Former Farm Estate of James Cagney goes on the Market.

While most people remember award-winning actor James Cagney as a song and dance man, on Martha’s Vineyard he was known as a hands on farmer.  In 1936, on his very first visit to Martha’s Vineyard, James Cagney fell in love with the beauty and tranquility of the island and acquired rolling acres of land with stone walls bordering the fields and a farmhouse dating back to the 1720s. For more than 35 years he spent several months a year as a hands-on manager of horses, cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys, and swapped stories with his fishermen friends in the nearby harbor village of Menemsha.

An eighteenth-century barn housing his prized Morgan horses was also where Cagney practiced stair dancing on a freestanding set of steps. “Some days … a couple of steers are looking at me and 40 turkeys are gathered around blinking at me and the chickens are cackling, although I like to think of it as applause,” he told his biographer. “I guess they’re all wondering what this silly idiot is doing. I guess they don’t know many farmers like me.” In May of 1956, Cagney was putting dance routines together at the farm for the movie “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Profiled in 1955 in both Look and Life magazines, Cagney granted the photographers free access to his home and farm, including posing for several shots dancing in the barn.

It’s the place Cagney came for freedom from the Hollywood limelight. “Acting was always a second choice with me. I was always aiming at the farm,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything more satisfactory, more life-fulfilling, than living on a farm surrounded by salt water… I said to myself, if I had just six months to live, I’d spend them at the Vineyard.”

Now this 70-acre property is one of the last vast farm holdings still intact and in private ownership on the island. With a sweeping entrance through expansive fields, walking and riding trails, woodlands, pond, beach access, water views and total privacy, this is an extraordinary situation in which to create your Martha’s Vineyard estate. The antique buildings remain and a new home site has been created on a beautiful ridgeline with strong water views, a perfect building site surrounded by open fields and the rolling treetops of the north shore of the island.  This property can support multiple houses and is a truly special estate awaiting its next chapter with a new owner. Hideaway in this place James Cagney loved “beyond words” for the freedom and peace it provides. Exclusively listed by Tea Lane Associates for $13,500,000   Please inquire or call 508 696 9999.