Back in the day they had TALENT, they could act, sing, dance, play instruments they could DO IT ALL, not like the untalented bunch in Hollywood today!! You look back at these talents and are in total AWE!! The Hollywood types today could only DREAM of having this talent!! The music also OMG Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers, musicians today have SO MANY sound effects ect. their talent will NEVER compare to past musicians NO WAY!!!
Yup. They came from a different tradition (Vaudeville) that meant a lot of itinerant song and dance skills, plus schtick, what passed for standup comedy. Cagney could really pull off pretty much everything.