Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

US 126m, B&W
Director: Michael Curtiz; Cast: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp

Yankee Doodle Dandy is a biographical film about the George M. Cohan who composed more than 300 songs and wrote, produced and appeared in over thirty Broadway musicals during his lifetime. Featured in a role where Cagney could show off his own considerable singing and dancing abilities, Yankee Doodle Dandy is perhaps Cagney’s most interesting, if not his finest acting performance. An unabashedly patriotic film, Cohan’s life story is told in flashback to President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was summoned to the White House to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his songs “Over There” and “It’s a Grand Old Flag” (Klaus Ming November 2013).