His first vaudeville job offered little training for a future Hollywood heavy, observes Actor James Cagney in his new autobiography Cagney by Cagney. "It was a female-impersonation act," says Jimmy, now 71. "Six guys in skirts, serving basically as a chorus line, and one of the 'girls' was quitting. I filled the vacancy." Cagney, who eventually grew from vaudeville chorine to cinema mobster, says he never felt quite at home with his tough-guy image. That famous grapefruit-in-the-face scene with Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy (1931), he complains, followed him for years: "Invariably,...
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