Too much Edward G
You dirty rat
James Cagney
Mae West
Chicago gangland in her heyday
Portrayed with beautiful dames
Singing seductive songs,
wearing mink, diamonds, slinky satin
Belonging to their men
I was almost asleep one night
When I heard a car chasing me down an alley.
I turned and saw it; and was terrified.
I knew it was a past life memory
Also the mobsters in the car were after me.
Snitches get stitches.
My heart had never beat this fast.
They were gaining.
I turned down an alley.
Heard the car stop.
Terrified, I was looking for an out.
Hid behind a trash can.
Someone fished me out
Threw me down.
I saw two men in shadow above me.
One leaned down and I felt a knife
Cut my throat from side to side.
I knew I deserved it, so I closed my eyes
He lands onto the highest perch,
"Top of the world, Ma, Top
of the world!" Who knows where
our Jimmy went if not there.
Before he was an aerialist,
he folded onscreen on his way to
the chair so that the boys who
followed him would have no
heir. Now, that's a hero,
grapefruit or no grapefruit.
***
(Bird watching on my porch)
I was one of the best leading men in Hollywood.
Many people thought my acting was quite good!
As long as Jack L. Warner said it was so,
I would be acting in many a diverse scenario!
They would have me playing a gangster or tough guy.
My great acting caught many a theater goer's eye.
Movie fans loved me in my appearance in "Public Enemy",
when I smashed a grapefruit in a woman's face for all to see.
Those were the usual roles from the studio I would get.
However, in the forties, my best part would come yet.
I won the Oscar for portraying a real-life song and dance man.
who was known on Broadway as George M. Cohan.
After that, I received many an offer and demand
to play many lucrative parts! Life was surely grand!
In a fifties film I starred in that played in many places,
I was Lon Chaney in "A Man of a Thousand Faces"
My last starring role was as a man with the Coca-Cola company.
This was in Billy Wilder's film "One, Two, Three".
In this film, I got myself in plenty of hot water
where behind the Iron Curtain, I lost the boss's daughter.
That was the last film for me for quite some time,
until I appeared briefly in the picture "Ragtime".
"You dirty rat" is a phrase used continuously
by they who impersonate the late actor James Cagney,
but Mr Cagney has insisted repeatedly
that he never once used that phrase in any of his movies.