Yankee Doodle Dandy

Turner Classic Movie channel is running weeks of Oscar-winning movies this month. Channel-surfing today, I came across "Yankee Doodle Dandy," with Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan. Don't recall the first time I saw this movie. I was probably about nine or ten years old, maybe? It's one of those movies that I can recite by heart. And I think Jimmy Cagney got an Oscar for his performance. After all those gangster films, who knew he could dance?

Actually, if I heard right, he and his sister, Jeanne -- who plays his sister in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" -- had had years of ballet training as kids. Try that coming from Hell's Kitchen. He probably really did know how to fight. Anyway, he was a gypsy on Broadway for a while, a chorus boy, before he got into films playing bootleggers and similar -- with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson. All mere children at the time.

Anyway, the first time I went to New York City -- about 1965, when I was still in high school (too young to quit) -- something that really caught my attention was the statue of George M. Cohan in Times Square.... "Give My Regards to Broadway." And pigeons sitting on his head.

For the uninitiated, George M. was a Broadway star and producer in the first quarter of the 20th century. He was born actually not ON the 4th of July, but on July 3, if I recall correctly. And he was hugely patriotic. Many people were in those days. The Civil War was still a living memory for many people, as was the Spanish-American War, and the USA was taking off as a world power.

George M. wrote the songs "Mary," "Give My Regards to Broadway," "It's a Grand Ol' Flag," "Over There," and probably a thousand more -- he wrote musicals, produced them, and also starred in them. He was from a family of vaudevillians and lived his whole life on stage, more or less. Famous for his audacity and rather gaudy showmanship. Believe he had an unfortunate first marriage or romance of some kind -- not mentioned in the movie -- but was said to be a very decent man and kind to the talent. No doubt because he'd been kicked around plenty himself.

Also not mentioned in the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy," what truly did in George M. and the Cohan-Harris production company was the unionization of the legitimate theatre. George M. refused to unionize and was blackballed. And by all reports, the way he fought the unions and unionization was by offering higher pay and amenities than the union contracts provided. He was beaten down (figuratively) and driven out anyway. If you worked for him, you'd never work anywhere else.

But the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy," is one my favorites. One of my all-time favorite scenes is Cagney dancing on the dock as Little Johnny Jones. I love that dance. Lots of ballet in Cagney's style; he even does some purely balletic moves. Mixed with tap, of course. The dance of joy. Click here to see it on YouTube.

The movie is told like a long flashback, while George M. is in the White House, telling FDR his life story. FDR then awards George M. a Congressional Medal of Honor for devoting his life in service to his country. At the time, George M. had come out of retirement to play FDR in Hart & Kaufman's "I'd Rather Be Right Than President."

Don't know if it's actually in the play, but in the movie, Cagney does a scene as FDR dancing, telling the press one thing and another -- funny quips -- "but that's off the record." Then the final line is like, we'll tell the Germans where to go "and put ants in their Ja-pants... And that's for the record!"

The movie was being made at about the time Pearl Harbor was attacked. I believe it was in production, and the stuff about the Germans and Japan was added in -- but not really sure. It was Oscar-nominated for movies made in 1942, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was December, 1941.

I love peoples' attitudes at the time, though. Even with FDR in office (whom I despise), people still held an uncomplicated loyalty to the USA. If someone attacked you, you didn't sit around and wonder whether or not you should fight back. You didn't read Tojo his rights and threaten to try him in a civilian court in Hawaii. (Ooooh, scary.) You went after the bastard. And all his friends.

The thing is, either you believe in the USA or you don't. The USA is exceptional. It is different from any other nation on earth. The American Revolution, and particularly American principles (imported from the European Enlightenment and further developed here) changed the whole world. These principles weren't the result of a half-dozen guys sitting around listing noble-sounding platitudes. They believed in what they wrote in the Declaration of Independence and the view of humanity it represents. In the US Constitution, they framed a government based on those principles -- universal principles, relevant and meaningful not just to those people at that time, but for the whole human race, always. And it works.

Of course now, Barney Fudd knows better. If we can't bust the economy and the population and destroy the nation under the US Constitution, then it's time to change the Constitution, he says. What a horse's ass. Like he has the capacity to absorb the information in the Constitution, let alone improve upon it. Pelosi just blows a raspberry when challenged on constitutionality. Give-'em'pork Harry Reid ignores it, prefers bribery, so long as funds are drawn from the US Treasury.

And on the news today, there was a report that North Carolina is considering teaching US history only from 1877 to the present in the public schools. Forget the Declaration of Independence, the Constituion, the Civil War, etc etc. Just tell everyone about the Progressives and the Populists and how we're all marching arm-in-arm toward's Marx's utopia. Only the specious, mind-numbing, soul-crushing trivia of socialist propaganda.

What assholes, really. They must be Ivy Leaguers.

For me, I'd rather be right than president.