The New Pictures

Yankee Doodle Dandy (Warner) is possibly the most genial screen biography ever made. Few films have bestowed such loving care on any hero as this one does on beaming, buoyant, wry-mouthed George M. (for Michael) Cohan. The result is a nostalgic, accurate re-creation of a historic era of U.S. show business. Not that the picture is a strict reconstruction of the playwright-songwright-actor-producer-hoofer's life. But star-spangled George M. Cohan, now 63, ailing, and confined to his upstate New York farm, was the kind of entertainer who really liked to entertain people, and Yankee Doodle has caught his spontaneous warmth.

By a neat device, Showman Cohan (James Cagney) tells his life story to Franklin Roosevelt (Captain Jack Young) in the White House, where he is summoned to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is the story of a cocky, puckish, talented Irish-American, who accepted the accident of his birth on July 4, 1878 as an implied command to wave the Stars & Stripes forever. Critics called the act corny, but audiences recognized it for what it was: a born showman expressing a sincere emotion.

Yankee Doodle tries hard to squeeze 50 years of Cohan Americana into two hours and six minutes of celluloid. It succeeds best with the early years-the tough, tender, Irish clannishness of The Four Cohans (Father Walter Huston, Mother Rosemary DeCamp, Daughter Jeanne Cagney,/- Son Jimmy) and their variety act; Songwriter Cohan's accidental partnership with Sam H. Harris (Richard Whorf), his ambiguous first meeting with his future wife (Joan Leslie), who came backstage while young Cohan was playing his mother's father in Buffalo, N.Y. "I'm 18," she confided to the "old man". "I sing and I dance and I'm going to New York! Should I?" There are also the old songs (The Yankee Doodle Boy, 45 Minutes From Broadway, So Long Mary, Mary's A Grand Old Name, etc.) still ringing clear.

Because its makers took extraordinary pains to be faithful to the intricacies of show business, the show business in Yankee Doodle is extraordinarily good. So is its Grade-A cast, especially Oldtimer Huston and a pretty newcomer named Irene Manning, pleasantly singing and playing the ex-Broadway musiqueen. Fay Templeton.

The picture goes overboard with an elaborate presentation of You're A Grand Old Flag. But the simple restaging of Cohan's conception of his cocky war song, Over There, is enough to send movie audiences straight off to battle-especially as gusty Songstress Frances Langford sings it (with Johnny Get Your Gun) to 1917's doughboys. The rest, down through one of Cohan's last stage appearances (in I'd Rather Be Right, 1937), is anticlimax.

Canny Showman Cohan knew what he was doing when he insisted that Irish Jimmy Cagney was the one cinemactor who could play him. Smart, alert, hardheaded, Cagney is as typically American as Cohan himself. Like Cohan, he has a transparent personal honesty, a basic audience appeal. Like Cohan, he was once a hoofer.

With these attributes. Cagney manages to suggest George M. Cohan without carbon-copying the classic trouper. He has the Cohan trick of nodding and winking to express approval, the outthrust jaw, stiff-legged stride, bantam dance routines, side-of-the-mouth singing, the air of likable conceit. For the rest, he remains plain Jimmy Cagney. It is a remarkable performance, possibly Cagney's best, and it makes Yankee Doodle a dandy.

The Brothers Warner put about $1,500,000 into Yankee Doodle, and no doubt they will get it back. They are not likely to get Jimmy Cagney back. This picture is his last for a major studio. Following a Hollywood procedure that may become a trend, he has formed his own movie unit (Cagney Productions, Inc.), plans to produce his own pictures for United Artists release. Warner Bros, will miss him. For the last twelve years the cinema's most talented tough guy has been his studio's top money maker.

/-Actor Cagney's 23-year-old Phi Beta Kappa sister (Hunter College, '38) in her first important cinerole.

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