Of
special note, then, is the musical biopic a genre that littered the studios,
most notably in the 40s. Most of them (understandably) focused on the popular
composers of the day: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Richard
Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (about whom more later), and even Sigmund Romberg. (The
exception here is Irving Berlin, but since he was constantly shopping what were,
more or less, vanity projects like Irving Berlin’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band
and Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, we didn’t really need to know more
about him. (That said, one wonders what the aborted Say It With Music
might have been like, even if it came 15 years after the cycle.)
Two of the (many) problems with these biopics was that, in most cases, the subject was still alive and productive and was protective of his image, and that, again in most real-life cases, after a brief period of trying to break in, these composers were wildly successful (certainly successful enough to rate a movie about their life and work) and stayed on top; not exactly a gripping dramatic arc. (Porter, at least, had a horrific accident in the late 30s that crippled him and left him in tremendous pain the rest of his life. As might be expected, the accident is dealt with in the mostly-gruesome Night and Day, but is soon forgotten, except for Cary Grant limping and using a cane.)
In
place of a more realistic portrayal of the work of these men, there are usually
a number of tropes and beats that are pretty consistent from picture to
picture: the “one girl” whom the subject just can’t connect with; the montages
of famous numbers in settings that no theatre could ever contain; the
personality quirks that stand for characterization. In the cases of Porter and
Hart, especially, dealing with their homosexuality was never going to be
approved by the Breen Office, so the focus is placed on Porter’s complicated
marriage and Hart’s even-more-complicated feelings about Vivienne Siegel rather
than their actual love lives. (Even that goes haywire in the even-more-horrific
2004 Porter biopic De-Lovely, which is able to deal more frankly with
the marriage and his sexuality, but is derailed by a series of grotesque
musical performances by artists woefully incapable of understanding or
delivering the material they’re rendering. But that’s another review …)
In
this context, then, what to make of Yankee Doodle Dandy, Michael Curtiz,
Robert Buckner, and Edmund Joseph’s attempt to collapse the long life and career
of George M. Cohan into 126 minutes?
Let
me stipulate that I love this movie. I love the script, the direction, the performances,
and the numbers. It’s just that it drives me crazy in its chronology and lack
of accuracy. Of course, it has a lot to overcome: the Production Code, the
needs of the audience of 1942, and – most importantly – Cohan’s own preferences
and sensibilities, but the cavalier way it truncates some events, ignores
others, and distorts even more drives me crazy.
Dealing
with musical biopics is never easy. Dealing with Yankee Doodle Dandy is
a mugg’s game.
The
credits kind of give the game away. After the title, we are assured that the
movie is “Based on the life of George M. Cohan,” which sets up the framing. We’re
not going to get the real story; we’re going to get an adaption of the
story (“Gems from the Life of George M. Cohan,” as the 78s of the day put it). Bosley
Crowther’s glowing New York Times review acknowledges this:
the screen-writers … have taken some liberties with Mr. Cohan’s life. They have juggled facts rather freely to construct a neat, dramatic story line, and they have left slip a few anachronisms [ED. NOTE: A few!] which the wise ones will gleefully spot. But, as the late Sigmund Lubin once put it, they’re yours at no extra cost. And, of course, Mr. Cohan had the last word. He said okay, let them go.
(As though at least some – like the disappearance of his first wife, and the mischaracterization of his second -- hadn’t originated with him.)
Following
the credits, we focus on the marquee of an unnamed theatre (standing in for the
Alvin, now Neil Simon Theatre) where Cohan is starring “In His Triumphal Return
to the Stage:” I’d Rather Be Right, “The Greatest Musical Comedy Hit in
Years” (Brooks Atkinson in the Times, like Cohan a lot, but called the rest
of the show “clever and generally likable … but … not the keen and brilliant
political satire most of us have been fondly expecting.”). This is the first
stretching of the truth; Cohan had been on Broadway as recently as nine months
previously, but we’ll get to that.
We
are met with two reviewers leaving the theatre, so this is apparently opening
night. They remark on their liking so the show (“So I guess I’ll pan it,” says
one) and that one’s publisher isn’t thrilled with the idea of Cohan
impersonating the President. I’d have been more curious about their feeling
about a show that apparently has only one scene and one number. More later.
We
now cut to Cohan’s dressing room, where he’s accepting congratulations from
well-wishers and going through telegrams. 17-year-old Joan Leslie (whose enthusiastic
ineptness becomes quite charming) is impersonating the 57-year-old Agnes Cohan (here
called “Mary”) by wearing an impressive gray wig and the best makeup Perc
Westmore can devise to age her. Richard Whorf’s Sam H. Harris (in a good
understated performance that contrasts nicely with the bluster of James Cagney’s
Cohan) is reading telegrams. There’s a reference about not getting one from
Hirohito, which is the next hint that the chronology is going to be screwy. Hirohito
was Japan’s Emperor when I’d Rather Be Right opened on November 2, 1937,
but it’s definitely a wartime reference. (Shooting on the film started on December
8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.) Two nice touches in the scene
are Cagney speaking out of the side of his mouth (as did the real Cohan; a character
detail that’s later forgotten) and Cohan’s not being able to read the telegrams
because “these are not my reading glasses,” echoing a later scene where George
gives his father, Jerry, half interest in all his properties. In that scene,
Jerry – played by the flawless Walter Huston – tears up and claims he can’t
read because he’s not wearing his own reading glasses. It’s a nice bit of
subtle symmetry.
As
Harris read the telegram, we are informed that “the President,” who goes
unnamed (although FDR’s real press secretary, Stephen Early, is named) wants to
see Cohan on “a personal matter.” Cohan fears it’s because he’s impersonating the
president and is “really worried,” for
unspecified reasons. (A fear that’s even more curious, given the later staging
of “Grand Old Flag.” Again, more later.)
We
are then taken to Washington DC, in the middle of a terrific rainstorm. The
telegram has specified that Cohan should make an appointment at his earliest
convenience, and I guess we’re supposed to assume that this is that night or
soon after. That the time is 9:00 PM (as indicated by the clock in the
President’s office – which is definitely not the Oval Office, but a private
study on the second floor), we can assume it’s the following Sunday or Monday,
usually the only nights off in a Broadway performer’s schedule.
That
there are armed guards at the gates of the White House leads us, again, to
believe that the scene takes place in the then-contemporary 1942, rather than
1937, when both I’d Rather Be Right opened and (spoiler alert!) Cohan
was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal (which he didn’t accept until 1940, due
to his animosity toward FDR, another personality trait that is whitewashed).
After
some preliminary chat, Cohan decides to tell the President, about whom he
earlier expressed nerves about taking up his time, his life story. We
transition to Providence, RI (with the foothills of Burbank making a cameo
appearance), where Huston’s Jerry Cohan is performing his vaudeville act, while
his wife, Helen, or “Nellie,” is in labor with George. The scene is specifically
set on July 4, 1878, although George was born on the 3rd. We can’t
let the facts get in the way of a good story, though, can we? The Most
Patriotic Man Ever has to be born on the Fourth.
As
we go on, the young George is portrayed riding a donkey in a parade, assuring
FDR (oh, let’s just call him that, even if the film doesn’t) that “even in
those days, I was a good Democrat.” Cohan was well-known as a very conservative
Republican, which was one of the reasons it took him so long to accept that
Gold Medal. (He was on the road in Washington on a pre-Broadway tour, and it
was almost a second thought, rather than the Major Event portrayed here.)
Fast forward to c. 1891, where the Cohans are touring in the play Peck’s Bad Boy, which is a generally unremarkable sequence featuring the knockabout slapstick that in-screen audiences find irresistibly hilarious, and that in-theatre audiences find baffling. The most notable thing about the sequence is that it’s the first that shows off Curtiz’s fidelity to showing the scenes and numbers in ways they would actually have looked. There’s no expanding them to cinematic size, the way any other number of directors (most notably Busby Berkeley) would have would have done. We’re seeing them with as much fidelity as possible: cardboard flats, prosceniums, footlights, the whole nine yards. It’s one of the film’s strongest elements; really grounding George and the other Cohans in a theatrical context. (Kudos to Art Director Carl Jules Weyl.)
After
a dissolve from young George (Douglas Croft, who would later go to non-fame
playing the first iteration of Robin, the Boy Wonder in the 1943 Batman
serial), we see an indeterminately-aged Cagney playing the father of his mother’s
character in Four of a Kind (the name of the Cohans’ real act, though
one doubts it contained this kind of cheap melodrama). That he’s playing a young
man playing his mother’s father is ironic given that Cagney was 11 years older
than Rosemary DeCamp, who plays Nellie.
After
the show, Leslie’s Mary summons up the courage to consult George about whether
she should pursue a career in the show business. In reality, Ethel Levey, his
first wife, whom he married when he was 22, was already an established
vaudevillian, whose own career lasted well into the 1940s. (She outlived George
by some 13 years).
Another
fast-forward, and Mary has sort of joined the act, and we’re treated to the
anachronist number “I Was Born in Virginia,” with the first taste of Cagney expertly
imitating the real Cohan’s unique dancing style, superbly joined by Huston (who
gives charm new meanings), De Camp, and Cagney’s own sister, Jeanne (who doesn’t
have much to do in the picture, but does it relatively well). The “Virginia”
number was written by Cohan for 1906’s George Washington, Jr., which
will come up later in the story in its (more or less) proper historical place.
It’s a charming number, though, and is another indication that we’re going to
be playing fast and loose with chronology. It’s almost a reflection of an old
man telling a story and confusing his facts in an entertaining way. It makes no
sense and is all muddled, but we go along with it.
We
now come to a favorite trope: the montage of our hero (and, again, it’s always our
hero) going from publisher to publisher and producer to producer, being
ignored and belittled by our short-sighted antagonists (in this case, Dietz and
Goff, played by the invaluable George Tobias and Chester Clute). We’re now
introduced to Sam H. Harris, who will become Cohan’s producing partner (who is seemingly
in his own producer-hopping montage from an unmade movie), which should put us
circa 1904, when the partnership began, but George and Mary have just
auditioned for Dietz and Goff with “Harrigan,” a number George won’t write
until 1908. Of course, given that the next scene (in a theatrical boarding
house) mentions that Oscar Hammerstein has just signed Scottish performer Harry
Lauder, an event that occurred in 1907 (by which time George had had more than
a dozen shows on Broadway), it’s anyone’s guess when this is happening. The
matter is thoroughly confused by George’s fake announcement that Dietz and Goff
are going to produce his Little Johnny Jones, which Harris actually
produced in 1904. In this case, the production is enabled by the investing of a
Mr. Schwab, played by S.Z. Sakall (whom Cagney reportedly disliked enough that ran
128.he complained about him to Curtiz, and with whom he never worked again;
despite that, Sakall is as delightful as usual.)
Schwab
ponies up the dough for Little Johnny Jones, which (in our timeline)
opened on November 7, 1904; the fifth Broadway show to feature content by
Cohan. Of course, the film being what it is, while the other cinematic Cohans
are out on the road somewhere, whereas the real Cohans (minus Josie), along
with Ethel, had roles in the show.
The most notable thing about this section, though, are the two musical numbers. We begin with a closeup of the conductor’s score for “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” and an indication that it’s the opening number of Act II. This is a rarity for these kinds of film, in that (as in the case of what we’ll later see of I’d Rather Be Right) in them, shows usually consist either of one number or a series of numbers that only an idiot could link together in a coherent plot. (Seriously; can anyone tell me what the plot of 42nd Street’s show-within-a-movie Pretty Lady is?) Here, not only do the writers and Curtiz give us the verse of the actual number, they give us dance interludes and period-appropriate costuming and staging; the whole number, along with Cagney’s truly dazzling recreation of Cohan’s dancing and performance style. The only “flaw” (and note the air quotes) is that Cagney, by nature, is a little more theatrical and flamboyant than the real Cohan, who, as historian Ethan Mordden has noted, was revolutionary for his underplaying and naturalness. That nit-picking aside, it’s a fantastic number, and (again) its fidelity to what it might have looked like in 1905 gives us a real sense of Cohan’s popularity and impact. (It should be noted that the original production ran only 52 performances. A second run, in 1905, ran 128. A third run later that year ran 28, and a fourth[!] run in 1907 ran only 16.) Bonus points here, as the curtain falls on the number, it’s decorated with a large “L,” indicating we are indeed in the Liberty Theatre, where the show debuted.
After
the standard scene offstage (“It seems to be going well” “If the critics don’t
kill us.” In the real world, Life Magazine called it “the apotheosis of
stage vulgarity.”), we’re back on stage with “Give My Regards to Broadway,”
which the rest of the picture never tops. Again, we get the period-appropriate
staging: an obviously fake boat, spotlights, and special effects, a large
chorus (dressed in turn-of-the-century clothes, rather than looking like they’re
in 1942), a little bit of the plot (just enough to let us know what to expect
from the number), and Cagney doing the best dancing he ever did on film. It’s unmistakably
Cagney (the gestures are virtually trademarked), but the sensibility is pure Cohan.
The little laugh (“ha-HA!”) and fist pump Cagney/George/Johnny gives when he learns
he’s been vindicated is a perfect synthesis of actor and character. Even though we’re less than an hour into the
picture, this is its first act curtain.
As
we begin Act Two, we find ourselves in a train station as the Abandoned Three
Cohans wait for a train to take them to their next split-week vaudeville gig. Again,
the timeline is screwy. George’s first show on Broadway, The Governor’s Son,
opened in 1901, and guess who was in it? The other three Cohans and Ethel. Even
if this is supposed to take place after Little Johnny Jones opened, that
was four years after this scene is apparently taking place. To top it off, the
numbers the reunited family sings in a montage were written in 1911, 1927 (ten
years after Jerry’s death!), and 1908.
The
family unit is restored at last, so we’re now in George and Mary’s apartment.
He’s literally just finished writing “Mary” as a tribute for his wife. This
would seemingly place the scene in 1906, as George wrote the song for Forty-Five
Minutes from Broadway. (More bonus points here for Sally Sweetland, who invariably
dubbed Joan Leslie – anonymously -- in a way that was indistinguishable from
Leslie’s own voice, and Leslie does a marvelous job lip-synching Sweetland.)
Jed Harris bursts in, telling George they’ve got to get over to the Lyceum to
see Fay Templeton in order to persuade her to star in Forty-Five Minutes. George
mentions that “If she can do two years in the turkey she’s in now, she can do
four for us.” The turkey in question is A Little Bit of Everything,
which the marquee assures us is in its “second big year.” Because time no
longer has any meaning in the Cohanverse, it almost goes without saying that,
not only did that show open in June 1904 (two years before Forty-Five Minutes),
it closed in September; hardly a two-year run. (Even Forty-Five Minutes
itself lasted less than a year, with one run from January, 1906 to March, then coming
back in November of the same year.) With that timeline so messed up, it hardly
matters that the Templeton show played at the Aerial Gardens and the Broadway,
rather than the Lyceum, which was built in 1903, nor that Cohan actually contributed
material to it.
Templeton,
played by a tempestuous Irene Manning, storms off to do her show, and during
the first act, George writes the title song for Forty-Five Minutes, a
feat – and song – so impressive that Templeton agrees to do the show then and
there. She must not have been too impressed, though, since she didn’t sing it
in the actual show; comic Victor Moore – pretty much the complete opposite of
the glamorous Manning – did.
George
returns to the apartment and breaks the news to Mary that he’s given her eponymous
song to Templeton. Mary approves of the betrayal and even self-effacingly gives
up a career on the stage in order to be a “looker-after” for George. (She does
turn up later in the George Washington Jr. cast, though.) In real life,
the Cohans had separated in 1906, when Forty-Five Minutes was produced, and
divorced in 1907. Also left unmentioned is the couples’ daughter, Georgette.
Levey sued Warner Bros. over invasion of privacy when the film opened, but
given how much the film veers from the truth (and how positively Cohan’s wife –
by any name – is portrayed), it’s no wonder she lost the case …
Following
another nicely-staged number, we find ourselves apparently in front of the Herald
Square Theatre in 1906, where Eddie Foy (Cohan’s rival, played by Foy’s son, Eddie,
Jr.) is disparaging the poster for George Washington Jr., which
shockingly (given the chronology so far) actually did open a month after Forty-Five
Minutes. Foy claims not to know who Cohan is, but George had already been a
star for five years, only two years less than Foy.
Time
for another number, isn’t it? And indeed, we get the rouser “You’re a Grand Old
Flag.” In the show, the number was titled “The Grand Old Rag,” but was changed
to assure audiences that the song didn’t disparage the Stars and Stripes.
This is an exceptional number in that the staging is the most “Hollywood” in the picture. It still takes place on a realistically-sized stage, but set pieces appear and vanish in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds of extras appear in the finale, Theodore Roosevelt makes a cameo – which is a little odd, considering how upset everyone seems to be over his cousin Franklin being portrayed thirty years hence. (I used to think there was almost nothing more American than Walter Huston’s cameo as Uncle Sam, but then I realized Huston was Canadian, so that theory went our the window.) Suffice it to say, this is the first number intended to work up a 1942 audience’s appetite for winning the war. There’s really no pretense in making it appear to be a period number, and I think Curtiz realizes this, which is why the staging is more “contemporary.”
Following
this War Bond Rally, we get a montage of the show on tour, accompanied marquees
from other Cohan shows, underscored by the song “Like the Wandering Minstrel,”
another time-traveler form 1927, and the marquees feature The Honeymooners
(1907), The American Idea (1908), The Man Who Owns Broadway
(1909), Hello, Broadway (1914), The Little Millionaire (1911).
That
advancement in time over, we somehow find ourselves in 1910, for Jerry Cohan’s 62nd
birthday. Josie announces her retirement, as do Jerry and Nellie. Josie’s last
show was indeed in 1908 (she died in 1916, at the age of 40), but the elder Cohans
worked until 1912 (he died in 1917, she in 1928), when both appeared in George’s
Broadway Jones. George makes Jerry his equal partner in all of his
properties, and tearing up, Jerry tries to cover up the emotion by claiming he’s
not wearing his reading glasses, a nice callback to the early scene in the dressing
room.
Another
montage, starting with 1918’s The Voice of McConnell, then mentioning The
Review (sic) of 1917 (there were Cohan Revues of 1916 and 1918,
but no 1917 edition), before George telling FDR that he was tired of being dismissed
as a musical comedy writer, so he wanted to try a drama, in this case Popularity,
which, while rightfully portrayed as a flop (it ran 24 performances), was
written in 1906. (He later musicalized it as The Man Who Owns Broadway,
where it was slightly more successful, running 128 performances) George tells
us he couldn’t go to the opening night because he was appearing down the street
in The Yankee Prince, but Popularity must have been a very long play,
because The Yankee Prince opened in 1908.
Once
the family assures George that the play is bad, he agrees to close it, taking
out a self-effacing ad in the papers to apologize for it. As he and Sam leave
the Western Union office, news breaks of the ocean liner Lusitania being sunk by
a German U-boat, which somehow places the scene on May 7, 1915.
George
tries to enlist in the Army, but at 39 (Cohan’s actual age at the time of the
sinking, surprisingly) is turned down. He retreats to a theatre and writes “Over
There,” introducing the second number really intended for the 1942 audience. Begun
by Frances Langford’s Nora Bayes singing the song, the encore is preceded by
Cagney looking right at the camera and urging everyone to sing. One imagines
that the theatres the movie was screened at rang with enthusiastic audiences
joining in.
Fortunately
for everyone concerned, World War I is over in a matter of seconds, so we can be
ushered into another montage of Cohan songs and shows, this time featuring “In
a Kingdom of Our Own” (1929); The Royal Vagabond (1919); “The Love Nest,”
from Mary, produced by Cohan in 1920, but with a score by Lou Hirsch and
Otto Harbach (a contribution unacknowledged here); the title song from Little
Nellie Kelly (1922); “The Man Who Owns Broadway” (1909); The Song and
Dance Man (1930); “Molly Malone” from The Merry Malones (1927); the
title song from Billie (1928); The Tavern (1930); and Eugene O’Neill’s
Ah! Wilderness, from 1933.
George
bemoans how lonely it was to be performing without the rest of his family and
admits to worrying about his father’s health. The mention of the O’Neill play
puts us no earlier than 1933, but by that time (as mentioned) Jerry had been
dead for 16 years, Nellie for 5, and Josie for 17. George gets the call that
his father is on his deathbed and arrives with Mary. In actuality, he had been
married to his second wife, Agnes, since 1908, and had three children with her,
none of whom appear here.
Huston’s death scene is quite touching, and despite his delirium, he connects with George. His portrayal is moving enough that Cagney was apparently moved to uncontrollable tears while filming the scene.
With
Jerry dead, George and Mary take a trip around the world. How they managed to
do that is a mystery since, despite the claims on the I’d Rather Be Right
marquee, Cohan worked pretty steadily on Broadway throughout the 20s and 30s,
until 1940.
Next
is an interlude on the Cohan farm. George is relaxing in his hammock, reading the
copy of Variety with the immortal headline “Stix Nix Hix Pix,” when a
jalopy full of teens pulls up and the driver, played by the always-welcome
Charles Smith, asks if he can use water from the Cohan well for his radiator. More
time-shifting wonders occur in this scene. The headline appeared in 1935, but the
teens are so taken by the headline that they launch into a rendition of “Jeepers
Creepers,” which was written in 1938. Since the scene can’t take place after
1937, one wonders if Smith’s jalopy has a flux capacitor to allow him to time
travel. Smith’s girlfriend, played by Joyce Reynolds (whom Warners tried
unsuccessfully to flog into stardom) asks George if he did any pictures. George
replies no, ignoring his performance in The Phantom President which, in spite
of it really being the only film record we have of Cohan, is probably best left
ignored, so it’s understandable.
Now
we’re homing in on the grand finale. Mary tells George that she’s gotten a call
from Sam Harris, who is apparently broke (although his real-life equivalent was
producing shows up until his death in 1941) and needs George to come out of retirement
and save his production of I’d Rather Be Right, with a book by George S.
Kaufman and Moss Hart (whose stuff, Cohan admits, he can’t improve). While it’s
understandable the writers want to give us a grand comeback, Cohan was anything
but inactive; he’d appeared in some ten Broadway plays since 1930 alone, so it
was hardly his “triumphal return to the stage.” Also unmentioned are Richard
Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, who had written the score and whom Cohan loathed (sarcastically
referring to them as “Gilbert and Sullivan”).
We
cut immediately to a startlingly faithful recreation of the actual set for I’d
Rather Be Right, and are given a number that nicely combines fidelity to
the original and wartime ballyhoo. The actual show’s plot deals with a young
couple who want to get married, but the boy’s boss can’t afford to give him a
raise until FDR stops spending so much (there’s actually a number titled “We’re
Going to Balance the Budget”). The couple falls asleep in Central Park and dream
of meeting a singing and dancing FDR (Cohan, obviously), the Supreme Court, the
Cabinet, and pretty much everyone else in the administration except Eleanor
Roosevelt. When the couple wakes up, the budget is still unbalanced, but they
agree to get married anyway.
The film version consists of the usual one number (“Off the Record”) but with added lyrics (by the uncredited Jack Scholl) about putting ants in Hitler’s Ja-pants (a sentiment Cagney drives home by looking right down the camera lens). In real life, the number comes near the end of Act Two. Here, though, the number ends, the curtain comes down, bows are taken, and everyone apparently goes home or out to a nightclub, wondering why they’d spent good money on a three-minute show.
The long flashback over, we find ourselves once again in the President’s office, as FDR presents Cohan with the Congressional Gold Medal, which the script implies (without outright stating) is the Congressional Medal of Honor. Moved, George thanks the President and leaves, giving us one of the great images in the history of cinema as Cagney does an apparently-improvised tap dance down the steps of the White House.
Getting
his hat and coat, he exits onto Pennsylvania Avenue just in time to see a military
parade, giving one last kick in the teeth of the timeline. Is it 1937? 1942?
Who knows? Does it even matter at this point? The soldiers and crowd are all singing
(coincidentally enough) Cohan’s “Over There,” and as Cohan falls in line with
the soldiers, drill sergeant Frank Faylen taunts him into singing along as we
fade out.
In
spite of my carping over the insane timeline, I do love this picture and will
inevitably watch it whenever it airs. There’s not a bad performance in the
whole thing (as I said, Leslie is a little inept, but charming), the direction
is superb, and it’s just a lot of fun (an unfortunate blackface moment early on
aside). It’s not flawless, of course; there’s the whole marriage thing, and
Cohan’s war with Actor’s Equity (which was a real black eye for him) isn’t even
hinted at. His ego is kind of waved away early when Jerry tells the insufferable
young George that “I’ve never met a great performer who also wasn’t a great guy,”
upon hearing which, George does a 180 and becomes the swellest guy who ever
lived …
I’ve long been puzzled by the movie’s chronology, though, so it’s been helpful to me to finally sit down and try to sort it all out. Unfortunately, the movie licked me and put ants in my own Ja-pants.
(*I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s distrust of museums coming from when he was in Genoa and was shown two of Columbus’s skulls; one when he was a man and one when he was a boy.)
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