When I was about seven or eight, WOR-TV, Channel 9 in New York, had the weirdest programming. Other than Mets baseball, their daily schedule was made up of old movies. And they did something really bizarre called "Million Dollar Movie." They would pick some old film from the 30s and 40s and run it twice every week night Monday through Friday. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, they would show it continuously over and over all weekend. It's a surprise to me that, at the end of this weekly cycle, some poor celluloid was frayed at the edges. Usually, the movies were completely from the B variety shelf. But, every so often, there was some gem that I could not turn off. "The Big Circus." "Hold That Ghost." "Buck Privates."
And "Yankee Doodle Dandy." I caught it somehow the first night and I was drawn in on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And, by the end of the week, I had seen it probably 11 or 12 times. I knew every line of dialogue. Every lyric. Every dance step. Even where the commercial breaks were.
But, I never watched the first ten minutes. Because, at the very beginning of the movie, young George M. Cohan misbehaves and is spanked by his father. I never could bring myself to watch that. Perhaps, I ws projecting.
"Yankee Doodle Dandy" is the epitome of a star vehicle. If you put anybody else in the lead role of renowned songwriter George M. Cohan besides Jimmy Cagney, you don't have the same movie. You probably don't even have a good one. The film is his. Pure and simple. He acts. He sings. He dances. He glides. He wins an Oscar. Cagney was truly one of the unsung actors of our country's film history, and he reaches his pinnacle in this movie. The production numbers, heralding Cohan's most patriotic ditties, are amazing. The title number, shown below, has been seen countless times on virtually every clip show about Hollywood.
I, however, am partial to the more obscure number that Cagney does at the end of the movie. In it, he parodies then-President Franklin Roosevelt in a song and tapdances wildly down a banquet table and then up a wall. It's amazing to me that, in light of FDR's unpublicized polio, film audiences probably didn't think twice about this scene, which today would be considered in bad taste.
Yes, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is flag waving hokum. They knew exactly what they were doing, given that production of the movie started several days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But, it is still a purely golden cinematic treasure. I like to watch it every year around the Fourth of July. Who knows what propelled a goofy seven year-old to watch it 12 times in one week? But, I sure as hell can understand why I have seen it once a year every since.
And that's for the record!
Dinner last night: Kobe burger at Cafe Montana prior to the Aero Theater double bill of "Ball of Fire" and "Twentieth Century."
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