Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) - film review

In 1942, the veteran star of Broadway George Michael Cohan is appearing in a musical satire in which he plays the President of the United States.  When the real President summons him to the White House, George is understandably perturbed and half-expects to be put in front of a firing squad.  Apprehensively, he enters the President’s office and begins to tell his life story.  Sixty years ago, George Cohan was born on the 4th of July to a pair of vaudevillians, Jerry and Nellie Cohan.  By the age of six, George was performing with his parents in their stage act, and would soon be joined by his younger sister Josie.  In his early twenties, George is consumed by a passion to write his own musical plays and, after several setbacks, he finally finds someone willing to back his first Broadway production.  Naturally, the show is a smash hit and further successes soon make George one of the best known young theatre talents in America.  During WWI, he entertains the troops and his songs help to lift the morale of a nation.  The 1920s bring even greater success.  But for how long would the name George M. Cohen be revered and remembered?

James Cagney’s finest hour?   Although Cagney is generally best remembered for his tough gangster portrayals in films such as The Public Enemy (1931) and White Heat (1949), Yankee Doodle Dandy reminds us that he was an extraordinarily talented song-and-dance man as well as a great character actor.  Few of Hollywood’s leading lights had anything like Cagney’s versatility and energy, and this is the film which shows us most vividly the immense range of his talents.   Yankee Doodle Dandy rewarded Cagney with his one and only Oscar and is the film which the actor rated as his personal favourite.   Through a series of exuberant vaudeville numbers, the film provides an entertaining insight into the evolution of Broadway through the first decades of the Twentieth Century.  

Yankee Doodle Dandy is a dramatised account of the life of George M. Cohan, a Broadway legend in his own lifetime who would be virtually forgotten today were it not for this film.  Cohan was ill with cancer whilst the film was in production, and died not long after its release, but he was impressed and moved by the film when he saw it at a private viewing.  Some of the less wholesome aspects of Cohan’s life (such as the fact that he was divorced and remarried) are tactfully omitted, however.   James Cagney was the obvious person to portray Cohan on screen, given the similarity in their backgrounds and early careers (both were Irish-Americans who started out as lowly song-and-dance men before hitting the big time).  Cagney reprised the role in the 1955 film The Seven Little Foys.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 occurred just after work on the film had commenced.  With America’s entry into WWII now a certainty, the production team skewed the film slightly to make it a propaganda piece, extolling the virtues of liberty and the American way of life whilst boosting the morale of a country about to enter a costly global conflict for the second time in a generation.

With such rousing numbers as The Yanks are Coming, You’re a Grand Old Flag and the eminently hummable title song the film could hardly have failed to lift the spirits of its audience at a time of national crisis.  There is perhaps no single film that evokes the true spirit of America more forcefully than this captivating crowd-pleaser.  For all the patriotic flag-waving, this is not a mindless jingoistic propaganda fest, but a sincere celebration of good old-fashioned American values, as well as a deeply ironic statement on the transience of fame.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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