Yankee Doodle Dandy
| Yankee Doodle Dandy | |
|---|---|
Movie poster by Bill Gold
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| Directed by | Michael Curtiz |
| Produced by |
Hal B. Wallis Jack L. Warner William Cagney (associate) |
| Written by |
Robert Buckner Edmund Joseph Uncredited: Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein |
| Starring |
James Cagney Joan Leslie Walter Huston Richard Whorf |
| Music by |
Songs: George M. Cohan Score: Ray Heindorf Heinz Roemheld |
| Cinematography | James Wong Howe |
| Edited by | George Amy |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $11,800,000 |
Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan, known as "The Man Who Owned Broadway". It stars James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, and Richard Whorf, and features Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp, Jeanne Cagney, and Vera Lewis. Joan Leslie's singing voice was partially dubbed by Sally Sweetland.
The movie was written by Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph, and directed by Michael Curtiz. According to the special edition DVD, significant and uncredited improvements were made to the script by the famous "script doctors", twin brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein.
Cagney was a fitting choice for the role of Cohan since, like Cohan, he was an Irish-American who had been a song-and-dance man early in his career. His unique and seemingly odd presentation style, of half-singing and half-reciting the songs, reflected the style that Cohan himself used. His natural dance style and physique were also a good match for Cohan. Newspapers at the time reported that Cagney intended to consciously imitate Cohan's song-and-dance style, but to play the normal part of the acting in his own style. Although director Curtiz was famous for being a taskmaster, he also gave his actors some latitude. Cagney and other players came up with a number of "bits of business", as Cagney called them, meaning improvised lines or action in theater parlance.
Although a number of the biographical particulars of the movie are Hollywood-ized fiction (omitting the fact that Cohan divorced and remarried, for example, and taking some liberties with the chronology of Cohan's life and the order of his parents' deaths), care was taken to make the sets, costumes, and dance steps match the original stage presentations. This effort was aided significantly by a former associate of Cohan's, Jack Boyle, who knew the original productions well. Boyle also appeared in the film in some of the dancing groups.
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