I had forgotten…
…that Bob Hope could dance like this. I prefer Cagney’s completely and utterly unique style, but Hope had impressive skills, too.
And they get points from me for bravery, dancing on the table like this, and so relaxed!:
This isn’t from “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It’s from “The Seven Little Foys,” which was one of the first movies I ever saw in a movie theater. I was too young to understand it, and recall it as incredibly boring.
This movie is my favorite Bob Hope movie. He displays both his comedic and dramatic chops and I believe is quite convincing as the father of the show biz family.
In “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, Eddie Foy Jr. played his father opposite James Cagney’s George M. Cohen.
Bob Hope started out hoofing on the stage in London.
I remember watching that movie on television with my dad and him telling me about the Seven Little Foys.
Hope was many things: dancer, comedian, actor, and staunch patriot. A truly great American.
I have a hard time seeing how tap dancing works. It doesn’t look like the sounds match what the feet are doing.
Cagney’s first routine looks a lot like the Irish clog-dancing style adjusted for Hollywood, while Hope’s is more like American clogging — relatively stiff upper body vs much looser arms and shoulders.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/02/dont-try-this-at-home/
A true story, when I came back from the Army in 1970 my wife and I rented a house from the head house keeper at the top Hotel in Oklahoma City. She was a lovely lady and she told me that when Bob Hope came to town for the big 4th of July we love America shows they put on for several years he stayed with them in one of their better suites. She also said he was the neatest guest she ever saw, he made his bed every morning, wiped down the sink area and kept every personal item tucked away. When he left it appeared no one had ever used the room. He was also very kind and generous with the staff. Bob Hope was born the same year as my father and they really did not make them like they used to.
Triple threats
some were quadruple threats
Bob Hope and Jimmy Cagney were fixtures in the movies of my youth. But Bob Hope’s Christmas shows for the troops are what I remember most. Watched many of them on TV, but in 1965 I saw him in person as he, Jerry Colona, Jill St. John, and other celebrities entertained us at Subic Bay in the P.I. That was a real treat. He was a true patriot who loved this country and loved to entertain the troops.
Of COURSE watching “The Seven Little Foys” was boring on film.
It’s like watching “Video Killed the Radio Star” on MTV.
Or getting “news” from Stephen Colbert,late at night.
That was fun, but the whole time I was watching it, all I could think was “that’s got to be hard on the tabletop finish.”
Cagney‘s dancing looks like he ever so slightly floated above the ground. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he gave a good kick and popped up to the ceiling.
Bob Hope is very good with his feet, but notice how he’s not really in control of his upper body the way Cagney is. That was what I loved about Fred Astaire: every single cell in his body was in exactly the spot he meant it to be every second. Every movement was perfect.
TCM recently had a tap-dancing movie marathon. One of the films was “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I read up about the movie on IMdB and in the Trivia section was a note that Cagney mimicked Cohan’s dancing style, which was more stiff-legged than Cagney’s usual. Seems like he did the same in “The seven Little Foys” as well. And, according to IMdB, Cohan liked Cagney’s portrayal.
I wrote a fair amount about tap dancing here last night, but the comments are gone now. I think they both had links. I’ve heard others mention similar occurrences. Maybe the blog scrubs for comments with links to limit spam by those bots neo likes to spoof?
No problem on my end. Sometimes it’s best if ramblings one makes at 3am are not forever recorded for posterity.
As my avatar, Julius Marx said, “Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?”
Rufus – I had a couple of missing comments last week, for no apparent reason.
If links were a problem, I would never get anything accepted!
However, make a note of this symptom:
if you hit “post comment” and the page refreshes so that it is back at the top of Neo’s post, rather than at the bottom of the comment thread, then your comment probably did not go through; scroll down and you can see that it is neither in the comment box nor on the posted thread.
Hit your browser back-arrow, and you can still see it from before submission (or I can, at any rate).
I have discovered that I can sometimes edit the comment and get it past the gate-keepers, but it’s an almost random event; I’m never sure what the problem really is.
Recently, I tried to post the frequently-seen paragraph by Solzhenitsyn about “what if we had all resisted the arrests?” — I eventually had to delete the middle third. No link was involved.
No idea what was going on, or why that worked.
PS: If you write up long comments in Word first, you won’t lose the painstakingly acquired rhetoric and references.
Sometimes, I save a comment at the end of a thread where I don’t intend to post it instead of opening Word.