Yankee Doodle Dandy

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.

Right from the start, I have to say you do not need to be an American to be caught up in the excitement of the blatant flag waving tribute to a great artist. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" made to boost morale after the U.S. entered the war surely would have achieved its goal. It would have been even better in Technicolor (not the coloured version later shown). The songs were great, the acting and the individual dancing style of James Cagney was superb and deserved the Oscar. The two scenes featuring "Over There" were very moving with Frances Langford a standout! The story, while bearing small resemblance to real life, was good and Walter Huston and Rosemary de Camp were excellent. When you see a film such as this some 60 years after its release, and still really enjoy it, it shows how the Golden Years of Hollywood were just that.

So it takes liberties with facts. So it's jingoistic. Big deal! I adore it for its depiction of turn-of-the-(20th}century New York, especially its theater, which has fascinated me for years. And it has the breath-taking performance of Jimmy Cagney in the title role; he's absolutely elecrifying in the musical numbers. If some scenes are mawkish, well, I think that can be forgiven.

This movie, above all others, make me so proud to be an American.

`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.