If there's a more American movie than Yankee Doodle Dandy, you'd be hard pressed to find one. That's mostly thanks to the source material – the life of singer/songwriter/actor/writer George M. Cohan, who lived just long enough to see James Cagney portray him onscreen. Cohan was one of the most popular songwriters of the early 1900s and while his name may have disappeared from the popular lexicon, his songs are still with us. We're all still singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Give My Regards To Broadway” and “Grand Old Flag.”
Produced in 1942, Yankee Doodle Dandy will forever be linked to World War II, thanks to the framing device employed by the team of screenwriters (Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph, plus the uncredited Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein). The film starts during the first days of the war, with Cohan starring in Rogers and Hart's I'd Rather Be Right as Franklin D. Roosevelt (this is actually the first of many anachronisms – that show actually closed before the war started, but we won't let facts get in the way of propaganda). Cohan runs off to Washington to meet FDR under the assumption that he's in trouble, but that's not the case. FDR merely wants to hear Cohan's life story, starting with the circumstances of his birth on July 4, 1878 (he was really born on July 3 but...it's a movie!).
After Cohan is born into a performing family, we flash forward to his teen years and learn that he was just as feisty (and egocentric) then as he was as a grown man. He and the Four Cohans – his mother (Rosemary DeCamp), his father (Walter Huston) and his sister (Cagney's real-life sister Jeanne Cagney) – soon become a major sensation on the vaudeville circuit. But that's not enough for Cohan and he decides to leave the act to write his own songs to sell to producers. At first, it's his first taste of failure, but then he meets playwright Sam Harris (Richard Whorf) and the two begin to mix story with music and Cohan's hit parade begins.
Behind all the ups and downs of Cohan's life, there is a love story, of course. Because what's a Grand Old Hollywood biopic without an amazingly young and beautiful girl to fall in love with our hero? That girl is Joan Leslie's Mary, a composite of Cohan's two wives. Leslie was just 17-years-old during the making of this movie and would play a very similar role for another fantastic Warner Bros. biopic, Sergeant York (1941). She's really delightful beside Cagney and is a wonderful dancer, able to keep up with Cagney.
Cohan and Mary decide to retire, but he's convinced to do I'd Rather Be Right and the story comes full circle. There's a wonderful ending here, with Cohan marching with soldiers to “Over There,” the anthem he wrote for World War I. It's American chest-thumping at it's finest.
But it really is the genius of two people that make sure that we are never bored during the film's 125 minutes. Cagney, of course, is at his best here. He always wanted major roles outside of gangster pictures and Cohan was one of his best, earning him his only Oscar. I don't think that it's his best role (that's Cody in White Heat), but you just feel the immense joy Cagney had playing Cohan. With every dance step or note sung, Cagney is having the time of his life showing us these talents that he rarely got to use onscreen.
The other genius is director Michael Curtiz, one of the most talented directors of the Golden Age. Just imagine this – just six months after Yankee Doodle Dandy premieres in June 1942, Casablanca premieres in November 1942. Both classics were directed by the same man. (His other credits include The Adventures of Robin Hood, White Christmas, Angels With Dirty Faces and Mildred Pierce.) With Yankee Doodle Dandy, Curtiz shows incredible understanding of the camera and how best to use it during musical sequences. Even as the “Grand Old Flag” scene gets bigger and bigger, Curtiz makes sure the audience always feels like this could actually have been performed on stage this way. It's very different than a Busby Berkeley movie because even if every word isn't fact, Curtiz still keeps the film grounded in reality.
Yankee Doodle Dandy remains not just one of the best biopics of the Golden Age, but probably in film history. Even though it plays around with the facts, the audience is still presented George M. Cohan as a musical genius who encountered flops and loss. Cagney, Curtiz and everyone else made sure Yankee Doodle Dandy is more fun than any flag-waving patriotic movie should be.
On Home Video: Warner Bros. released Yankee Doodle Dandy on DVD back in 2003, with a stacked two-disc edition. There's a commentary by the always wonderful Rudy Behlmer, a documentary on the making of the film and a Cagney biography. You would think that this would be a great candidate for a Blu-ray, especially since Warner Bros. wouldn't have to make new features, but there's still no plans for that.