James Cagney as George M. Cohan
Michaela Owens explains why she appreciates James Cagney’s tour-de-force performance in Michael Curtiz’s tremendous musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy.
It only takes a few seconds of a James Cagney performance to know that there hasn’t been and never will be another actor like him.
With his rat-a-tat voice, jerky gestures, and infinite energy, Cagney should feel like an actor too deeply rooted to his heyday to suggest a connection with modern audiences. After all, this is the guy who brought the ‘30s film gangster to electrifying life and made the Hays Office blush with pre-Codes that still raise eyebrows today. At a glance, he might seem like one of the most stereotypical Old Hollywood stars you can think of with a persona that feels easy to pinpoint and imitate.
The longer you stay under the spell of Cagney, though, the more you realize how startingly original and unafraid he was. In a career full of cocky fast-talkers, ruthless criminals, and complicated ne’er-do-wells, it would be an absurd understatement to say a Cagney character is brash and explosive — but there was always something quietly vulnerable there, too, something that could floor you when you least expect it.
In a film like Yankee Doodle Dandy, it is obvious what that moment is supposed to be. Telling the story of musical legend George M. Cohan (and doubling as WWII-era propaganda, if we’re being honest), Yankee Doodle Dandy doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the Hollywood biopic as it takes you through Cohan’s life from his birth to his acceptance of the Congressional Gold Medal. All the standard beats are there, as well as the fictions you’d expect, such as Cohan’s two wives becoming just one wife he was happily married to for decades. When Cohan’s beloved father (a terrific Walter Houston) lies dying as his son repeats their family’s long-running curtain speech of “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you” before breaking down into sobs, it is the most emotional we ever see Cohan, his collapse into his wife Mary’s arms transforming him into a little boy lost for just a few seconds before the image fades to a funereal black. It is a scene designed to tug at the heartstrings — and for this crybaby, it fully does — but the moment where Cagney really takes my breath away is so much simpler.
After reliving his story and receiving his Congressional Medal, Cohan begins to descend the White House stairs when he suddenly bursts into an impromptu dance. It was an improvisation on Cagney’s part, and a delightfully astute choice for a character whose whole life has been built on performing. Such a vibrant artistic expression conveys Cohan’s happiness more than any teary dialogue could, reaffirming my belief that there is nothing as pure as a musical. There is no flashiness to his dance steps, no complex taps or athletic spins. Instead, there is a honesty to the movement that reveals how simplicity and intuition were the soul of Cagney’s artistry.
Out of all the jaw-dropping work James Cagney gave us, it is fascinating that his sole Academy Award win (and his first of only two nominations) was for his performance as a song-and-dance man. Maybe this was because Cagney’s criminals were just too frightening, too raw, and Cohan was the most conventional role the Academy could’ve honored. But there is too much of a light emanating from Cagney in Dandy to completely dismiss the beauty of his performance here. A vaudevillian at heart who started his career on the stage in musicals, the actor’s joy as he struts through his routines — gliding in the air, tapping with astonishing speed and precision, stopping and starting with a stiff-legged style that reportedly mirrored Cohan’s own — is infectious. Actors being nominated and winning Oscars for biopics has become a tradition over the years (and not an entirely welcome one), but when someone like Cagney offers us the kind of magic he does as Cohan, it’s difficult to cling to your cynicism.
At least for a minute until you remember Bohemian Rhapsody was a thing.
Yankee Doodle Dandy will be screened at IU Cinema on February 3 as part of the 5X James Wong Howe series.