Video : A Cagney Collection

James Cagney could do it all.

In fact, novelist Grahame Greene once wrote of Cagney: “He can do nothing which is not worth watching.”

Born in New York’s Lower East Side in 1899, Cagney was the quintessential movie tough guy in such films as “Public Enemy” and “White Heat.” A former vaudeville hoofer and Broadway dancer, he was equally adept in the musicals “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Footlight Parade.” And in “Boy Meets Girl,” “One, Two Three” and “Mister Roberts,” he proved a first-rate comedian.

The Oscar-winning actor’s career spanned more than 50 years. Cagney made his film debut in 1930’s “Sinner’s Holiday.” His swan song was the 1984 CBS movie “Terrible Joe Moran,” in which he played a feisty, wheelchair-bound former boxer.

TNT this week pays tribute to the legend in the documentary “James Cagney: Top of the World,” hosted by Cagney fan Michael J. Fox, who met the actor shortly before his death in 1986. The special features clips, interviews with family and friends, including Jack Lemmon (“Mr. Roberts”), the late Mae Clark (“Public Enemy”) and Joan Leslie (“Yankee Doodle Dandy”).

In conjunction with the documentary, TNT will be airing a “Cagneyrama Festival” this month, featuring more than 20 Cagney films.

Numerous Cagney movies, included those listed below, are currently available on video.

“Public Enemy” (MGM/UA) is the film in which Cagney shoves a grapefruit in the face of his moll (Clarke). Released in 1931, the melodrama about the rise and fall of a gangster is crude and dated. But Cagney’s powerhouse, star-making performance is still a knockout 60 years later. Jean Harlow, then 20, plays a seductress.

Cagney showed off his musical talents in 1933’s “Footlight Parade” (MGM/UA). Cagney is a pint-size dynamo as a director who tries to outdo himself with extravagant musical shows. Busby Berkeley staged the lavish musical numbers seen in the movie: “By a Waterfall,” “Honeymoon Hotel” and “Shanghai Lil.” Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler also star in this enjoyable hoot.

While under contract to Warner Bros., Cagney even got the chance to brush up on his Shakespeare in Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle’s magical 1935 adaptation of the Bard’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (MGM/UA). Cagney steals the show with his engaging performance as Bottom. The cast includes Mickey Rooney and Olivia de Havilland.

The sizzling 1938 melodrama “Angels With Dirty Faces” (MGM/UA) brought Cagney his first best actor Oscar nomination. Cagney and Pat O’Brien play former childhood buddies: Cagney becomes a murderous gangster and O’Brien a priest. You’ve seen it all before, but never better than this.

Cagney rode the range in 1939’s watchable “The Oklahoma Kid” (MGM/UA). Cagney plays a good guy seeking revenge on the men who lynched his Pa. Humphrey Bogart, of course, is the bad guy.

That same year, Cagney and Bogie teamed up for the colorful drama “The Roaring Twenties” (MGM/UA). Cagney, Bogie and a rather wan Jeffrey Lynn are World War I Army buddies whose lives intertwine over the decades. Cagney plays a prohibition racketeer, Bogie is a gangster and Lynn tries to live the straight and narrow. The final line, uttered by Gladys George, is a classic.

Cagney finally copped a richly deserved Oscar for his larger-than-life performance as famed song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in the 1942 musical-biography “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (MGM/UA). Cagney sings and dances up a storm to such Cohan greats as “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Give My Regards to Broadway.” There won’t be a dry eye in the house.

“Top of the world, Ma!” Cagney utters that line at the conclusion of the red-hot 1949 melodrama “White Heat” (MGM/UA). Cagney, in his first gangster film in nearly a decade, pulls out all the stops as a mobster with a definite mother-obsession complex. Margaret Wycherly is his beloved Ma. A definite must-see.

“Love Me or Leave Me,” the classy 1955 musical-biography of torch singer Ruth Etting, garnered Cagney his third and final Oscar nomination. Cagney is terrific as Marty “The Gimp” Snyder, a pushy, ruthless racketeering husband whose obsession for his wife Etting (an equally good Doris Day) nearly destroys their lives.

Though Cagney came out of retirement in 1981 to make Milos Forman’s “Ragtime” (Paramount), his last starring role was 20 years earlier in Billy Wilder’s wickedly funny satire “One, Two, Three” (MGM/UA). Pushing 62 at the time, Cagney exudes as much energy as he did 30 years earlier as a fast-talking Coca-Cola executive stationed in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War whose life turns into a nightmare when his boss’ daughter (Pamela Tiffin) secretly marries a Communist (Horst Buchholz).

“James Cagney: Top of the World” airs Sunday at 5 and 9 p.m. and Monday at 1 a.m. on TNT.