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.
You don't have your facts straight at all! Cagney was a baby and little kid on the lower East Side and the family ALWAYS lived on the East side; NEVER in HELL'S KITCHEN! He didn't run with a gang as a kid; he took tap dancing lessons!
Raft, OTOH, grew up in Hell's Kitchen ( which is on the WEST SIDE ! )was a ballroom dancer ( giggilo ) and had mob buddies all his life. Neither did Raft go to college, which Cagney did...an Ivy League one, no less.
And then there's Bogie, who came from privilege, went to private schools and even Prepped at Exeter!