Yes, there are many films you could choose to watch on July 4th. But if you haven’t seen it recently why not revisit Yankee Doodle Dandy ?
Our man above won the Oscar, and you’ll see why. The film best captures the spirit of Fourth of July. It’s the 1942 movie biography starring James Cagney of that flag waving showman, George M. Cohan.
The in-your-face patriotism displayed in the picture is not in fashion now, therefore the movie comes across today as a refreshing anomaly. But there was a deeper connection between its subject and its star.
There is no question among show biz historians that Cohan was an extraordinarily influential multi-talent, a pioneer of “the great White Way” pre-World War I. (A statue of him still graces Times Square since he is considered “the father” of American musical comedy.)
Born in 1878 to Irish parents in Providence, Rhode Island, Cohan’s career began in 1908. He quickly displayed his considerable abilities as an actor, singer and dancer and then as a playwright, composer and lyricist. He wrote hundreds of songs during his long career (he died in 1942) including such standards as Over There, Give My Regards To Broadway, You’re a Grand Old Flag and The Yankee Doodle Boy.
Cohan was 21 years older than Cagney, another Irishman, this one from New York’s Lower East Side. The style and accomplishments of the musical stage pioneer directly influenced how Cagney viewed his own career.
Repeatedly asked about his personal favorite movie role, Cagney responded this way:
The answer is simple, and it derives from George M. Cohan’s comment about himself: once a song-and-dance man, always a song-and-dance man.
In that brief statement, you have my life story; those few words tell us as much about me professionally as there is to tell. I didn’t have to pretend to be a song-and-dance man. I was one, Jimmy wrote in his 1976 autobiography, Cagney By Cagney.
The musical biography of Cohan was directed by Michael Curtiz, and costarred, among others, Walter Huston, Rosemary De Camp and Cagney’s sister, Jeanne. Cagney’s leading lady was Joan Leslie.
The film was a huge hit, nominated in five Academy Award categories and won for Cagney 1943’s best actor Oscar. (He appeared as Cohan again in Bob Hope’s 1955 comedy The Seven Little Foys
A second factor in Cagney’s personal preference for his Cohan role was this: in attaching himself to Yankee Doodle Dandy with its overt no-holds-barred patriotic theme, the actor successfully undercut suspicions about his own “patriotism.”
At the time, he was concerned that his reputation in Hollywood had been scarred by my so-called radical activities in the thirties when I was a strong Roosevelt liberal. Anyone of that backround was usually colored pinko at the very least.
Well, there you have it. Yankee Doodle Dandy — red-white-and-blue Cagney’s personal best movie.
Wonderful look at JAMES CAGNEY by Joe & Frank…
But I tend to think that Cagney’s taking the lead role in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY had a lot more to do with silencing all those who were saying he was unpatriotic!
Cagney had long been a union minded man, and he had contributed to striking miners and other labor causes… But the real source of the “unpatriotic” trouble was his sponsoring of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which he later disowned after learning it was a Communist front organization.
So, Cagney needed to show he was just as big a flag-waver as his idol George M. Cohan. And boy, did he accomplish that with flying colors!
Whats more,the timing of the very first day of shooting of by far the biggest flag-waving picture of WWII, just happened to be the very next day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A monumental coincidence???
A monumental coincidence that was repeated again in 2001, with the movie PEARL HARBOR being released just a few months from the event that Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and other neo-conservatives were supposedly warning us against in their document “The Rebuilding of America’s Defenses, in which they state clearly that the US needs a New PEARL HARBOR that will once again galvanize the public.
And how not just so monumentally coincidental, but even more monumentally convenient, that did we just so happen to get that very event on 9/11.
It took some forty years for the truth about December 7th, 1941 to come out. That America did everything possible for that so-called “sneak attack” to happen, and rally everyone around the war flag.
Forty years to learn that the Japanese were set-up and tracked all the time, that the commanders in Hawaii were deliberately kept in the dark and scapegoated, that the war profiteers needed an excuse.
As FDR said “a day that will live in infamy.”
Truthful words that just add insult to injury, as he was totally in on the deception and betrayal.
But don’t just take my word, do your own research, so many books have been written since to verify this, even a BBC 1989 documentary called SACRIFICE AT PEARL HARBOR among other detailed accounts.
So ask yourself on this patriotic July 4th day, what would George M. Cohan or even James Cagney, have to say about that, or any of the events that followed!