PHOTO FLASH: Beauty and The Barber? Susan Egan and Len Cariou Visit CAGNEY

The tabletop challenge between Bob Hope, as Eddie Foy Jr., and James Cagney, as George M. Cohan in "The Seven Little Foys" ranks as one of the great dance moments in movie history.

Eight times a week, Jeremy Benton, as Hope, recreates the friendly competition with Robert Creighton's Cagney in a knockout routine that's one of the many dance highlights of CAGNEY, the hit Off-Broadway musical about Hollywood's tough guy in tap shoes.

This week Benton got a post-show visit from Broadway legend Len Cariou, who scared The Devil out of playgoers as one of musical theatre's toughest guys, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Also there to lend support was a woman famous for playing one of Broadway's gentler souls, Susan Egan, who originated the role of Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Cagney, the new hit musical about Hollywood's tough guy in tap shoes, features "some of the best tap dancing have seen in my life" (NBC4 TV) set to a score of original songs and classic George M. Cohan favorites, including "Over There," "Grand Old Flag," and Yankee Doodle Dandy." Cagney's six-member cast stars Broadway's Robert Creighton (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Anything Goes) as the legendary James Cagney, with Jeremy Benton (Nat'l Tour of Irving Berlin's White Christmas), Danette Holden (Broadway's Annie, Shrek the Musical), Josh Walden(Broadway's Ragtime, La Cage aux Folles, A Chorus Line), Ellen Zolezzi (Seussical), and Bruce Sabath (Broadway's Company).

Not even five and half feet tall, James Cagney's oversized talent catapulted him from scrappy Irish kid on the streets of New York to Hollywood legend on "the top of the world." A Vaudeville hoofer turned actor, Cagney made a splash on Broadway before Hollywood called and made him one of the Silver Screen's most iconic tough guys in legendary films including The Public Enemy, The G Men and White Heat. But it was his turn as song and dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy that earned him the Academy Award and forever cemented his place as one of America's most beloved movie legends alongside the likes of Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Stewart and Fred Astaire.