Every July 4, the film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is a favorite family pastime. This year in particular, as our nation celebrates the start of its 250th year of independence anchored in God-given rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” it will warm the heart and move the soul.
It was James Cagney’s favorite -- given that, like George M. Cohan, whose story the film tells, he was “once a song-and-dance-man, always a song-and-dance-man.”
The irony is that he ended up playing the role because his younger brother Bill Cagney, who served as his agent, was on the hunt for a patriotic film. This was given that Jimmy had been tarred as a communist sympathizer largely because of some associations as he was just starting out in the '20s — having more to do with needing a square meal and a roof over his head than agreement with a world view.
Cagney’s future in then conservative, anti-communist, Republican Hollywood was dimmed when journalist Ella Winters, wife of Lincoln Steffens, covered the story. It was untrue. What’s more, Cagney’s friends were all anti-communists including Robert Montgomery, known as Hollywood’s “Mr. Conservative.”
So, Cagney got right on a plane — even though he disdained flying — and flew from Martha’s Vineyard, back to Los Angeles to meet with Congressman Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee. By the end of the meeting, Dies left Cagney’s office smiling, carrying the star’s signed publicity photo.
Meantime, Bill soon hit the bull’s eye with Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Besides serving as a star-spangled antidote to Cagney’s allegedly red sympathies, it was notable in that both Cohan and Cagney were hoofers and showmen with poor Irish antecedents who had married women who were “good looker-afters” and who had tangled with the entertainment powers-that-be before retiring early to the farm.
Pearl Harbor
Filming began the day President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war, as the cast listened intently on the radio, along with millions of their fellow Americans.
Afterwards, Cagney turned to them, recalled Joan Leslie, who played Cohan’s wife in the film, and said, “I think this is a good place for a little prayer.”
This commercially and critically successful film — Warner Bros.’ second top grossing firm for the year — screened at American bases around the world, was a huge morale boost, as well as a personal triumph for Cagney who won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Cohan.
The scene where he comforts his father, Jeremiah “Jere” Cohan, on his deathbed, breaking down just before his father, played by Walter Huston, breathes his last, is one of the most poignant in film history, and left the staff crying on the sidelines, said Leslie.
Sharing with the troops
After filming, Jeanne Cagney, who had played Cohan’s sister Josie in the film, assumed an even bigger role in the all-important publicity phase.
“Uncle Jim was so shy and hated to go out into the crowds,” wrote Jeanne’s daughter Theresa Cagney Morrison.
Jeanne used to say “she had the best of his career” and heard from everyone “how much they loved him."*
Cagney did make trips, though, with the USO, reprising scenes from the film for the troops abroad and also touring Army hospitals where he visited wounded soldiers and did sketches of them on their casts and in his own drawing pad.
Closer to home, Cagney was also now spending time with his mother Carrie, a devout Catholic, who, finally, in 1938 — after many years of Jim’s petitioning — had moved to the heart of Hollywood to live out her remaining days close to her children.
Jimmy had bought his mother a place on Martha’s Vineyard, as well; but she preferred living in the thick of it — first in Manhattan; then in the sunset of life, around Sunset Boulevard with her sons. And, soon, to her delight, like Jeanne, she could not help notice how loved her famous son was and how much he did to help others.
His legacy continues to help us through the influence of this film that radiates such goodness and virtue, especially the virtue of patriotism we practice so gratefully this July 4.
