McCABE, John 1920-2005

(John Charles McCabe, III)

PERSONAL:

Born November 14, 1920, in Detroit, MI; son of Charles J. (an engineer) and Rosalie McCabe; died September 27, 2005, in Petoskey, MI; married Vija Valda Zarina (a ballet teacher), October 19, 1958 (died 1987); married Rosina Lawrence (an actress), 1987 (died 1997); married third wife; wife's name Karen, 2003; children: (first marriage) Linard Peter, Sean Cahal, Deirdre Rose. Education: University of Detroit, Ph. B., 1947; Fordham University, M.F.A., 1948; Shakespeare Institute of University of Birmingham, Ph.D., 1954. Politics: Liberal Unionist. Religion: Roman Catholic.

CAREER:

Wayne University (now Wayne State University), Detroit, MI, instructor in theater, 1948-51; City College of New York (now City College of the City University of New York), New York, NY, instructor in speech, 1955-56; New York University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1956-58, associate professor, 1958-63, professor of theater and chairman of department of educational theatre, 1963-67; Mackinac College, Mackinac Island, MI, professor of theater and chairman of department, 1967-70; Lake Superior State College, Sault Ste. Marie, MI, author-in-residence, 1970-86. Producer, writer, actor, and director of plays and films, 1943-62. Military service: U.S. Army Air Forces, 1943-45; became sergeant.

MEMBER:

Actors Equity Association, Shakespeare Association of America, Catholic Actors Guild, Baker Street Irregulars, Sons of the Desert (founder, 1963), The Lambs, The Players.

WRITINGS:

Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1961, revised edition, Grosset (New York, NY), 1967, reprinted as Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy: An Affectionate Biography, Robson/Parkwest (New York, NY), 2002.

George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1973.

The Comedy World of Stan Laurel, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974, new edition, Moonstone Press (Beverly Hills, CA), 1990.

(With Al Kilgore and Dick Bann) Laurel and Hardy, Dutton (New York, NY), 1975.

(With G.B. Harrison) Proclaiming the Word, Pueblo Press, 1976.

(Ghost writer) James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney (autobiography), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1976.

Charlie Chaplin, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1978.

Grand Hotel: Mackinac Island, Unicorn Press (Detroit, MI), 1987.

Babe: The Life of Oliver Hardy, Carol Publishing (New York, NY), 1990.

The High: A Living Diary of University of Detroit High School, 1877-1948, Thirty-Eight Thirty-Nine Press (Mackinac Island, MI), 1992.

Cagney (biography), Knopf (New York, NY), 1997.

Also contributor to Variety and the Detroit News.

SIDELIGHTS:

John McCabe worked professionally as a stage and film actor from childhood, in addition to his careers as a theater instructor and author. His lifelong love of movies led him to write several books about the comedic duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (he founded their fan club, Sons of the Desert), as well as other screen legends. His favorite actor of all time, though, was James Cagney. McCabe ghost wrote Cagney's 1976 autobiography, Cagney by Cagney, and in 1997, he wrote the full-length, authorized biography of the legendary actor based on his previous interviews with him, a book called simply Cagney.

Cagney recounts the actor's poverty-stricken childhood on the streets of New York. The son of a hard-drinking Irishman and a stalwart, soft-spoken mother, Cagney sought to better himself and attended Columbia University before being plucked from obscurity by movie mogul Jack Warner in the early 1930s. He starred in such classics as The Public Enemy and White Heat, but resented being typecast as a hotheaded gangster and largely stayed out of the Hollywood limelight. More inscrutable than most movie stars, Cagney was called "the faraway fella" by his best friend, actor Pat O'Brien. By the 1960s, Cagney quietly slipped into retirement and concentrated on other interests, notably painting and living a country life in upstate New York.

Reviewers noted that Cagney is the work of an unabashed fan who is well-versed in the craft of acting. "Cagney exceeds the typical standards of celebrity biography," wrote James T. Fisher in Commonweal, "because McCabe is fully attentive to the many dimensions of his subject's artistry." Bonnie Smothers wrote in Booklist that "what McCabe has done with his book is to bring back vividly those old, golden images; he has written a reverent and good book." Though "written from the point of view of a devoted fan," noted Wilborn Hampton in the New York Times Book Review, "McCabe makes no attempt to hide the occasional irascibility and eccentricity of his subject.… Often, the author simply opens his interview notebooks and lets the actor speak for himself."

Some criticism was leveled against McCabe for his "lack of analysis about Cagney's personal life," as Jeff Brown put it in a People review. For example, Cagney and his wife (to whom he was married for sixty-four years) had long hoped to have children, but when medical problems prevented it, the couple adopted two children. They built a separate house on their property for the children and their housekeeper, and removed themselves from the day-to-day tasks of raising them. Further references to the children in the book are few. "You can sense McCabe sweeping the few handfuls of dirt under the rug," wrote Ty Burr in Entertainment Weekly. Yet McCabe is careful to distinguish between the actor and the roles he played. "As McCabe brings to light in his revealing biography," said David Hajdu in the New York Times Book Review, "Cagney the man was hardly interchangeable with his hard-nosed screen persona, and he was anything but the philistine he professed to be."

McCabe once told CA: "The theater—into which I was born—became for me (perhaps inevitably) a paradigm of what life should be. As my years increased, I never saw essential reason to alter that view, and indeed in my maturity that opinion is constantly being reaffirmed. Our dear Will [Shakespeare] put life's outline clearly in the Seven Ages speech, and Christ set forth its best functional impulses in the Sermon on the Mount. Everything that I have experienced in life—both as a man and writer—reassures me that this pattern of life is not only drama unending but the deepest truth as well.

"The theater—and in that I include film, radio, television, journalism, and all writing—when it does its job best both entertains and tells the truth. This is what I have tried to do as a writer.

"I love good wine, O. Henry, classic chili, the word 'grape,' blue, the songs of Noel Coward, Mackinac Island, water, the plays of Shaw, O'Casey, Shakespeare, and W.S. Gilbert, The Tavern by George M. Cohan, 104 of the 105 films made by Laurel and Hardy, ('Twice Two' being the exception), James Cagney, most Jesuits, London, potato salad, Stratford-upon-Avon, Mozart, draught beer, Dublin, God, and my family."

McCabe died in 2005. Writing in the London Independent, Glenn Mitchell noted: "McCabe wore his vast erudition lightly and applied it without pomposity." Mitchell also provided background to McCabe's interest in Laurel and Hardy, whom he had met while a student in England. His interest in the comedy pair helped lead to a belated critical appreciation of their comic art. In addition to his work on Laurel and Hardy and Cagney, McCabe also wrote books about the British comedian Charlie Chaplin and the Broadway legend George M. Cohan. During his retirement on Michigan's Mackinac Island, McCabe "continued his interests in theatre by giving annual Shakespeare readings and through the staging of revivals," according to Mitchell.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, October 15, 1997, Bonnie Smothers, review of Cagney, p. 362.

Commonweal, April 10, 1998, James T. Fisher, review of Cagney, p. 33.

Entertainment Weekly, December 19, 1997, Ty Burr, review of Cagney, p. 69.

New York Times Book Review, December 7, 1997, David Hajdu, "Yankee Doodle Dandy"; January 2, 1998, Wilborn Hampton, "A Master at Making Gansters Likable."

People, January 26, 1998, Jeff Brown, review of Cagney, p. 33.

Publishers Weekly, October 27, 1997, review of Cagney, p. 59.

obituaries

periodicals

Daily Telegraph (London, England), October 17, 2005.

Independent (London, England), October 11, 2005, Glenn Mitchell, p. 36.

Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2005, p. B10.*