Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Michael Curtiz

Writers:

Robert Buckner (screenplay) and
Edmund Joseph (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

6 June 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

Based on the story of GEORGE M. COHAN with the Greatest of all his Great Music

Plot:

A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.

Plot Keywords:

Vaudeville | Playwright | Dancer | Comeback | Songwriter

Awards:

Won 3 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

James Cagney	...	George M. Cohan
Joan Leslie	...	Mary
Walter Huston	...	Jerry Cohan
Richard Whorf	...	Sam Harris
Irene Manning	...	Fay Templeton
George Tobias	...	Dietz
Rosemary DeCamp	...	Nellie Cohan
Jeanne Cagney	...	Josie Cohan
Frances Langford	...	Singer
George Barbier	...	Erlanger
S.Z. Sakall	...	Schwab
Walter Catlett	...	Theatre Manager
Douglas Croft	...	George M. Cohan, As a Boy of 13
Eddie Foy Jr.	...	Eddie Foy
Minor Watson	...	Albee

Runtime:

126 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #7929) | Canada:G (video rating) | Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

According to James Cagney's autobiography his brother William Cagney (who was also his manager) actively pursued the role of ultra-patriotic George M. Cohan for James as a way of removing the taint of James' political activities in the 1930s, when he was a strong, somewhat radical supporter of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When Cohan himself learned about Cagney's background as a song-and-dance man in vaudeville, he approved him for the project.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The writers stretch the bounds "poetic license" by trying to tie George M Cohan's flop Popularity (1906) with the sinking of the Lusitania (1915) and the U.S. entry into World War I (1917) as all occurring at the same time.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Critic #1: I call it a hit. What'll your review say?
Critic #2: I like it too, so I guess I'll pan it.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film (2008) (TV)

Soundtrack:

The Yankee Doodle Boy

Red White and Blue, Cagney for You

James Cagney won his only Oscar for his recreation of George M. Cohgan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Already terminally ill, Cohan lived long enough to see the film and no doubt he would have approved of it because it sure is how he would like to have been remembered.

In 1942 when Yankee Doodle Dandy premiered there was a whole generations of people left alive who saw George M. Cohan perform. Watching the film today Cohan is like a figure from antiquity. But Warner Brothers was lucky to have James Cagney with the studio who's dancing style closely paralleled Cohan's. If it is ever run on Turner Classic Movies, make sure you see George M. Cohan's sound film The Phantom President. You will be astonished to see how closely Cagney captured his style. In the same way that Philip Seymour Hoffman captured Truman Capote and Joaquin Phoenix became Johnny Cash.

Cohan's contemporaries are also like names from antiquity. But a century ago when Cohan was just hitting the big time performers like Fay Templeton, Nora Bayes, and Eddie Foy were very big stars and in 1942 plenty of people saw them also. I wish we had some film of them to see how Irene Manning, Frances Langford, and Eddie Foy, Jr. did in their recreations. I'm sure Foy, Jr. did a smashing job with his Dad.

The background stuff is true enough. Cohan was born to a pair of vaudeville performers Jerry and Nellie Cohan played here by Walter Huston and Rosemary DeCamp. Later on a sister was added to the Cohan family and here Josie Cohan is played by Jeanne Cagney. They did do all the towns, big and small, in America. Cagney meets wife Joan Leslie at Shea's Theater in Buffalo, New York and Shea's survives to this day. And his first real success was Little Johnny Jones which score included American classics, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Give My Regards to Broadway.

What's left out is the fact Cohan had two wives. His second wife survived him and died in the early Seventies. As his songs became popular in patriotic/rightwing circles, Cohan's personal politics reflected that. He fought hard and lost in the battle for Actors Equity. Cohan thought a union of players was tantamount to Communism. But such was his standing among performers that Cohan was granted the unique privilege of being allowed to appear on stage without having to join Equity once the union was recognized as the bargaining agent for players.

Cohan is shown in Yankee Doodle Dandy as gracefully having retired when other trends in popular music took over. Far from it, he was a very bitter man and when he did that final comeback in I'd Rather Be Right he fought with Kaufman and Hart over the book and Rodgers and Hart over the songs.

But Yankee Doodle Dandy presents the public musical face of George M. Cohan and does it very well. To this day, some forty years after first seeing Yankee Doodle Dandy on television, I love the recreations of Yankee Doodle Dandy, Give My Regards to Broadway, and You're a Grand Old Flag as they were first seen on stage. Plus some of the snatches of the lesser known Cohan songs as performed by the players portraying the Cohan family and others.

When all is said and done, George M. Cohan was a great force of nature in the American musical theater. And we thank his father, mother, and sister, and George M. himself for what he left us.