Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) - Part 2

The Fay Templeton number of “So, Long Mary” in the “Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway” scene is an excellent parody of small town American ambition for something bigger and better, and yet clinging to what is simple and familiar. Any song that can come up with a rhyme for “Schenectady” has my vote.

But in the “Grand Old Flag” number staged as part of Cohan’s “George Washington, Junior” musical, the film revs up to a colossal orgy of patriotic flag waving. The red, white and blue never looked so impressive in black and white. We have a chorus in Union Civil War uniforms, an appearance by the Boy Scouts, a tableau featuring Betsy Ross, the Spirit of ’76, and an African-American man singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” while slaves file past him and they pay tribute to a replica of the Lincoln Memorial. There is a poignant dignity in this last scene, without the hoopla of what came before, a helpless but earnest nod to a point on our timeline we cannot now change. It is unlike the cringe-worthy scene at the beginning of the film, when Cagney is led up the stairs at the White House by the black butler, played by Clinton Rosewood, who says he saw Cohan’s act many years ago when his then employer, President Theodore Roosevelt, or Mister Teddy as the butler calls him, gave him tickets for seats “in the gallery.”

There is perhaps at least one generation of young Americans who do not know that there was a time, particularly in certain parts of this nation, where African Americans were not allowed in theaters except in the segregated balcony seating, including when this film was made. This remark in the film may pass right by them unnoticed. More noticeable is the brief scene of the Four Cohans in blackface. It, too, is cringe-worthy and foolish, but to leave it out would be a lie. It is a realistic image of a long ago style of entertainment in American theater, which in this film is reviewed with remarkable detail.

Going back to the “Grand Old Flag” number, we are then presented with a Teddy Roosevelt look-alike leading a platoon of Spanish-American War soldiers, and a flock of workers, nurses, farmers, and an assortment of the Common Man gathering around some men about to load a cannon. If we did not figure it out before, we now know this movie is really about World War II. Released in 1942, this film gives us only a brief escape into the nostalgic past of American theater, but deftly slaps us back to consciousness. There is a war on outside the movie house, and when Walter Huston emerges in the final moments of the number dressed as Uncle Sam and Rosemary DeCamp as the Statue of Liberty, and there are more flags than we can count, we know that something more is expected of us. And it is not even the finale yet.

In the film World War I intrudes upon the life of George M. Cohan. He writes “Over There,” which became the anthem for American involvement in that war, and later in the film when he finishes telling his life story to FDR, the President gives him the medal for writing “Over There” and “A Grand Old Flag.” The faux FDR tells him “A man may give his life to his country in many different ways.” The film seems to expect the audience to give back something, too, now that we are at war, and the movie is over, and it is left to each of us to find the way to do it.

Just as important a message, and just as poignant, is when the two doctors confer outside the dying Cohan, Sr.’s room, reminiscing about the Four Cohans’ career. “I can’t help thinking a theatrical era is dying in there,” one says to the other. Their diagnosis is on the state of the theatre, and not the patient. Today there is a statue of George M. Cohan in Times Square. Mr. Cohan died five months after this film was released. He was ambitious, and he was flag waving, and he gave back something.

The Flag (1927)

The above photo is of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. Betsy wasn’t home at the time.

Flag Day is celebrated today in the US. Elementary school memories might include the ceremonial raising of the flag, a few clumsily recited poems like “In Flanders Fields” or a bored fourth grader plowing through the Gettysburg Address, and perhaps the playing of “Taps” by a trumpet player borrowed from the local high school band. That’s how it used to be. “The Flag” (1927) gives us a similar vague but earnest tableau of patriotism in the guise of the Betsy Ross story, in a way things did not really used to be.

Ross’ real place in American history as a unique figure: a successful businesswoman in the 18th century, has been buried to a great extent in the legend of her making the first flag. What we don’t know about it, Hollywood is always happy to make up.

What is interesting about this short, directed by Arthur Maude, is its being filmed in an early Technicolor process. The colors, like peach tones and light blues, are somewhat muted, but the flesh tones of the white and black actors appears natural. There’s not much story here: General George Washington, played by stone-faced Francis X. Bushman, wants a national flag, so Betsy creates one . One has the feeling that the film was little more than a test for the color process.

A (very slight) subplot involves a British officer sneaking into Betsy Ross’ house to visit his wife, who happens to be staying there as her guest. When he strips off his black cape to reveal his brilliant red uniform coat, it is quite striking. When Washington and Ross are at a party, all looking out at the blue twilight settling over a pink western sky, Ross describes her design for a flag as stars in a field of blue, one for each colony, as she gazes up at the starry sky. The bars of red are “for the blood of sacrifice” like the pink streaks of sunset, on “a ground of white for love and peace.”

It is meant to be “a flag beneath whose folds every man shall find freedom and protection.” This becomes quite literally true for the British officer, who when Ross unveils her creation (the bold red, white and blue primary colors of the large flag standing out very flashy against the muted colors of the set), and it is hung on the wall for display, he hides behind it when hunted by Continental soldiers.

Washington discovers him and grants him leniency, and as they shake hands, the blue-coated and red-coated men, they predict a future day when their nations will be “united in a common cause.” We are brought immediately to 1917 and the flags of the US, the UK and France carried by allied soldiers of World War I as they march toward the camera.

A simplistic view of foreign relations, to be sure, but Hollywood had a way of tying everything up with a ribbon. Symbolism is what Flag Day is about, anyway.

That’s all for this week. See you Monday.