Academy Award to be the star attraction at Cagney auction

James Cagney's green 1961 Bentley S2 four-door saloon is expected to fetch between $30,000 and $40,000, while a diamond engagement ring set in platinum and centred by an octagonal-cut diamond of approximately 6.42 carats is estimated at $25,000 to $35,000.

James Cagney memorabilia including his 1942 Academy Award for best actor given to the Irish-American for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy will go under the hammer at a New York auction on September 27th.

William Doyle Galleries, New York, estimate that the Academy Award given to Hollywood star for his role as the patriot showman, George M. Cohan, in Yankee Doodle Dandy will fetch between $300,000 (€321,000) and $500,000.

According to the auction house, Cagney considered the best actor award as his crowning achievement. "Despite his numerous gangster roles, Cagney always considered himself first and foremost a song-and-dance man, the very role he played in the movie."

Ms Jeni Sandberg, a specialist at William Doyle Galleries, says: "Academy awards are not allowed to be sold. After 1949, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences instituted a contract with award recipients saying that they could sell it but they had to first offer it to the Academy for $1. So of course the Academy would buy any for $1.

But that was instituted in 1949 so there's really a finite number that can be sold because there was a finite number that had been given before that."

So Cagney's 1942 award is one of the relatively few which can appear on the market. The actor was also nominated for best actor in 1938 for his role in Angels with Dirty Faces and in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me.

In 1996, Clark Gable's 1934 best actor award for It Happened One Night fetched $607,500, topping the previous record of $563,500 set by Vivien Leigh's 1939 Oscar for her role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson paid $1,542,500 for the 1939 best picture award for Gone with the Wind, says the auction house.

Celebrity material has always done quite well. But the recent Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe sales at Sotheby's and Christie's respectively, which did "stupendously well" and "saw the most outrageous prices for seemingly the most simple things", have pushed a market hungry for celebrity memorabilia, Ms Sandberg says.

Cagney's green 1961 Bentley S2 four-door saloon is expected to fetch between $30,000 and $40,000, while a diamond engagement ring set in platinum and centred by an octagonal-cut diamond of approximately 6.42 carats is estimated at $25,000 to $35,000.

"He was born here in New York in 1899. His parents were born in Ireland. He's from the O'Caignes. He went to Ireland on a couple of different occasions. He hung out with other Irish actors in Hollywood - Spencer Tracey, Pat O'Brien, Maureen O'Hara," Ms Sandberg says.

Best remembered for his gangster roles including Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), White Heat (1949) and Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Cagney got his big break on Broadway in Penny Arcade in 1930. Warner Brothers bought the rights to the film, renamed it Sinner's Holiday and hired Cagney to recreate his original role.

Motion picture stills in the auction in lots of 20 or 30 are estimated at $200-$600 per lot. An opening night signed brochure from Yankee Doodle Dandy is estimated at $1,000-$1,500, while a racoon coat which belonged to the actor is estimated at $400-$600.

Website: www.doylenewyork.com jmarms@irish-times.ie