Born at the turn of the century  on July 17, 1899 James Francis Cagney, became one of America's greatest actors.He was born above his fathers saloon at avenue D and eight street in N.Y.C.The area was then known as the gas house district. He was the second of five children, when he was two the family moved uptown to 429 east seventy-ninth street. Seven years later they moved to 166 east ninety-sixth street. Cagney would later say "that always sticks in my memory as a street of stark tragedy, there was always crepe hanging on a door or two somewhere on the block. there was always the clanging of an ambulance bell. Patrol wagons came often..."  The Cagney's neighbors included Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Irish and Jews. By his teens Jimmy could speak fluent Yiddish, a talent used in several of his films. At seventeen he was a bellhop at the friars club, while attending Stuyvesant high school.  Upon graduation he got a job as a junior  architect the pay was good and as jimmy later put it "we needed every penny". His mother encouraged him to continue his education  so he entered Columbia University for a course in fine arts. Along with his brothers Harry and Edward  Jimmy was sent to the Lenox Hill Settlement house to take a course in public speaking.  From time to time the settlement staged little plays in which neighborhood kids took part. His first part was in a Chinese pantomime. The next role was as an Empreror in a Japanese musical comedy called  What,for why?  His first starring role was in Lors Dunsany's one-act play "The Lost  Silk Hat.

In the fall of 1918 a Spanish influenza epidemic swept the eastern seaboard and  Jimmy's father died at forty-two. Shortly thereafter his sister Jeanne was born. In his sixth month at Columbia he withdrew to help out with family expenses. While employed at  wanamakers he became friendly with a salesman,  formerly a vaudeville actor told Jimmy about a show at Keith's 86th Street Theater that needed a replacement for a boy who had left the cast. Cagney auditioned and was accepted for a role in the vaudeville show called "Every Sailor". He was horrified to learn that he was to play a comic female impersonator, along with seven other boys. The weekly salary of $35  was to good to pass up, he would remain with the show for eight weeks. He then returned to  more stable employment at a brokerage house on Broad Street in lower Manhattan.  In the summer of 1920 Jimmy went to an open-call for a Broadway musical called Pitter Patter. He was hired as a chorus boy, to earn extra Jimmy  became a Dresser for the star of the show. It was in this show that he would meet his future wife  Frances. they were married in 1921, after the close of the show.  Several vaudeville shows followed like "Ritz girls of 1922" and "Snapshots of 1923". Cagney would later say that with the exception of his wife Vaudeville had the greatest affect on his life, he always thought of himself as; "Just a Song and Dance man.

In the 1926-27 New York season the biggest hit was George Abbot and Phil Dunnings "Broadway." Cagney was cast as the lead in the London production wife bill(Frances) as a dancer.  At the last minute he was replaced,  but was kept on the payroll because he had been given run of the play contract. Jimmy understudied for the lead actor Lee Tracy.