Yankee Doodle Dandy

Yankee Doodle Dandy is one of the best movies ever made.  Not greatest, mind you: as far as I know, it didn’t do much to change or advance the medium of film.  But it’s one of the best because it’s so energetic, so ebullient, so flag-wavingly patriotic, and so much fun that you can’t help but love it.

James Cagney plays George M. Cohan, a man who grew up performing with his family in vaudeville.  As he matured, he developed into a pillar of the Broadway scene.  He wrote, produced, and starred in hit after hit, and he penned canonical American music such as “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and “Over There.”  As the film tells it, he was also a swell guy.

This is a musical biography long on production numbers and Horatio Alger allusions, and it works due to Cagney’s effervescence.  And here’s the amazing thing: prior to this film, Cagney had been known as a ‘tough guy’ actor, with hits such as The Roaring Twenties and Angels with Dirty Faces.  When he sang and danced and mugged his way across the screen, audiences were as amazed as we would be if Jason Statham revealed that he’s been studying tap for the last twenty years and has the moves to prove it.  The film won Cagney an Academy Award for Best Actor and, though he went on to play tough guys once more in classics like White Heat, it changed Hollywood’s view of him forever.

But that’s neither here nor there.  For us, Yankee Doodle Dandy offers a delightful story, characters we can get behind, and production numbers we can remember for years to come.  As an added bonus, it has such a great ending that it motivates us to be better than ourselves.

This is a wonderful film.  If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to see Yankee Doodle Dandy.

The Furies

Only a fool or a hero would name his ranch The Furies.  T.C. Jeffords is both.

New Mexico, 1875ish: T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) rules over one of the biggest ranches in the territory.  He’s larger than life.  He’s a hero on the range.  And he’s spending money faster than he’s making it.  His daughter, Vance, is unamused.

His daughter is Barbara Stanwyck.  She loves him.

But

you

do

not

mess

with

Barbara Stanwyck.

Which is the film’s strength and its weakness.

See, here’s a movie that takes these two iconic actors, Huston and Stanwyck, and sets them up in this great conflict: he’s promised her the ranch, but he’s burning through its resources so fast that the promise is turning empty.  She loves him, but she has to fight him to save his legacy and save him from himself.  And it’s great stuff, it really is.  The Furies gives us two smart and capable people and lets them have at it, and it’s here that it really shines.

But The Furies tries to have it both ways.  See, it gives Stanwyck this love interest who does things like slap her to put her in her place.  She accepts this, which seems totally out of character both for the young Ms. Jeffords and the actress playing her.  When she kissed this guy after his assault, my jaw hit the floor.  I expected her to put a knife in his gut – or, at the very least, swindle him out of house and home.  I mean, this is Barbara Stanwyck we’re talking about, here!  But no.  Later, there’s some business about the guy telling her that she’s going to shut her mouth and do what she’s told, she accepts it, and I sat there agog.

I’m not saying this isn’t a good story.  I’m certainly not saying there aren’t some great things here.  I’m not even saying that this isn’t a reasonable portrayal of how someone of Stanwyck’s character’s age and background might behave.  I’m saying that, given what I (admittedly, as much a prisoner of my time and culture as the next guy) know about women, it’s inconceivable to me that a woman like Stanwyck’s Vance Jeffords would respond to abuse as she does in this film.

So enjoy the foolish hero.  Enjoy the resourceful heroine.  Wince at the cavalier attitude toward domestic violence.  This is a flawed picture, but it works nonetheless.  The Furies is a damn fine western.