Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 DvdRip Mkv Lee1001

Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 DvdRip Mkv Lee1001

MKV with chapters and Eng/spa subs



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035575/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle_Dandy

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY; screen play by Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph; from an original story by Mr. Buckner based on the story of George M. Cohan; directed by Michael Curtiz for Warner Brothers; music and lyrics by George M. Cohan. At the Hollywood Theatre.

This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.

May 30, 1942

'Yankee Doodle Dandy,' With James Cagney as George M. Cohan, Opens at Hollywood -- 'Falcon Takes Over' at Rialto

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: May 30, 1942

"Yankee Doodle Dandy" rode into town last night on a whole lot more than a pony; it rode on the star-spangled crest of one of the fanciest build-ups that Broadway has ever known, not to mention the glowing reputation of one of "the Street's" most beloved sons. Folks who are looking for something propitious to decorate today would do well to try for a seat at the Hollywood Theatre. For there, at the scene of last night's "$5,000,000 première," you will find as warm and delightful a musical picture as has hit the screen in years, a corking good entertainment and as affectionate, if not as accurate, a film biography as has ever—yes, ever—been made.



No need to tell anybody who the subject of this sparkling picture is. The public has been well advised for months that Warner Brothers were filming the life of George M. Cohan, with all the old Cohan songs and bits from his memorable shows. And the fact that cocky James Cagney would play the leading role has been a matter of common knowledge and of joyous anticipation all around. So the only news this morning is that all has come out fine. The picture magnificently matches the theatrical brilliance of Mr. Cohan's career, packed as it is with vigorous humor and honest sentiment. And the performance of Mr. Cagney as the one and original Song-and-Dance Man is an unbelievably faithful characterization and a piece of playing that glows with energy.



True, Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph, the script-writers, have taken some liberties with Mr. Cohan's life. They have juggled facts rather freely to construct a neat, dramatic story line, and they have let slip a few anachronisms which the wise ones will gleefully spot. But, as the late Sigmund Lubin once put it, they're yours at no extra cost. And, of course, Mr. Cohan had the last word. He said okay, let them go.



And the story as now presented is that of a lusty trouper, a showman who earned in the theatre a lasting place in our nation's Hall of Fame. Indeed, the picture begins with Cohan being called to Washington while playing the role of President Roosevelt in the musical show "I'd Rather Be Right." At the White House he meets the President (an unprecedented trick for the screen) and to him is told, in flashback, the wonderful story of this Yankee dandy's life.



And it is a hummer of a life! It starts on July 4, 1878, in Providence, R. I., when the red and squawling Georgie first hitched his wagon to the stars and stripes. And it follows the fortunes of the Cohan family—the famous Four Cohans, vaudeville specialists—through their picturesque trouping around the country, the first break of saucy George as "Peck's Bad Boy," his teaming with Sam H. Harris and the production of "Little Johnny Jones," and it traces his rising fortune to the World War and the writing of "Over There." Then it digresses pleasantly into the fictitious afternoon of the family's life, and takes up for a climax with Cohan receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Roosevelt.



Without question, the most solidly entertaining portion of the film is that which has to do with Cohan's early bouts with the stage and the sumptuous reproductions of bits from his early shows. Here Mr. Cagney excels, both in characterization and jubilant song and dance. His handling of "Yankee Doodle Boy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway," from "Little Johnny Jones," must be—with all due respect—quite as buoyant as Mr. Cohan's own. And one priceless dialogue he plays with Eddie Foy Jr., representing the elder Foy, couldn't have been better if Mr. Cohan had played it—and written it—himself.



But the complementary intimate family story is also appealing, too, largely because of the warm-hearted portrayal of the elder Cohan by Walter Huston. He and Mr. Cagney, as father and son, create the image of a deep attachment which has the very breath of life in it. And the episode wherein is recounted Mr. Cohan's composition of "Over There" is tremendously moving in its simplicity. There is not a maudlin note struck in the film. And the only elaborate flag-waving is done in one gaudy production sequence based on the song, "You're a Grand Old Flag."



The abundance of further pleasures is endless. There is Irene Manning playing Fay Templeton and singing "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" and "So Long, Mary," fit to make any oldster cry. There are the excellent performances of Joan Leslie as Cohan's romantic prompter, Rosemary DeCamp as his mother, Richard Whorf as Sam H. Harris, and countless others, not to forget Captain Jack Young's tastefully restrained and surprisingly realistic impersonation of the President. Indeed, there is so much in this picture and so many persons that deserve their meed of praise that every one connected with it can stick a feather in his hat and take our word—it's dandy!



There is a story that James Cagney stood on his toes while acting, believing he would project more energy that way. That sounds like a press release, but whatever he did, Cagney came across as one of the most dynamic performers in movie history--a short man with ordinary looks whose coiled tension made him the focus of every scene.



He's best known for the gangster roles he played in the 1930s, a decade when he averaged almost four films a year for Warner Bros. From ``Public Enemy'' (1931, with its famous grapefruit-in-the-face scene) to ``The Roaring Twenties'' (1939), he was Hollywood's leading crime star--even at the studio that also had Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart under contract. But he didn't win his Oscar until 1942, when he played Broadway showman George M. Cohan in ``Yankee Doodle Dandy.''



Maybe that was because Hollywood doesn't like to honor actors playing bad guys (Cagney was nominated but didn't win in 1938, as a gangster in ``Angels With Dirty Faces''). Maybe it was because the nation was newly at war in 1942, and happy to honor a patriotic biopic about the composer of ``It's a Grand Old Flag.'' Or maybe it was because Cagney threw himself into the role with such complete joy.



Audiences didn't expect to see Cagney singing and dancing. He'd been a hoofer in his stage days, but danced only once in a major film (``Footlight Parade,'' 1933). Now he had the lead in the life story of one of the most famous song and dance men of his day--a role everybody knew Fred Astaire had turned down.



Cagney wasn't a dancer by Astaire's standards, or a singer by anybody's, but he was such a good actor he could fake it: ``Cagney can't really dance or sing,'' observes the critic Edwin Jahiel, ``but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.''



You can sense that in an impromptu scene near the end of the movie. Cagney's Cohan is walking down a marble staircase at the White House when he suddenly starts tapping and improvises all the way to the bottom. Cagney later said he dreamed that up five minutes before the scene was shot: ``I didn't consult with the director or anything, I just did it.''



What's he doing at the White House? The movie is told in one of the most implausible flashbacks in the history of musical biographies--a genre famous for the tortured ways it doubles back to tell showbiz stories. As the movie opens, Cohan has been called out of retirement to star as Franklin D. Roosevelt in ``I'd Rather Be Right,'' a Broadway musical hailing the president as war clouds gathered. He gets a telegram summoning him to the White House, and arrives on foot, drenched, late at night. He's shown into the Oval Office, where an over-the-shoulder shot of FDR identifies him by his cigarette holder. The president says he remembers seeing ``The Four Cohans'' in Boston 40 years earlier.



``I was a pretty cocky kid in those days,'' Cohan muses. ``Pretty cocky kid ... ''



That sets off an entire film of flashbacks, narrated by Cohan, as he tells the president his life story. How he was born on the Fourth of July (``I was 6 before I realized they weren't celebrating my birthday''). How he began as a child star, touring with his parents, Jerry (Walter Huston) and Nellie (Rosemary De Camp), and his sister, Josie (Jeanne Cagney, Cagney's own sister). How he got a swelled head after starring in ``Peck's Bad Boy,'' and how while still a teenager he played his own mother's father on the stage.



That memory sets up a famous sequence, as a young fan named Mary (Joan Leslie) comes backstage to get advice from the apparently bearded and ancient Cohan, who continues the deception until suddenly breaking into a frenzied dance. She shrieks as he takes off his makeup (in showbiz, he tells her, ``you'll have to get used to false eyebrows'') and soon he's writing a hit song for her (``Mary'') and they're getting married.



These are all of course staples of showbiz biography--reality turned into myth, if not into press releases. Today's biopics focus on scandal and Freudian gloom, but in ``Yankee Doodle Dandy'' everything is upbeat, and even George's marriage proposal is couched in showbiz dialogue. No wonder that when the aging George M. Cohan himself was shown the movie, he liked it. (According to historian Jay Robert Nash, his response was right in character: ``Cohan grinned, shook his head, and paid the inimitable Cagney his highest compliment: `My God, what an act to follow!' '')



It was. As Pauline Kael said of Cagney, ``Though he was born in 1899 and is somewhat portly here, he is so cocky and sure a dancer that you feel yourself grinning with pleasure at his movements. It's quite possible that he has more electricity than Cohan himself had.'' Unlike Astaire, whose entire body was involved in every movement, Cagney was a dancer who seemed to call on body parts in rotation. When he struts across the stage in the ``Yankee Doodle Dandy'' number, his legs are rubber but his spine is steel, and his torso is slanted forward so steeply we're reminded of Groucho Marx.



There are two currents to the story: patriotism and success. Cohan sees himself as a flag-waver, and the critics attack him for writing only lightweight musical comedies. Stung, he writes a serious play, but when it flops he apologizes and returns to what his fans demand: sentiment, silliness and rousing nationalism. (Ironically, two of his lyrics supplied the titles for anti-war films: ``Born on the Fourth of July'' and ``Johnny Got His Gun.'')



Every scene follows the themes. He tries to enlist for World War I, is rejected for being too old, and protests, ``This war is a coffee klatsch compared to what I go through in the course of a musical show.'' He does a tap dance in the recruiting office to demonstrate what he means, walks outside and catches two notes from a marching band. And then, in one of those fantasies of creation so beloved in films about musicians, he sits on an empty stage with a piano and doodles with the notes until he discovers the opening for ``Over There.''



The movie hurries from one obligatory scene to the next: retirement of parents, offscreen deaths of mother and sister, onscreen death of father (Walter Huston goes out on a good exit line) and a montage of marquees from his hit shows. Finally comes the White House visit and, after Cohan has told the patient FDR his entire life story, a private presentation of the Medal of Honor.



There's little that's really original in ``Yankee Doodle Dandy,'' which was directed by Michael Curtiz, the gifted Warners workhorse whose credits included ``Casablanca,'' also released in 1942. The cinematography, by the legendary James Wong Howe, uses the elegant compositions of figures that were common at the time, and the staging includes two numbers where big studio treadmills are used to move groups of extras, or keep them marching in place.



But the greatness of the film resides entirely in the Cagney performance. Even Walter Huston, one of the finest character actors of the era, is confined by routine material. There is a sudden chemistry in a sequence involving Fay Templeton, as a Broadway star Cohan wants to work with (the relatively unknown Irene Manning is stunning in the role). But mostly it's bio by the numbers--except for Cagney's electricity.



He doesn't dance so much as strut; he doesn't act so much as sell you his desire to entertain. In dialogue scenes, when other actors are talking, his eyes dart across their faces, silently urging them to pick up the energy; he's like Michael Jordan impatiently willing his co-stars to keep up with him. And when he's in full sail, as in ``Give My Regards to Broadway'' or ``Yankee Doodle Dandy,'' it's like regarding a force of nature.



VIDEO

Size.... 1.96gb

Duration.... 02:05:38

Video Tracks... H264 [High@L4.1]

Frame Width..... 720

Frame Height.... 480

Total Bitrate.... 2245kbps

Frame Rate.... 23F/S

Contains Chapters... Yes

AUDIO

Bit Rate.... 192kbps

Audio tracks

Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz mono 192kbps[eng] [default]]

Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz stereo 192kbps [spa]

Audio Sample Rate.... 48KHz

Bits Per Sample 16 Bit/Sample

SUBTITLES

VOBSUB [eng][Spa]