Yankee Doodle Dandy

`Yankee Doodle Dandy' makes the viewer say, `They don't make them like that anymore.' The film is uplifting for its espousal of unabashed patriotism and its representation of America as a place in which a gifted performer like George M. Cohan could rise from vaudeville to Broadway. It is also moving for its reverence for the nineteenth late century theatre and early twentieth century Broadway: the sequence showing Cohan's successes of the 1920s commemorate the other musical and non musical hits of the decade as much as Cohan's. I was moved to tears by the ending showing the elderly Cohan joining in a World War II parade, a group of soldiers marching to `Over There' and being asked why he isn't singing, `Hey old-timer, don't you know this song?' `Yankee Doodle Dandy' is a celebration of Cohan's life and career -- a little sanitised perhaps, but still portraying his love for his family, his profession and his country. It isn't a museum piece but more of a picture from another era – and in a time when America is honoured by songs such as `Kick Ass USA' it's a valuable reminder of an age when people feeling their country under threat roused their nationalism by reminding themselves of what made them want to fight for it.

James Cagney put down his tommy gun and grapefruit long enough to register his lone Oscar-winning performance in one of Hollywood's most enduring biopics, playing song-and-dance man George M. Cohan with so much gusto it's hard to believe the filmmakers wanted Fred Astaire, or that Cagney ever did anything else but musicals. Cohan himself probably didn't make as good a Cohan as Cagney does here.

The film is best-known for its musical moments, not only because of Cagney's clever hoofing but for the way the numbers are staged. When Cohan debuts his new song "You're A Grand Old Flag," the picture goes from being a relatively straight stage shoot to a series of logistically-improbable montages (a group of Boy Scouts give way to Revolutionary War troops, which melt into a knot of freed slaves gathered around a statue of Lincoln) that sell the history of the United States in all its glory. Finally, as the song winds to its big finish, hundreds and hundreds of uniformed flag bearers spill out on a stage suddenly too big to hold any conventional theater.

The overall effect of this is overwhelming enough to make you want to run out and buy War Bonds 60 years after the conflict "Yankee Doodle Dandy" was inspired by has ended. Patriotism may go out of style from time to time, but events happy and otherwise have a way of bringing it back.

The smaller touches make "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as entertaining as it is inspiring. Little Georgie gets too big for his britches when he tells a Brooklyn audience he can lick any kid in town, and gets put to the test. Older George and a partner beguile a producer (played by S.Z. Sakall, Carl from "Casablanca") into taking on a play no one else wants by pretending it's a hot property. George meets his future wife Mary in old-man costume, and can't resist having a little fun with her. "I know I have talent," Mary blurts, "even if I am from Buffalo."

Cagney does talk rather fast, and he needs to if only to keep pace with a frenetic storyline. Situations change rather quickly in "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and sometimes, as with George's sudden success and the later dissolution of the Four Cohans, it happens a bit too fast to follow. Cagney hardly pauses for breath. He's no singer, either, talking his way through his numbers like Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady," only not as well.

But few films deliver the goods like "Yankee Doodle Dandy." You get a strong feeling for vaudeville entertainment, how mass entertainment worked in the gaslight age. The musical numbers (all done within the context of public performance, or else rehearsal, i.e. naturalistically) have real charm. The dialogue is great, too, a trifle canned and buffed-up maybe, but very Runyon-ish in its Stage Door Johnny way.

The best scene, for Cagney's acting and for comedy, is when he shows Mary a new song he wrote for her. The way his eyes move from her face to the score, prompting her unnecessarily, reveals both affection and the showman's inner ham. He almost looks menacing, but of course it's because he's smitten by the singer and trying to tell her through his song. It also sets up a great bit of comedy later on when George has to give Mary's song away to stage star Fay Templeton, then go back and explain it to Mary.

"He's the whole country squeezed into one pair of pants," exclaims one producer trying to get Templeton to hitch her wagon to Cohan's star. With Cagney wearing the pants, the end result is a perfect fit.

The amazing piece of timing here is when Warner Bros. began work on this biography of entertainer George M. Cohan, WWII had not yet broken out. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred the day before shooting began. When the film opened people on the home front badly needed some morale boosting, and this film gave it to them. It's just a joyous musical costume piece from start to finish with nice comic touches balanced with some sentimental moments (supposedly Walter Huston's deathbed scene had even taskmaster director Michael Curtiz crying). There's nothing in the way of real conflict or even much heavy in the way of romance between Cohan and his fictitious film wife "Mary", who was modeled after Cohan's actual second wife in some ways. Cohan was actually married twice. Oddly enough, it was Cohan who said he wanted as little romance in the film as possible.

The more I learn about Cohan the more I realize that Cagney was perfect to play him - both Irish Americans, both about the same size and build, and George Cohan's style of dancing and singing were about the same as Cagney's. It's hard to believe that Fred Astaire was Cohan's first choice to play himself. Astaire was a great talent, but I don't think he could have conveyed the combination of mischief, optimism and energy that was Cohan the way that Cagney ultimately did. Several people criticize Cagney's dancing here, but that eccentric style was Cohan's, who always considered himself more of an overall entertainer than a dancer in the first place.

If you're "date conscious" as I am, there are some matters of plot that might bother you. Cohan was born on July 2 or 3, not July 4. Cohan's mother outlived his father by eleven years and Cohan's father was not "very old" when he died as is said in the film - at least by today's standards. When Cohan's father died in 1917, he was only 69. Cohan's sister did die young - she was only 39, dying in 1916, plus she was not his little sister. Instead Josie was a year older than George. The film has Josie marrying when she would have been close to forty, when she actually married at the beginning of the 20th century and thus was the one to break up the four Cohans, not George. Also, Cohan received his Congressional Medal in 1936, not as WWII began as shown in the film. However the plot device of having George M. recount his life story to FDR, receiving his Congressional medal in the Oval Office, and then dance joyously down the White House stairs and into the streets joining a group of marching soldiers in a chorus of "Over There" was probably a great way to bridge Cohan's patriotic past with what was then an uncertain time that certainly needed a dose of his optimism.

The one thing that I did find a little odd - and one thing isn't much in a two plus hour long movie - is that it is hard to spot the actual point in the film where Mary becomes George's wife. There is quite a bit of domesticity shown before the two were married. Mary is cooking for George, staying in his apartment alone waiting for him to come home from the show, and acting very much like they are already married. The only way you know they are not is that George very subtly pops the question to the point that I'm surprised even Mary knew what he was asking! I know this doesn't seem like much in today's world, but considering that they were trying to paint Cohan in the most positive light possible and that the living arrangements might be misunderstood, I am surprised that the censors of that time never raised the issue.

At any rate, I highly recommend this one. You'll have a great time, at least in part because you can see that Cagney is having a great time. He always said this film was his favorite, and it shows in his performance.

James Cagney recalls in his autobiography that this movie was his favorite, largely due to his love of dancing. He was one of the great "tough guys" of all time on film, but dancing was his passion, he noted. It shows here. This was "a labor of love," to use a cliché, and it's obvious how much fun he was having in this film. His hoofing talent also was obvious. He was good, very good.

In fact, for the audience, most of this movie is pure "feel good." Almost all the characters are nice people, the story is inspirational and nicely patriotic and the songs are fantastic. If you pick up the two-disc special-edition DVD that came out several years ago, then you'll see this film in all it's glory. The transfer is magnificent and really brings out the great cinematography. I never realized how beautifully filmed this was until I saw this on DVD.

The story is simply the biography of George M. Cohan, the writer and Broadway star of many, many hit plays and hit songs. Unlike today's biographies, this is a very positive story about a man who brought patriotism alive during World War I with such inspirational songs as "It's A Grand Old Flag" and "Over There." For some of us, listening to these songs can bring a tear or two.

Cagney is his normal riveting self and Joan Leslie certainly makes an appealing female lead as Cohan's wife. The great Walter Huston plays Cohan's father. I've always found Huston to be an actor of great presence. In this movie is a very, very touching deathbed scene with he and Cagney.

So you have a little bit of everything here from drama to romance to comedy to music and Cagney is the glue to fits it all together beautifully. One of the great classic films of all time.

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (Warner Brothers, 1942), directed by Michael Curtiz, is an autobiographical musical of a legendary Broadway showman, composer, actor and dancer, George M. Cohan (1878-1942), as played by James Cagney in what's been reported as his personal favorite of all movie roles, and it's easy to see why. In spite the fact that Cagney won his only Academy Award as best actor, he was letter perfect in the role as Cohan. Interesting to see a noted movie tough guy singing and dancing, but it's even more-so in watching Walter Huston as Cohan's father doing a song and dance himself.

The story opens with the middle-aged Cohan (James Cagney), following a comical musical performance in "I'd Rather Be Right" in which he plays and spoofs the president (Franklin D. Roosevelt). He gets a telegram from the president himself to meet with him at the White House. Believing the worst, he arrives to meet "with the head man." Alone with him in the Oval Office, the two men converse which leads to Cohan to soon be relating his life story via flashback starting with his birth (born on the 4th of July), as the son of stage entertainers, Jerry and Nellie Cohan (Walter Huston and Rosemary DeCamp), followed by his boyhood days as the star of "Peck's Bad Boy" (Douglas Croft playing George at age 12), the teaming up with his younger sister, Josie (first played by JoAnn Marlowe, then by Patsy Lee Parsons, and by Jeanne Cagney as an adult) and his parents, forming the act called "The Four Cohans," George leaving the family to form an act on his own, his association with a young hopeful named Mary (Joan Leslie), whom he eventually marries, the publication of his songs that make him world famous, the death of his parents, his retirement from the stage and his return to Broadway to appear in a play that has summoned him with an invitation from the president, and after nearly two hours of recollection, the story moves forward to present day with Cohan to find out why he was really asked to come to visit with the president.

With a handful of song and dance tunes, many composed by Cohan himself, the soundtrack is as follows: "The Dancing Master," "The Dancing Master" (reprise); "Strolling Through the Park One Day" (by Joe Goodwin and Gus Edwards); "Minstrel Number," "I Was Born in Virginia," "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch," "Harrigan," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "All Aboard for Old Broadway" (by Jack Scholl and M.K. Jerome), "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Oh, You Wonderful Girl," "Blue Skies, Grey Skies," "The Barber's Ball," "Mary," "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway," "Mary" (reprise); "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway," "So Long, Mary," "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (by William Steffe and Julia Ward Howe); "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," "Of Thee I Sing," "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Come Along With Me," "Over There," "I'm Happy As Can Be," "Love Nest" (by Louis A. Hirsch and Otto Harbach); "Little Nellie Kelly," "The Man Who Owns Broadway," "Molly Malone," "Billie," "Jeepers Creepers" (by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren); "Off the Record" and "Over There." Of the songs listed above, several could have been chosen as alternate titles in regards to Cohan, including: "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Grand Old Flag," "The Man Who Owns Broadway," or "Off the Record," but the final selection became "Yankee Doodle Dandy." While many of these songs are Broadway show tunes, the most memorable ones happen to be the patriotic songs, especially "Grand Old Flag," "Over There," and of course, the title tune.

In the supporting cast are Irene Manning (Fay Templeton); Richard Wholf (Samuel H. Harris); George Tobias (Mr. Dietz); George Barbier (Claude Erlanger); S.Z. Sakall (Mr. Schwab); Eddie Foy Jr. (Eddie Foy); Minor Watson (Edward Albee); and Frances Langford credited as a singer, but actually Nora Bayes. Listed bottom in the cast is Captain Jack Young as The President, who, during the opening and closing segments, is only visible by a back-view depiction.

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY started a new trend of bio-musicals that would become fashionable throughout the 1940s. As a movie, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY is a grand old musical that blends nostalgia of the past (early twentieth century, World War I) with patriotism of the 1940s. While very little is known of the real George M. Cohan today, the inaccuracies wouldn't really matter nor noticed. Cohan was actually married twice, but never to a girl named Mary. The screenplay, overall, fails to mention Cohan actually appeared in some motion pictures, one being THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT (Paramount, 1932) opposite Claudette Colbert. To watch that Cohan film is to see how close Cagney worked to impersonate him on screen. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY is true indication of Cagney not just as a movie tough guy, but his diversatility as an actor. Although the patriotism plays towards the World War II audience, much of Cohan's spirit of being an American continues to reflect upon the present generation.

Full of memorable lines, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY's most noted happens to be Cohan's closing speech following a performance, "My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I THANK YOU." Filmed with crisp black and white photography, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY did go through the process of colorization in the mid 1980s. While original Technicolor photography might have been its major asset, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY still ranks first rate entertainment for all ages, and one responsible in keeping the George M. Cohan name more alive today than ever before. Available on video cassette, DVD and through presentations on Turner Classic Movies. (**** flags)