Similar To: My Fair Lady, Annie Get Your Gun, Ray, any musical biopic
IMDB Summary: A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.
Yankee Doodle Dandy ends up on my List of Shame for being the number 98 movie on the AFI’s Top 100. My oldest sister has a great love for musicals and Turner Classic Movies fodder, which is probably one of the reasons why I ended up not. In fact I was a bit apprehensive about even including the musicals genre when making the list. Eventually I decided that if I hadn’t it would have violated the entire basis on which the list was based. So, having no idea what the movie was about, I sat down and watched Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Yankee Doodle Boy
The movie is a relatively straightforward biography of George M. Cohan. It begins with George (played by James Cagney) as an old man playing what is presumably his final performance in a musical about Franklin Roosevelt. At the end of the show he receives an invitation from the President to visit the White House. At the White House he has a conversation with the President (who, like George Steinbrenner in Seinfeld, is shot entirely from behind with bad dubbing) where, almost without any real motivation on behalf of the President’s part, Cohan begins telling the President the story of his life.
From this point forward we get the musical star biography that you’re used to seeing…that is with one small difference. No heroin. In fact, no real trials or tribulations of any kind. The typical struggle, success, downfall, redemption story is missing here. After a very short “struggling for success” in the film that lasts about ten minutes, we see George Cohan find success. And then more success. And then even more success. George struggles with his arrogance in the beginning of the movie, telling everyone how amazing he is. After the brief opening he doesn’t have to anymore because everyone else in the movie keeps telling him how great he is. Maybe heroin and alcohol addiction were invented to give the characters in a musical bio pic a more interesting story arc. Without it, this movie is like watching the first ten minutes of Brady Bunch episode on repeat fifteen times.
There is a big difference between this kind of musical and the dominant Disney musical that most people my age are accustomed to. In The Little Mermaid for instance, when Kind Triton speaks to his daughter Ariel about following the rules he does so in a way that is grounded and realistic. You’d almost think you were overhearing a real father talk to his daughter, except this one is a fish, the movie is animated, and they sing songs every ten to fifteen minutes. In Yankee Doodle Dandy, not a single characters speaks in a way that is realistic or convincing. This is a biography about stage performers in which all the actors playing them seem as though they’re shouting their lines into a theater and not into the lens of a camera.
Of course maybe a critique of the characters and plot and acting is all moot. This is a movie about a man who spent his life creating pageantry and big musical numbers. You may never have heard of George M. Cohan (I certainly hadn’t) but you’ll have heard of the songs he wrote. Among them are “Give My Regards To Broadway,” “Grand Old Flag,” and “Over There.” My favorite part of the film was when Cohan was teaching his girlfriend Mary a song he wrote for her.
“For it was Mary. Mary. And there was something there, that sounds so fair.”
Hearing this I immediately perked up because I realized that Cohan is the man who wrote the song Julie’s dad asks Michael to play during a scene in a movie I love: Tootsie. That was the most fun I had with Yankee Doodle Dandy: being reminded of a movie I enjoyed more than it. I understand though. The movie was released in 1942, a time when we needed patriotic anthems and a story of a patriotic man without vices that we could believe in. It just doesn’t make for very interesting fare now.
Of course, this is all unfair. Maybe the measure of what’s a great musical isn’t how captivating the story was or how much you identified with the struggle of the protagonist. Maybe the measure of a great musical is in how much you enjoyed the songs. If so, it’s probably important to mention something my fiancee mentioned to me the day after watching Yankee Doodle Dandy. She said the night before, she came to bed quietly not wanting to wake me. As she climbed into bed I rolled over in my sleep, threw my arm over her, and started singing in my sleep: “Oh I’mmmm a yankeeeee doodle daaaaandyyyy…”
For what it’s worth. I have no memory of it.
Verdict: Skip.
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