Late Night Music Club with James Cagney
By bluegal Thursday Jul 03, 2008 10:00pm
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is one of Hollywood's greatest, grandest and slickest musicals. The nostalgic, shamelessly-patriotic, entertaining film also supported the war effort as it paid tribute in its mostly fictional story to [George M. Cohan,] a popular Irish/American entertainer and the grand American gentleman of the theatre in the early 20th century.
The timeliness of its release, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, helped the 'propaganda machine' of going to European battlegrounds overseas with a song that was a rousing theme song written years earlier for WW I - Over There. And a second song, You're a Grand Old Flag, contributed to morale-boosting, flag-waving patriotism and love of one's country. And it was the first time that a living US President (FDR in this case, played by Jack Young) was portrayed in a motion picture.
Login or Register to post comments.
to me this is the lamest, sappiest, crappiest dance routine in all history.
cagney=cool
cagney=martial artist
sorry i just hate this clip!!
I loved him when he was killing people, and sure he wasn't Gene Kelley or Micheal Jackson, but give Cagney credit....he was very talented. And by the way, it is a 66 year old video. Think of how our videos will look in that span of time.
marko, you are so wrong.....
Cagney was a song and dance man before he came to Hollywood and they made him a gangster. He learned tap as a kid, but didn't have a lot of formal training in dance. But that didn't stop him from doing song, dance & comedy on the vaudeville circuit, where he learned much of his craft; he became so good at it that he choreographed a Braodway show in '28 and got rave reviews.
Maybe you just don't like the style of the times...I dunno. But, IMO, Cagney was an excellent dancer.
Okay, here's the song and dance from a 1943 film, The Gang's All Here. It's not Cagney, but, I gotta say it, if you can't appreciate this, you're hopeless! :^D
Carmen Miranda
The Lady In The Tutti Frutti Hat
Andy K Jong Il @ 3:
i am not questioning his talent or his background.
it's like "got to get you into my life" by the beatles, great band great album, crappy track IMO
My favorite Cagney movie was when he played Puck in A Midsummer Night Dream.
On the basis of that part he was nearly offered, or refused the part, of Robin Hood. Erroll Flynn then took the part.
Well, marko, I kinda disagree with you about that, too, but not as much.
Here's one other thing to remember about the Yankee Doodle Dandy routine:
It's a re-creation of the routine from the musical Little Johnny Jones, which was made in 1904. So, while Left&Left dated the routine at 66 years, it's actually 104 years old!
Okay, here's the Great American Musical Form- Jazz- accompanied by some fantastic dancin'!
Cab Calloway (featuring, on the dance, The Nicholas Brothers)
Jumpin' Jive
Speakin' of jive....
Lester Young
Jitterbug Jam
Andy, that was something I've never seen before, Carmen Miranda and The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat. They could certainly put on the grand choreographies with creative sets in the old days, eh. So many monkeys, handmaidens, male servants and bananas ... I'm craving Bananas Foster right now !
calgarylady@8
Yeah, I love posting that clip. Glad you enjoyed it!
You know, there are two different types of choreography going on there: the dance and the camera. I haven't done it in a while, but I've counted the nuber of cuts in that scene and, iirc, there are under ten. And, if that isn't amazing enough, there were the monkeys that you mention. It's tough to film critters, 'cause they don't take direction well.
Gilda Radner
Let's Talk Dirty To The Animals
Elton John
Philadelphia Freedom
Now here's some dancin"!
from Godard's Bande a part
[FIFY. Site Monitor]
Styx Madame Blue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGXYiIDTPDI
I like the mega corporate band Styx , Dennis DeYoung and all. ;) ...great song.
Cagney hoofing is great. Who cares what he's dancing to?
Brando admired Cagney as the best film actor that preceded him, and Brando was right. Cagney could do anything.
This movie is a perennial 4th of July guilty pleasure of mine, and Cagney's great in it. Granted, it's a fictionalized propaganda piece, but one can't escape a certain tingle when the men's chorus roars out Over There (that was the attitude of the age - that Americans could do anything, even bring peace to a world in flames).
YDD is good, but Cagney's *other* famous Musical, Footlight Parade, is even better. Scatily-clad nymphettes writhing around in a big swimming pool with Busby Berkeley's camera dollying between their legs....? The scene in the Chinese bordello is pretty cool, too. Pre-code Hollywood, the golden years. Hey Now!!
I caught this movie last night and I was impressed. I have never been a James Cagney fan because I'm really not into gangster flicks, but I am going to give his other films another look. I was impressed with his dancing ability even though the choreography lacks range (he seems to do a lot of the same moves over and over again). And even though this was a patriotic, flag waving, propoganda piece, it's a good reminder of what this country used to be like and how far we have fallen. It's also nice to know that in today's era of the GOP claiming ownership of the flag, we can credit a Democrat with writing two songs ("Grand ole Flag" & "Over There") that can still motivate and solidify this country's patriotism.
Hey Belle:
Also try "The Time of Your Life", based on William Saroyan's play. Cagney's great in it, natch, and it's an absolutely incredible movie.
I hand'n't seen A Midsummer's Night Dream in ages.
But as to the timing of the release of this movie: Over at Universal Studio's horror movies were no longer set in any German sounding town, but a generic Vasaria or Transylvania.
Basil Rathbone and Nigel Green's Sherlock Holmes series was updated to the 40's, to make the Brits more familiar to the public and therefore more sympathetic.
The gangster movies were disappearing, and popular gangsters like Cagney and Bogart become G-men and private dicks.
Robin Hood came out while Hitler was gaining power and probably lent to the idea we had to help the Brits.
Casablanca came out extolling the isolationists who then get involved.
Sgt York came out about the conscientious objector who became the biggest hero of WWI.
Even in the movie Tarzan and the Amazons, when Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan when told about the Nazi's presence in Africa said, "Nazi's go away." He didn't want to get involved. But when Nazi's kidnapped Johnny Sheffield's Boy, Tarzan says with a scowl and a drawn knife, "Now Tarzan make war." Cheers from the audience would erupt at this line.
Boris Karloff played Fu Manchu, and Bela Lugosi also played oriental badguys.
Even kiddy entertainment was very involved. The movie serials generally had Japanese bad-guys, sometimes German. Lewis Wilson's Batman fought a Japanese Dr. Daka played by J. Carroll Naish. This was all part of the Yellow Peril going back to the early 20t century. However, in Capt. America with Dick Purcell, the bad guy was German played by Lionel Atwill and of course in The Secret Service in Darkest Africa, the hero Rex Bannon had to fight Germans in Africa, who were going around the continent stealing art treasures that would help them develop a super dangerous weapon.
And that's just scratching the surface.
Great clip, but it ought to be pointed out that George M. Cohan was a hard-right, union-busting anti-progressive who despised Franklin Roosevelt and tried to strangle Actors Equity in its cradle. Oh, and he couldn't read a note of music, either.
If that "propaganda machine" hadn't succeeded, the world would likely, almost certainly, have ended up a much, much worse place to be. WWII was one war that we had to get involved in, and the Nazis were one enemy that we absolutely had to defeat.
Context please ..... sept 1939 when Hitler and fan club invaded Poliand, America would have none of it -- we were an isolationist nation (unlike the last 60+ years). And even though we entered WWI late (1917), we still had great losses, and the country hated the aftermath -- even blaming Europe on the Great Influenza pandemic of 1919 --- taking out 20+ million world wide. So sept '39 to Dec. 7, 1941 --- here comes Pearl Harbour on that Sunday morning; and the following Monday the Congress declares war against Japan --- BUT NOT GERMANY. The country still did not want to get in the mess in Europe. Hitler sloved the problem two days later by declaring war against the U.S. This movie was a big deal in moving the country to an emotional response to the war and to make WWI seem not so awful. Hitler's pal Leni Riefenstahl had nothing on Hollywood. And the odd dancing of Cagney was supposed to look manly and not so gay --- hard to do when you are five foot three.....And last point the Great Depression in 1939 was still having a massive influence on the country and fear was not just a jingle made up by FDR --- it was real. But the movie theater was where America went to forget her troubles and dream -- but what better place could there be to sing your way into WAR. Better than how George Bush did it , anyway....
Login or Register to post comments.