Gregg Toland

popular name: James Cagney

date_of_death: March 30, 1986

age: 86

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: James Cagney was one of greatest actors, dancer, entertainer and performer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949). To avoid being typecast as a gangster in every film, he was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film (and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera". Today fans of the great actor can visit the grave of James Cagney at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

popular name: Irving Lazar

date_of_death: December 30, 1993

age: 86

cause_of_death: Complications stemming from diabetes and kidney failure

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Irving "Swifty" Lazar was the legendary Hollywood talent agent whose image as a dapper, elfin deal-maker with Coke-bottle glasses and bald dome made him a caricaturist's dream represent some of the greatest talent in Hollywood including Humphrey Bogart, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Faye Dunaway, Richard M. Nixon, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, and John Huston (to name a few). Mr. Lazar, who wore trademark oversize dark eyeglasses, called himself the Prince of Pitch (he hated "Swifty") who won record fees for his clients when such mega-deals were unheard of including the sale of Truman Capote's novel "In Cold Blood" for $500,000, the musical "Camelot" for $1.4 million and he sold Neil Simon's play "The Odd Couple" when it was only a five-sentence summary. He also started the tradition for annual Oscar-night parties with his own private annual Oscar-night dinner party at Spago.

popular name: Al Littieri

date_of_death: October 18, 1975

age: 47

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: If you liked watching films in the 1970s, you'll know who Al Lettieri was, even if you can't put a face to the name. He played Solozzo in The Godfather. (Michael played by Al Pacino shot him dead with the Police Chief in the restaurant). A little later on, he turned up as Steve McQueen's nemesis in The Getaway, pursuing him down through Texas to the Mexican border, seducing the vet's wife and throwing spare ribs around the car in a rage because he didn't 'like this game anymore!' Or maybe you remember him in Mr. Majestyk as a mob hit man opposite watermelon grower played by Charles Bronson. Either way he played the heavy with menacing machismo and style. He was taken too quickly when he suffered a massive heart attack at age 47.