Word: cohane
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Death, the prompter, as it must to all actors, called exit last week George M. Cohan did not have to wonder what his notices would be like: his career had been vividly reported to millions while he lived. Five months before death (of cancer) Cohan had seen a runoff of his own cinemapotheosis, Yankee Doodle Dandy (TIME, June 22), with James Cagney outdoodling the actor he portrayed. The picture turned the jauntiness and the flag-waving, the Cohan tunes and the Cohan tricks, into a nostalgic tintype of an era. No one typified that era more than Cohan himself...
Songwriter, actor, dancer, vaudevillian. playwright, Cohan was never equaled-even by Noel Coward-for sheer versatility. But his many talents had a single aim, a showman's aim: to please the crowd. "First think of something to say," his formula ran, "Then say it the way the theatergoer wants to hear it-meaning, of course, that you must lie like the dickens." Of pure Irish stock, he never plugged the wearing of the green-it was always the red, white & blue...
...July takes that as his cue to make himself a one-man patriotic holiday, he's bound to turn out to be an intriguing character. And when a vigorously produced and directed movie is based on his career, top-flight entertainment is the result. George M. Cohan is such a character: "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is such a film, and the sum total is just what might be expected...
Containing most of Cohan's more popular songs with James Cagney in the title role. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is as red, white, and blue a fautasy as Cohan himself could ask for. Cagney dances, sings, and mugs through a better than average story, and a wonderful series of songs. "Its A Grand Old Flag," "Mary," "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway." "Over There," and a number of others are all done up in a flag-waving style that, fortunately, is never quite overdone...
Walter Houston, Joan Leslie, and Francis Langford play supporting roles effectively, but it's Cagney's show from beginning to end. He dominates it as completely as Cohan would probably do if he were there. When the time for handing out prizes rolls around. Cagney's performances ought to give him a running head-start. And the movie won't b far behind...