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!
Ha! Well, just in the generic sense, I view everyone nowadays as creampuffs compared to those who lived through that environment. But I definately recall Lyles telling me about Cagney’s dabbling in boxing and various street fights, and his concern for his face mussed up. They were good friends. Lyles produced the one film that Cagney actually directed in the 1950s.
I like Raft quite a lot, even with his unsavory connections. But he often looked a bit of a dandy, like when he tripped the light fantastic in “Bolero” at Paramount. William Gargan, another NY guy, also worked as a bootlegger for a while. Bogart, yeah, he was definately a prep-school guy. And Edward G. Robinson was a scaredy-cat, especially when it came to guns.
But guys like George O’Brien, Herman Brix, Tom Tyler, and such could have beaten all of ‘em to the ground.