James Cagney Movie Quotes

How did the “You dirty rat!” line that James Cagney never actually said get started? The same way “Yondah lies the castle of my foddah” got started for Tony Curtis. Comedy routines. Here are some of the rat lines Cagney did say in films:

Dirty little rat
Dirty, double-crossing rat
Dirty, yellow-bellied rat

And there were pigeons too:
Dirty little stool-pigeon
Dirty, no-good, yellow-bellied stool pigeon

More James Cagney quotes:

As Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
“‘Morning, gentlemen. Nice day for a murder.”
“Say your prayers, mugs.”
“You’ll slap me? You slap me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.”
“Look, I know you’re a smart lawyer – very smart – but don’t get smart with me.”
“Aw, don’t be a sucker!”
“Alright, Frazier. It’s my rap and I’ll take it. But it’s my hundred grand and I’ll take that too, the day that I get out.”
“It’s like a barber chair. And when they ask me, you got anything to say, I’ll say, ‘sure, give me a haircut, a shave, and a massage, with one of those nice new electric massages’.”
“No! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! Don’t make me burn in hell. Oh, please let go of me! Please don’t kill me! Oh, don’t kill me, please!”

As Biff Grimes in The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
“I uh, I guess a little kiss is harmless if it’s all in fun.”
“Well, your mother’s a bloomer girl. You’re a nicotine fiend. Are there any more at home like you?”
“I wish you’d tie a can to yourself and beat it.”

As George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
“My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”
His wife Mary, (played by Joan Leslie): “George, I didn’t know you could yodel.”
“Learned it on the farm. Nothing but pig callin’ with frost on it.”

White Heat (1949)
“Whaddya want – a medal?”
“A copper, a copper, how do you like that boys? A copper and his name is Fallon. And we went for it, I went for it. Treated him like a kid brother. And I was gonna split fifty-fifty with a copper!”
“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

As Lon Chaney in Man of 1000 Faces (1957)
“I’m the collection agency. I’ve come to collect my wife.”
“The kind of fellows I play, pretty girls don’t write to.”
“(In character of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre, to his estranged wife, played by Dorothy Malone) What’s the matter, Cleva? Still afraid of freaks?”