Yankee Doodle Dandy
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Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 biographical film about George M. Cohan, starring James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, 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 title song (properly titled "The Yankee Doodle Boy") 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 included "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 give his actors some latitude, and 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 Hollywoodized fiction (omitting the fact that Cohan divorced and remarried, for example, and taking some liberties with the chronology), 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 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. Curtiz failed to win Best Director for this picture because he instead took home the Oscar for Casablanca, in a very busy year for the famous director. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
In 1986, Yankee Doodle Dandy became the first computer-colorized film released by entrepreneur Ted Turner.
Urban Legend
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. The story is as follows: Cagney learns that he is in danger of being blacklisted for having communist sympathies. Therefore, he decides to make the most jingoistic movie he possibly can, and thus clears his name. This myth as stated 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.The DVD specials discuss this story in some detail. There was a Congressman named Martin Dies who was investigating possible communist influence in Hollywood in 1940, and he in fact had a cordial meeting with Cagney in which the actor reassured him that, although he was a liberal and supported Roosevelt's New Deal, he was also a patriot who had nothing to do with communism. That was the end of it, except that James' producer-brother William did see 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 awhile before Jack L. Warner bought the rights, and Cohan retained final approval on all aspects of the film.
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