#100: Yankee Doodle Dandy

Okay, for my first movie to get this thing rolling, we'll start at the bottom, with #100, Yankee Doodle Dandy. Now, I have not seen some of these movies in over six years, and I'm using my foggy memory and the spotty notes I wrote just after viewing them, so take the first few of these that I write with a grain of salt.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is a musical detailing the life of actor/composer George M. Cohan, whom I'd never heard of prior to watching. I'm no musical history scholar, and I found him a rather despicable fellow, very arrogant and full of himself. During the movie I was actually rooting against him, hoping that he would fail. The movie probably meant more to audiences of the time, who would have been familiar with Cohan and his work.

Educationally, I learned that he wrote Over There and Yankee Doodle Dandy (natch), and these two songs, which have endured over the years, apparently were at the heart of the major criticisms during his life – he only could write lowbrow, patriotic, flag-waving material for the masses.

The scene that most struck me at the time of viewing was when Cohan, fed up with his critics, set out to write an intelligent drama to silence them. The night of the premiere, however, he opted to be down the street starring in one of his trademark patriotic shows, rather than at his 'serious' piece. The drama was so terrible that the reviewers left during the second act. Cohan closed it two weeks later.

Looking back, six years removed from my original viewing, I had not remembered that particular scene (good thing I've saved nearly every .doc file I've ever typed!), but two things that do stick out in my mind are:
1) the vaudeville scenes from Cohan's youth. To a modern audience they seem odd, and I watched them with a historical fascination of a bygone entertainment medium. I can imagine viewers of Yankee Doodle Dandy, familiar with both Cohan and vaudeville seeing this as a wistful remembrance of days long past, watching it as they are in the relatively 'new' medium of motion pictures. Kind of how I feel about computers whenever I watch WarGames...
2) STIX NIX HIX PIX - don't ask me why I remember this, but after this movie I understood the Animaniacs song Variety Speak.

I can say that this is a movie that I probably would not watch again, and I am a big fan of musicals. It's most likely because I was unfamiliar with Cohan and his work, so that didn't draw me in. Also, as a movie character, Cohan was unlovable and unenjoyable to watch. In my humble estimation, he was the Lee Greenwood of his day. Sure, we all know Proud To Be An American, but could you have identified it as a Lee Greenwood hit?