"Angels With Dirty Faces" is Cagney's best work. I cry a river when he goes to the hot seat and then cried like a baby even though he was as tough as nails just to save the kids who looked up to him as a last act of pennance. He wails like a coward and pleads for his life and resists being strapped in. He is shown to be a coward- but he did it to show the kids whom had looked up to him not to follow his path. All the kids at the end of the movie thought him "Yellow" but he was the bravest of all the Saints.
I always like Yankee Doodle Dandy. Cagney had a body language in his dancing that stood out above everybody else, IMHO.
I know you must have thought me to be someone else. No harm, no foul. :)
Maybe we can discuss another film another day. G'nite, Burkeman1.