Pros: Cagney, Cagney, Cagney, and a picture of the origins of our musical theater.
Cons: Monochrome puts some persons off; print quality is vital. Sentimentality is a problem
The Bottom Line: Although the supporting cast is engaging, the show is Jimmy Cagney's, which won him an Academy Award for his inimitable dancing, and for his characterization of George M. Cohan.
In YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, Jimmy Cagney sings "It's a Grand Old Flag." He dances up a wall almost as well as Donald O'Connor. (Cagney was 42 at the time.) He creates an Academy Award Winning Portrait of George M. Cohan, a beloved figure in American Entertainment.
Anyone who has an interest in how a majority of Americans saw themselves, or in the history of American show business, or in the development of American Musical Theater -- anyone who is crazy about the multi-talented Cagney -- will like this l942 film. David Thomson, not an easy critic to please, writes that YANKEE DOODLE DANDY "survives as [Cagney's] masterpiece, a manic Punchinello Uncle Sam, a*se out, head forward, strutting his way through routines as if he had reinvented dance."
We have to make an allowance for the sentimentality of the time, an allowance I am often reluctant to make. However, after nearly a hundred years of considering the Irish a "criminal class," America had, in the late 1930's, embraced the Irish in her politics, her literature and her entertainment. And nobody could be more Irish, when he chose, than James Cagney.
In a three year period, 1940-1942, in addition to YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, Cagney played in the World War I film THE FIGHTING 69th (Wellman, 1940), a steamy tropical melodrama TORRID ZONE (Keighley, 1940), the gangster film CITY FOR CONQUEST (Litvak, 1940), a gentle period musical STRAWBERRY BLONDE (Walsh, 1941), a comedy THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. (Keighley, 1941) and, also for Michael Curtiz, CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS (1942) a film about pilots ferrying bombers to Great Britain. (In the original release version of the latter, many of the pilots went to heroic deaths singing a title song composed for the film!)
YANKEE DOODLE DANDY is unabashedly a patriotic film, released at our darkest point in World War II, when the Allies were in retreat on every front before the onslaught of the Axis. Americans deserved a lift; Cagney and company gave it to them.
Covering a time range from the early l900's to the beginning of World War II, this musical life of great song and dance man Cohan is an album of the songs and dances that made brash American show tunes known around the world. No one waved the American flag better than George M. Cohan! The film, despite its sentimentality and a certain amount of jingoism, reminds one of last year's *CRADLE WILL ROCK in its passion for the best that is American.
Helmed by old pro Director Michael Curtiz, who would win an Oscar the next year for CASABLANCA, another crowd uplifter, the film features not only Cagney, dancing and singing spectacularly, but Eddie Foy, Jr, one of the best professional dancers of the first half of the Century; and Walter Huston, already an Academy Award Winner, as Cagney's show biz father. Joan Leslie, the epitome of Irish-American beauty, was "sweet seventeen" when she played Cohan's wife over his long career.
Musicals were made for color, but the pace and period quality of the monochrome photography here reminds one of the time.
The songs include "Give My Regards to Broadway," "You're a Grand Old Flag," plus the great World War I marching song "Over There" and, of course, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy."
It is available in an okay colorization but avoid the short version that causes us to lose the continuity of the story.
UPDATE: May 29, 2005 -- Now on a crisp, vivid DVD, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY receives an extra star from me, simply for Cagney's marvelous performance. There was never a truer patriot, nor a better performer in Movies.
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