Yankee Doodle Dandy - Patriotic Themes

Patriotic Themes

A popular myth about this movie, or at least a stretching of the truth, was that it was written in response to accusations that James Cagney was a Communist. Supposedly, Cagney learned that he was in danger of being blacklisted for having Communist sympathies, so he decided to make the most jingoistic movie he possibly could and thus clear his name. This myth has its chronology a bit askew, as the McCarthy Era did not begin until the early 1950s. Also, the Second Red Scare did not begin until the late 1940s, well after the film was made. In other versions of this legend, either Robert Buckner or Edmund Joseph were the accused. Cagney was, however, accused of being a Communist in a California grand jury trial in 1940, and this may have had an influence on the story.

The DVD specials discuss this story in some detail. Congressman Martin Dies was investigating possible Communist influence in Hollywood in 1940; he in fact had a cordial meeting with Cagney. The actor reassured him that, although he was a liberal and supported Roosevelt's New Deal, he was also a patriot who had nothing to do with Communism. That was the end of it, except that Cagney's producer-brother William saw the Cohan story as a good opportunity to dispel any possible concerns about Cagney's loyalty. It was not written in response to the Dies investigation, as Cohan himself had been shopping his own story around for a while before Jack Warner bought the rights, and Cohan retained final approval on all aspects of the film.

As the DVD also points out, production on the film was just a few days old when the Attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. The film's cast and crew resolved to make an uplifting, patriotic film. It was timed to open around Memorial Day in 1942, and was regarded as having achieved its goal in grand fashion.

Read more about this topic:  Yankee Doodle Dandy

Famous quotes containing the words patriotic and/or themes:

    [Rutherford B. Hayes] was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)