Cagney was ONLY the "tough guy" in some movies. In real life, Cagney began his career as a BROADWAY GYPSY*. And he copied his "tough guy"/pants hitching style from his remembrances of adult neighborhood "toughs".
OTOH....George Raft REALLY was a "tough".
* GYPSY = dancer in a Broadway show chorus line.
What about Cagney’s boxing efforts? Hell’s Kitchen? The streets of NY in 1899-1909? Is that all studio-PR hokum? A.C. Lyles, his good friend, seemed to believe it, when I once had a discussion with him. And Raft himself was a professional dancer. Is that a disqualifier for Cagney, but not Raft? Or are Raft’s gangster buddies what define his toughness? Some were real creeps, like the dude that cut up Jon Hall at Tommy Dorsey’s apartment building.