James Cagney
Again, your favorite, and movies you consider great… He was in many good films, a lot of 80 minute manufactured quickies, but a GREAT movie?
Yankee Doodle Dandy is one of the best musicals ever. (One of the few I can stand to watch at all.)
The Public Enemy, White Heat, The Roaring Twenties (with Bogart), Each Dawn I Die… I think they’re pretty great, though I don’t know what the afficionados would say.
The last scene in The Public Enemy where his trussed-up body falls forward where mom is awaiting his return is still one of the most hair-raising I have seen.
And incontestably FOOTLIGHT PARADE. Simply magnificent.
I think they are all good movies, except “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, but I can only think of one musical I like, and it’s probably the one everyone likes - “Singin’ in the Rain”, maybe because they show the process, the behind the scene stuff, basic critiques of show-biz… Cagney is always great, though, even his cameo in “Ragtime”
Every actor I like seems to be in at least one GREAT movie. Cagney was the only one I could think of. Again, just personal preference.
I think Matthew Lillard is great, but I won’t defend calling any of his movies that.
One of my favorite actors whose movies I really enjoy is Jean-Claude van Damme. Yes I am serious. I find him and his movies to be entertaining.
I am not sure I would refer to any of his movies to be particularly “great” though.
How exactly are we defining “GREAT” here? Box office returns? DVD sales? AFI polls? Rotten Tomato ratings? How often a movie’s shown on TV these days? :dubious: 
How about William Powell? I think My Man Godfrey is brilliant (and has the funniest closing line in movie history), and the Thin Man series, of course, but I don’t know if any of them rise to the level of true greatness.
White Heat was a GREAT movie starring Cagney. Also everything jaycat mentioned, plus Angels with Dirty Faces, One Two Three, and a lot of others I’m not willing to look up.
I consider Powell’s My Man Godfrey To be a great film.
I…I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand the OP. Could you be a little more clear about what you’re looking for in this thread?
Were Jimmy Durante, Phil Silvers, or Mae West in any great films?
Silvers was in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
So was Durante.
Mae West probably would have been in it too, if they had asked her.
Buster Crabbe. The original Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Captain Gallant. Always liked him, but he never was in anything that could be considered great.
In the same vein, Johnny Weissmuller.
…they could have written a pretty good scene of her interacting with Dick Shawn.
In her own right, I don’t know how My Little Chickadee could be considered anything less than a great film.
“Young lady, are you trying to show contempt for this court?”
“No, your honor, I’m doing my best to hide it!”
Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s an hammy, overacted mess.
Stanley Kramer produced it as a challenge; someone has told him he had no sense of humor and couldn’t do comedy. Kramer proved the other guy right.
Respectfully, I disagree.
I laughed.
I enjoyed the mass participation of stars. It looked forward to such 70s productions as Catch-22 and Murder by Death.
Ah, MAD WORLD. The Jack Davis poster. Jimmy Durante kicking the bucket (I know the exact spot). Jonathan Winters demolishing the gas station. Terry-Thomas commenting on Americans’ infatuation with “bosoms”. I laughed and laughed. Sure, I was just adolescent then. And it wasn’t as much fun as the BEN-HUR premiere at Grauman’s, with chariots. But I liked it.
Also Buddy Hackett flying the airplane through the billboard
20 minutes into it, I had to turn it off!