For the Fourth: He’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a previous post.]
I saw that film on TV maybe 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney—whom I already knew as a tough old gangster—could dance. His dancing fascinated me because it was so non-balletic and idiosyncratic—the strutting, graceful/ungraceful, artful/artless uniqueness of his movement. In particular I recall the wall-climbing part at the end, which delighted me then and still does now.
Cagney wasn’t just an actor and hoofer, although he certainly was both. He was also a political conservative and changer. Excerpts from his Wiki page:
He was sickly as a young child—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure…The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918, and attended Columbia College of Columbia University where he intended to major in art…
Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, “It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him.”
He started tap dancing as a boy (a skill that eventually contributed to his Academy Award) and was nicknamed “Cellar-Door Cagney” after his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was a good street fighter, defending his older brother Harry, a medical student, when necessary. He engaged in amateur boxing, and was a runner-up for the New York State lightweight title. His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, but his mother would not allow it…
In his autobiography, Cagney said that as a young man, he had no political views, since he was more concerned with where the next meal was coming from. However the emerging labor movement of the twenties and thirties soon forced him to take sides…He supported political activist and labor leader Thomas Mooney’s defense fund, but was repelled by the behavior of some of Mooney’s supporters at a rally. Around the same time, he gave money for a Spanish Republican Army ambulance during the Spanish Civil War, which he put down to being “a soft touch.”…He also became involved in a “liberal group…with a leftist slant,” along with Ronald Reagan. However, when he and Reagan saw the direction the group was heading in, they resigned on the same night…
Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer in 1934, and again in 1940. The accusation in 1934 stemmed from a letter police found from a local Communist official that alleged that Cagney would bring other Hollywood stars to meetings. Cagney denied this, and Lincoln Steffens, husband of the letter’s writer, backed up this denial, asserting that the accusation stemmed solely from Cagney’s donation to striking cotton workers in the San Joaquin Valley. William Cagney claimed this donation was the root of the charges in 1940. Cagney was cleared…
After [WWII], Cagney’s politics started to change. He had worked on Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaigns…However, by the time of the 1948 election, he had become disillusioned with Harry S. Truman, and voted for Thomas E. Dewey, his first non-Democratic vote. By 1980, Cagney was contributing financially to the Republican Party, supporting his friend Ronald Reagan’s bid for the presidency…As he got older, he became more and more conservative, referring to himself in his autobiography as “arch-conservative.” He regarded his move away from liberal politics as “…a totally natural reaction once I began to see undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system… Those functionless creatures, the hippies … just didn’t appear out of a vacuum.”
Cagney: hoofer, political changer. An original all the way.
Happy Fourth to you all!
“once I began to see undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system… Those functionless creatures, the hippies … just didn’t appear out of a vacuum.”
Truer words were never spoken.
I was several years ahead of the hippie movement, age-wise. I supported the Vietnam War as a just cause. I believed in civility and manners. My younger siblings all protested and were generally less civil to those with whom they disagreed, were OK with seizing control of college administration offices and buildings. Remember Mark Rudd? Why were and are so many Jews Leftist, even violently so?
The birth of the 1960s radicals out of the calm, order and prosperity of the Eisenhower era deserves much study and contemplation, since we are still awash in the hippie/rock ‘n roll/make love not war tsunami a half-century later. The true believers hold many high offices, to our great and continuing danger on this July 4th.
One of my young and highly popular (because he ‘spoke truth to power’) college profs admitted just a few years ago that he’d participated in the break-in and vandalizing of the Philadelphia FBI office in the late ’60s. A felony, for which he is praised by the school and its students even today, admitting so only decades after the statute of limitations had expired. How noble, how gracious.
Students for a Democratic Society has been reborn, or perhaps never died. A nidus waiting to explode with the growth of radicalism, probably to claim it is anti-fascist.
Cicero:
Most Jews are not leftists, violent or otherwise. Most Jews are liberals, however, although more religious Jews tend to be conservatives.
You might just as well ask why are so many Jews scientists? Noble Prize winners? Doctors? Lawyers? Musicians? Actors? Movie moguls? Etc. Etc. In fact, Jews are quite prominent in so many fields, good and less commonly bad.
And by the way, leftist/radical Jews are almost always ethnic/secular Jews; they are ordinarily not religious. Leftism is their substitute. Believe me, I am well-acquainted with this group.
If you want to get up to speed on the degree of involvement of Jews among Russian Communists, see this (hint: not nearly as large as anti-Semites would have you think).
But yes, Jews were and are indeed leftists somewhat out of proportion with their numbers in the population. The answer to the question “why” is not obscure. They had been tremendously persecuted in Russia, and believed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that Communists would usher in a much less discriminatory era towards them and towards everyone. They were for the most part idealists—the ones I knew in my youth certainly were (and were completely secular, usually atheists). And as is often the case, they raised their children in the same “religion” of leftism. That’s what the term “red diaper baby” means—someone who was brought up by leftists. Some continue to be leftists; some do not.
David Horowitz has written at great length about this in his autobiography Radical Son. Highly recommended.
Yeah, but what happened to that tree?
Palm overboard!
Actually, Cagney intentionally emulated George M. Cohan’s (wacky!) stiff-legged dancing style and managed to sprain an ankle a couple of times as he worked to master it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle_Dandy)
I too, have a stiff-legged dancing style.
Where’s my Oscar?
I have always loved this movie. I knew Rosemary DeCamp (who plays Cagney’s mother in the film, even though she was about 11 years Cagney’s junior in real life).
Rosemary and her husband, John, were good friends of my wife’s family. John was a judge; he married Nina and I on May 27, 1973, a few days before we graduated from medical school.
Forty-five years ago!
Tempus fugit.
He made a pretty decent Admiral Halsey, too.
Here’s a link to some video of Cohan dancing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDDqYrfvt8
Do young people ever see these movies? They are so cut off from our culture. When there were only 3 networks,young people watched classic films on the same TV as their parents. Today, they go to their rooms and consume entirely different stuff.
Not only that , but they are age separated and don’t deal with older and younger cousins and neighbors like we used to. It’s sad that most don’t know anything about Yankee Doodle Dandy or Over There. Movies used to provide some kind of base that kids could build on as they acquired more knowledge. We have to find a way to integrate them into our culture and history.
‘What the worst part is I could have be ended it hare.
https://viralsquare.net/omg/navy-man-hurries-to-greet-his-wife-but-sees-her-pregnant-belly-and-realizes-she-lied-to-him/
And welcome to Fkeet
The fleet .
“Where’s my Oscar?” Right behind the bottle of tequila I culturally appropriated from the Aztecs, my frieind.
I was thinking I couldn’t have bigger problems than buying a replacement t shirt. Aztec Eagles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_workers_killed_in_the_September_11_attacks
I am the luckiest man alive. Think I’ll call my mom.
“leftist/radical Jews are almost always ethnic/secular Jews; they are ordinarily not religious.”
I think it is the substitute. I always thought that there was a religious factor, “Day of Atonement” sort of thing.
Cagney’s brother was a dentist in Culver City CA.
He was also a very savvy investor having owned most of Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach at one time.
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Watched the movie yesterday on TCM and loved it!
You nailed it. There’s a well-known maxim, whose provenance escapes me just now, that human beings are fundamentally religious creatures, and in the absence of an organized religion, they will attach religious significance to any other thing of their choosing, and worship it with the same religious fervor that they mock in what they view as “religious” people.