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You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
James Cagney
Walking down the stairs at the White House, James Cagney goes into a tap dance. According to TCM, that was completely ad-libbed.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
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6 June 1942
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Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan (pronounced "Coe-Han"), the actor / singer / dancer / playwright / songwriter / producer / theatre owner / director / choreographer known as "The Man Who Owns Broadway", starring James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston and Richard Whorf, and featuring Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp and Jeanne Cagney.
The movie was written by Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph, and directed by Michael Curtiz. According to the special edition DVD, significant and uncredited improvements were made to the script by the famous "script doctors" twin brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein.
The song "The Yankee Doodle Boy" (a.k.a. "Yankee Doodle Dandy") was Cohan's trademark piece, a patriotic pastiche drawing from the lyrics and melody of the old Revolutionary War number, "Yankee Doodle". Other Cohan tunes in the movie include "Give My Regards to Broadway", "Harrigan", "Mary's a Grand Old Name", "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There".
Cagney was a fitting choice for the role, as a fellow Irish-American who had been a song-and-dance man himself early in his career. His unique and seemingly odd presentation style, of half-singing and half-reciting the songs, reflected the style that Cohan himself used. His natural dance style and physique were also a good match for Cohan. Newspapers at the time reported that Cagney intended to consciously imitate Cohan's song-and-dance style, but to play the normal part of the acting in his own style. Although director Curtiz was famous for being a taskmaster, he also gave his actors some latitude. Cagney and other players improvised a number of "bits of business," as Cagney called them.
Although a number of the biographical particulars of the movie are Hollywood-ized fiction (omitting the fact that Cohan divorced and remarried, for example, and taking some liberties with the chronology of Cohan's life), care was taken to make the sets, costumes and dance steps match the original stage presentations. This effort was aided significantly by a former associate of Cohan's, Jack Boyle, who knew the original productions well. Boyle also appeared in the film in some of the dancing groups.
The movie poster for this film was the first ever produced by noted poster designer Bill Gold. This movie also has an injoke about movies-when Cohan "retires" in the 1930's and several teenagers-who know nothing about his career-ask him if he had ever been in the movies, he remarks that he had been in an actor in the "legitimate theater"!
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In the early days of WW2, Cohan comes out of retirement to star as US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a show "I'd Rather Be Right'. On the first night, he's summoned to meet the President at the White House, who presents him with a Congressional Medal of Honor (in fact, this happened several years previously). Cohan is overcome, and chats to Roosevelt, recalling his early days on the stage. The film flashes back to his birth on July 4th, whilst his father is performing on the vaudeville stage.
Cohan and his sister join the family act as soon as they can learn to dance, and soon The Four Cohans are performing successfully. But George gets too cocky as he grows up and is blacklisted by theatrical producers for being troublesome. He leaves the act and hawks his songs unsuccessfully around producers. In partnership with another struggling writer, Sam Harris, he finally interests a producer and they are on the road to success. He also marries Mary, a young singer/dancer.
As his star ascends, he persuades his now struggling Parents to join his act, eventually vesting some of his valuable theatrical properties in their name.
Cohan retires, but returns to the stage several times, culminating in the role of the US President. As he leaves the White House, he performs a dance step down the stairs (which Cagney thought up before the scene was filmed and performed with no rehersal). Outside, he joins a military parade, where the soldiers are singing 'Over There'. Not knowing that he's the composer, they jokingly invite Cohan to join in, which he does.
The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (James Cagney), Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, Recording. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Walter Huston), Best Director, Best Film Editing for George Amy, Best Picture and Best Writing, Original Story. In 1993, Yankee Doodle Dandy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
A popular myth about this movie, or at least a stretching of the truth, was that it was written in response to accusations that James Cagney was a Communist. Supposedly, Cagney learned that he was in danger of being blacklisted for having Communist sympathies, so he decided to make the most jingoistic movie he possibly could, and thus clear his name. This myth has its chronology a bit askew, as the McCarthy Era did not begin until the early 1950s. Also, the Second Red Scare did not begin until the late 1940s, well after the film was made. In other versions of this legend, either Robert Buckner or Edmund Joseph were the accused. Cagney was, however, accused of being a communist in a California grand jury trial in 1940, and this may have impacted on the story.
The DVD specials discuss this story in some detail. Congressman Martin Dies was investigating possible communist influence in Hollywood in 1940; he in fact had a cordial meeting with Cagney. The actor reassured him that, although he was a liberal and supported Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, he was also a patriot who had nothing to do with Communism. That was the end of it, except that Cagney's producer-brother William saw the Cohan story as a good opportunity to dispel any possible concerns about Cagney's loyalty. It was not written in response to the Dies investigation, as Cohan himself had been shopping his own story around for a while before Jack L. Warner bought the rights, and Cohan retained final approval on all aspects of the film.
As the DVD also points out, production on the film was just a few days old when the Attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. The film's cast and crew resolved to make an uplifting, patriotic film. It was timed to open around Memorial Day in 1942, and was regarded as having achieved its goal in grand fashion.
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Fred Astaire was first offered the leading role but turned it down.
George M. Cohan chose James Cagney to play him.
This was the very first black and white movie to be colorized using a controversial computer-applied process. Despite widespread opposition to the practice by many film aficionados, stars and directors, the movie won over a sizeable section of the public on its re-release.
Many facts were changed or ignored to add to the feel of the movie. For example, the real George M. Cohan was married twice, and although his second wife's middle name was Mary, she went by her first name, Agnes. In fact, the movie deviated so far from the truth that, following the premiere, the real George M. Cohan commented, "It was a good movie. Who was it about?"
James Cagney was eleven years older than his screen mother Rosemary DeCamp.
Frances Langford is listed in the credits simply as "Singer". In the film, Cagney calls her "Nora", so this character is probably the real-life Nora Bayes (1880-1928). Bayes was a popular performer who recorded many Cohan songs and entertained the troops with Cohan during World War I. Bayes wrote the song "Shine on Harvest Moon" and was the subject of the Warner Brothers biopic Shine on Harvest Moon (1944). In "Yankee Doodle Dandy", Langford also sings the medley "In a Kingdom of Our Own" / "Love Nest" / "Nellie Kelly, I Love You" / "The Man Who Owns Broadway" / "Molly Malone"/ "Billie" that backs up one of Don Siegel's great montage sequences. Langford sang "Over There" to WW I American troops and toured with Bob Hope to entertain American troops in WW II, Korea and Viet Nam.
Warner Bros.' second highest-grossing film of 1942 ($4.8 million).
James Cagney's performance as George M. Cohan is ranked #6 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
The movie's line "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you." was voted as the #97 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #98 Greatest Movie of All Time.
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.
James Cagney broke a rib while filming a dance scene, but continued dancing until it was completed.
Carl Jules Weyl's theater stage set took up a whole sound stage and was specifically constructed so that it could replicate the proscenium design of any given theater, from the traditional, 19th century stylings of the Liberty (now Madame Tusseud's Wax Museum, where "Little Johnny Jones" opened in 1904) and Herald Square (demolished in 1915, where "George Washington Junior" opened in 1906) Theaters, to the Art Deco design of the Alvin (now the Neil Simon, where "I'd Rather Be Right" opened in 1937) Theater.
James Cagney won his first and only Oscar for this movie.
"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on October 19, 1942 with James Cagney reprising his film role.
The car the college kids are driving is a 1933 Chevrolet Phaeton "Jalopy". Graffiti from back to front reads: "Exit Here" (arrow pointing to door handle), "Open Here", "Will Stop Quick if a Wheel Brakes", "For Sale", "Frankie & Johnnie", "But Good", "In Case of Fire Scream".
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