The Yankee Doodler

Here's William Frawley singing "The Yankee Doodler", a song about raising money for war bonds. Frawley may be best remembered for his role on I LOVE LUCY, but he started out as a song-and-dance man in Vaudeville. Here he is, performing the song on film.

In this era, you could listen to a juke box, or you might hear a song from a central depository, or you might drop a coin at a bar and get a soundie, a 3-minute movie in which some performer sang a song. Did they talk about this when they were spitballing MTV?

WARNING: RACIAL EPITHETS AHEAD.

Here's a musical short that was probably very popular in wartime 1942 (notice its title), but which would now evoke a few protests from various quarters due to the comments against Japanese and Italians. Interestingly enough, the lead performer shown on-camera -- he's accompanied by two girls in majorette costumes, and backed by an offstage chorus -- is none other than character actor William Frawley, not usually considered a musical performer.

Back in the days of American vaudeville, a very popular musical routine was "Ist Das Nicht Ein Schnitzelbank?", in which a schoolmaster with a comic German or "Dutch" accent would point to illustrations of various objects, with the other performers (portraying the students) replying in unison. Dozens of vaudeville acts did variations on this turn; even the Marx Brothers (with Groucho as the schoolmaster) tried it in their early days.

Frawley had been a vaudeville performer himself, and here he does a version of that routine with updated lyrics for World War Two. Wearing an academic gown and mortarboard, and with a long pointer in one hand, he points to a caricatured drawing of a Japanese man, and sings: "Isn't this a sneaky Jap?" When the offstage chorus reply "Yeah, man, sneaky Jap!", Frawley sings the next line: "Will we kick him off the map?" The chorus reply: "Yeah, man, off the map!".

And so forth. Some of the lyrics are less imaginative than others. Pointing to a drawing of Mussolini, Frawley continues the call and response: "Isn't this Benito's jaw?" (Yeah, man, Benito's jaw!) "Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw!" (Yeah, man, haw haw haw!) Did someone get paid for writing this?

'The Yankee Doodler' is one of those songs in which each verse gets progressively longer, tacking on the responses of all the previous verses. But at least there's a snappy refrain: "Now we're gonna win! Gonna win, gonna win!" The entire routine is performed by Frawley on a bare stage, pointing at various drawings that illustrate his couplets.

Well, 'The Yankee Doodler' is clearly wartime propaganda, and the Japanese and Germans were saying worse things about us than we said about them. Fair enough. Frawley performs a snappy song-and-dance routine here, and 'The Yankee Doodler' is interesting as an example of Frawley's musical abilities, as well as a (modified) example of the old-time Schnitzelbank routine. Still, I winced at those lyrics ... not because they're so jingoistic and racist, but because they're just so ruddy AWFUL! "Jaw" and "haw haw haw"? Oh, blimey! Kindly leave the stage! My rating for 'The Yankee Doodler' is just 6 out of 10.

Just watched this Soundie as directed by one Herbert Moulton on the DVD collection "Saved from the Flames". It features William Frawley-yes, Fred Mertz-in snappy vaudeville attire singing about how we're "Gonna Win This War" with choice words about Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese being repeated verse by verse to make what was pertinent points about achieving victory during World War II. He's accompanied visually by two lovely women in nice patriotic dresses just standing there pointing to the board of illustrations to prove Frawley's point. Would be considered politically incorrect today but still pretty entertaining to watch.

... with William Frawley appearing in this musical short with mortarboard and professor's robes and a blackboard with "doodles" on them - or cartoons - acting as cues helping Frawley in this lively and patriotic WWII era sing along soundie.

It's amazing how Mr. Frawley always looked about the same age no matter how young or old he was. It really shows how good a song and dance man Frawley was from all those years in vaudeville and that he was much more than the stingy landlord in I Love Lucy. If THIS song doesn't make you sing along, tap your foot or step in time (and give you a profound sense of Patriotism), then nothing will!

Not released on DVD or Blue as far as I know, not even the recently released Soundies set from Kino.

This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.

Of all the films in this collection, this and two other similar films are among the most unique. In an early television-like system, jukeboxes were produced in the early 1940s that not only played music but had film to accompany them--making them among the earliest music videos. Now I assume not too many of these films were made and it's really great that some are now available for viewing on DVD.

"Yankee Doodler" is a very lively little propaganda film that stars William Frawley. He sings a peppy song about winning the war and teaching Hitler a lesson--all while dressed as a stereotypical college professor while two hot babes just stand there and watch. Sure it's jingoistic and silly...but it's also really cool seeing Fred Mertz in such a role! Perhaps you don't realize it, though, but Frawley was originally a singer in Vaudeville and this is a great historical archive of him and this period in American history. Very enjoyable.