Cagney by Cagney

Author:James Cagney [Cagney, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76843-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

6

Psychologically I needed no preparation for Yankee Doodle Dandy, or professionally either. I didn’t have to pretend to be a song-and-dance man. I was one.

In just about every interview, in most conversations, one question emerges unfailingly: what is my favorite picture? Many people assume that one of those knock-down-drag-’em-outs would be my choice. A discerning critic like Peter Bogdanovich can’t understand why I choose Yankee Doodle Dandy over White Heat and The Public Enemy. The answer is simple, and it derives from George M. Cohan’s comment about himself: once a song-and-dance man, always a song-and-dance man. In that brief statement, you have my life story; those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.

Yankee Doodle Dandy began, of course, with Cohan’s interest in seeing his life story filmed. He was aware that this was a valuable property, and he wanted it done with style and taste. As I got the story, he went first to Samuel Goldwyn, then committed to a picture with Freddie Astaire. Goldwyn submitted the idea to Freddie, who didn’t think it was for him. Cohan took it to Paramount, but after listening to their offer, he turned it down.

At the same time that arrangements were being made for Cohan to sell his life story, my brother Bill was hard at it looking for a story with genuine American flavor. This was uppermost in his mind when he came upon the Cohan possibility. Bill then put everything behind getting the story done with thoroughness and depth. Bill wanted to do the Cohan story as a 100 per cent American experience principally to remove the taint that apparently still attached itself to my reputation—a reputation now scarred by my so-called radical activities in the thirties when I was a strong Roosevelt liberal. Anyone of that background was usually colored pinko in hue at the very least. Bill chose Yankee Doodle Dandy with deliberation.

Meanwhile, my friend Ed McNamara had been in a show with Cohan. Cohan sounded him out about me, and Mac was able to point out that I had been a song-and-dance man for years in vaudeville. On learning this, Cohan’s people took the idea to Warner Brothers with the proviso that I do it, all of this taking place without my knowledge. Then the Warner’s script for the picture—written by a man named Buckner and approved by studio head Hal Wallis—was sent to me at the Vineyard for approval. I read it with incredulity. There wasn’t a single laugh in it, not the suggestion of a snicker. And this was a script purporting to be about a great American light entertainer, a professional humorist, a man who wrote forty-four Broadway shows, only two of which were not comedies. I said to brother Bill, “It’s no good, I won’t touch it. But I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give it a blanket O.K. now if you put the Epstein boys on it to liven it up and inject humor.”

Julius and Phil Epstein were two very bright lads.

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