Watched Yankee Doodle Dandy last evening for maybe the eightieth time. I have it on Laserdisc so I could have watched it whenever I thought of it…but Turner Classic Movies was running it so I had TiVo grab a copy — and don't you sometimes feel dumb watching a free telecast of a movie for which you paid good money? Anyway, I did enjoy it. I think I had trouble appreciating this movie back in the seventies because I'd read a couple of biographies of George M. Cohan, and a series of letters that George S. Kaufman had written to a friend about his many troubles with Cohan. They all made Cohan sound like a pretty nasty man who waved the flag to mask selfish goals. That's a personal peeve of mine — shallow, self-interests disguised as patriotism — so I was disinclined to view Mr. Cohan in a favorable light.
I was also acutely aware of how little the movie resembled his actual life. One does not expect a Hollywood bio-film to reflect reality 100% or even 80% but this one was so far down the accuracy scale that it seemed like its makers had said, "Well, we can't tell the truth about this bastard so let's make up something." He wasn't even born on the Fourth of July, you know.
So why have I seen it so many times? I think it's because I like it a wee bit more with each viewing, which doesn't happen with many pictures. Jimmy Cagney is so darn good in it — acting, as well as singing and dancing — that he forces you to love the guy he's playing, and I care less and less each time that it isn't the real Cohan. Cagney just eclipses the real guy to the point where if you today mention George M. Cohan to people and they happen to recognize the name, they think of Cagney. In Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand may have supplanted the genuine Fannie Brice, but that would be the only other time I can think of that happening; of the real star being obliterated by the person playing them. Obviously, some of that has to do with the general unavailability of real Cohan or Brice performances but not completely. Those have been the only two times (unless you can think of another) where the person playing a supposedly-great star was a lot more talented — and a bigger star — than the person they were portraying.
Cohan himself did make a few movie appearances, by the way. Given his success on the stage, you have to figure that something just plain didn't translate. Either film didn't capture any trace of his talent or it had atrophied by the time he reached Hollywood. But like a few other (allegedly) great stage performers in early film, he sure doesn't come off as a star of any magical ability. If I were him, I'd much rather people think I was Jimmy Cagney.