Trailer of the Week: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

If one can't be reminded of Jimmy Cagney's most famous movie musical on July 4th weekend, when can one be reminded of it?

Movie Song of the Week: “Yankee Doodle Dandy”

From 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy, it's the title song. The most famous song Jimmy Cagney ever danced to. (Not that Cagney danced to a lot of songs, but some were more famous than others.)

Personally, I prefer his work in Footlight Parade but this song is nice too. And, hey, it is a most appropriate song for Independence Day weekend.

Enjoy:

I Love a Footlight Parade But I'm Not So Sure About Those Dames

I have always considered 1933's Footlight Parade to be the last of my personal holy trinity of Busby Berkeley movies (the first two being, of course, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933). I fell in love with it the first time I watched it and my affection for it has grown with subsequent viewings.

I never realized how well Jimmy Cagney could dance until I saw this movie. For that matter, I never really appreciated how funny he can be. Joan Blondell plays his Girl Friday, Ruby Keeler plays the usual girl-next-door-who-goes-out-there-and-becomes-a-star, and Frank McHugh plays a director whose inevitable response to almost any situation -- “It can't be done, Mr. Kent, it can't be done” -- gets funnier and funnier every time.

The movie is not quite as politically correct as it could be (there is some acting in yellowface as well as a Jewish stereotype) but then again there are signs that it could have been worse. At one point, the Cagney character talks quite seriously about staging a blackface number but fortunately, we never see it. And when one black character appears in the final musical number, “Shanghai Lil,” he actually speaks in a normal voice instead of the stereotypical Amos and Andy style of speaking that was so often forced upon black actors of this period.

Hugh Herbert also appears as a nepotistic censor and I got the feeling that his character was meant to be a not so subtle negative comment on censorship. Of course, that still does not change the fact that Herbert comes across as the same poor man's Edward Everett Horton that he plays in most of his movies, but it was an interesting point. (As you might guess, I do not think a lot of Herbert, and I tend to like the movies in which he appears in spite of him.)

Anyway, I can watch this film over and over again. And I just might do so again tonight.

Busby Berkeley's 1934 followup, Dames, however, is a film I am not quite so fond of. Not only do we get a lot more of the would-be-funny-but-more-often-just-annoying Hugh Herbert (this time playing a moralizing millionaire) but we also get a surprisingly bad musical number by Joan Blondell called “Girl By the Ironing Board.” To be fair, there are two musical numbers in this movie that I liked: the title number and “I Only Have Eyes for You.” But I do not quite have the same affection for this movie that I do for Footlight Parade.

Movie Song of the Week: “Shanghai Lil”

Yes, I know. This tune from 1933's Footlight Parade is not the most politically correct song ever written, but it's still a lot better than much of what passes for music today. Like most Busby Berkeley tunes, the song is so over-the-top that I can't help but love it -- though I could have done without the Pidgin English and the yellowface acting. It's from one of the few movies outside of a certain Oscar-winning musical to showcase Jimmy Cagney's dancing ability -- and quite frankly, he isn't half bad. Plus you get close-order drills, a flip-movie, and a patriotic number that almost comes off as a parody of patriotic numbers.

Add to that the fact that this song includes a routine which could be seen as a salute to interracial relationships and excludes the black stereotypes that would become all so common in movies of the 1930s and I can forgive this song a lot. Yes, it's basically a Sino-American version of Madame Butterfly with a happy ending, but, hey, happy endings aren't a bad thing in this big parade of tears.