Every Wednesday, caucus99percent's own enhydra lutris graces us with an open thread that includes, among many awesome things, some of the births and deaths whose anniversary occurred on the date that the open thread posted. This morning, as I read through today's version, as always, random thoughts occurred to me randomly. This essay embodies some of them. I hope it will interest and/or entertain enhydra lutis and you.

Random thoughts:

James Cagney was "a song and dance" man of vaudeville, stage and film. His performance in Public Enemy ensured his Hollywood "stardom," and many subsequent roles as a celluloid "tough guy." Although the title role in Yankee Doodle Dandy required very different talents than had Public Enemy, the versatile Cagney delivered another impeccable tour de force.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Cagney eighth among its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.[6] Orson Welles said of Cagney, "[he was] maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".[7] Stanley Kubrick considered him {Cagney} to be one of the best actors of all time.[8]"

When Cagney received an Oscar for lifetime achievement, he was lauded by fellow former vaudevillian and frequent Oscar host, Bob Hope, who had done a nascent moonwalk in The Seven Little Foys after Cagney danced again to Yankee Doodle Dandy. However, that evening, Frank Sinatra hosted the Oscars. The show open featured, among many other members of "Old Hollywood" glitterati, then Governor of the State of Callifornia, Ronald "the Gipper" Reagan, who followed the stars in more than one way.

After his second gubernatorial term ended, Reagan worked hard to earn the one-man show improbably titled, President Democrats Blame Most Often for America's Ills, Especially When Democrats Are Attempting to Deflect Blame from Presidents Clinton and Obama, sometimes referred to for convenience as What Trickle Down, Ron?. Readers may recall that this boffo vehicle finally hit a box office bump in the road after both Hillary and Obama praised President Reagan, including for good things that President Reagan had, to put it mildly, never done.

The last lap in the very long run of the s hit show What Trickle Down, Ron? may have begun in 2016, with ostensible uniting of all establishment forces, including all seventeen US intelligence agencies, against RUSSIA!, which was followed by dramatic pronouncements about the alleged need to end, for once and all, the alleged division among establishment "folk." Incidentally, some of you may remember that, during the earlier years of the run of What Trickle Down, Ron?, Reagan had briefly portrayed as well The President Who Dealt a Near Death Blow to Russia and Proved His Own Youthful Vitality by Wearing Only a Suit to Greet a Bundled Up Gorbachev. What was it with Reagan and stupidly long titles, anyway? But, I digress....

Wikipedia just informed me that Cagney's first paying show business gig was as a dancer in a chorus line, for which Cagney had to dress a woman. That is a bit ironic, given that all I know about Public Enemy is Cagney's character's infamously using a woman's nose to juice grapefruit half that she had meticulously prepared to eat as her breakfast starter. So, James Cagney very loosely connects two men enhydra lutris today informed us were each born years ago on this date, namely, Messers. George M. Cohan and messy Ike Turner. With humblest apologies to Shakespeare:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar Turner

More historical tidbits around the "business of show:" According to Tina Turner, while both were appearing in the same show, Mick Jagger asked her to teach him some moves. She obliged with The Pony and "he's "bin ponyin' ever since." (The context of the interview during which she said this made clear that both she and her interviewer thought Jagger had only one stage dance move.) According to some observers, whom I no longer can identify, James Brown also had only one move, "but he sure knew how to work it." (I'm not sure I agree, but some of Brown's moves may have been his variations on another brief "dance sensation," The Mashed Potato.)

I believe that both Cagney films excerpted below are available to be viewed in their entirely for free on youtube--but not because their respective copyrights have expired. I guess no one cared enough to make youtube remove them. Speaking of copyrights, HenryAWallace segued awkwardly again, film buffs are often able to pinpoint expiration of a work's copyright by Hollywood's "re-imagining" of the work. An example is Hook, in which late phenom Robin Williams played Attorney (!) Peter Pan. Hook opened after expiration of the copyright of James Barrie in Peter Pan, which copyright Barrie had willed to an understandably tenacious London children's hospital.

Of course, copyright law is often discussed with reference (and deference) to Mickey Mouse. Ironically, today's Mickey evolved (devolved?) from the mouse in Steamboat Willie, which launched Walter Elias Disney's empire and for which Disney was sued for copyright violation. IIRC, that suit was the first, but, by far, not the only, copyright infringement suit against Disney and his empire. Obviously, Disney won that suit. Much later, J.K. Rowling suffered a similar fate. Equally obviously, Rowling won the first copyright infringement suit against her as well.

(Rhetorical question: Does my ADD look too big in this post?)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for some of show produced in the course of conducting the business of show. I hope that you enjoy it. (As enhydra lutris also reminds us from time to time, please don't forget to tip your waiter.)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StDpLge_ITM]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUZ86E3g1eE]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNu5-rK2jqw]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irF3Yf3w9Uk]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmZfJuS4sVc]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzQnPz6TpGc]

JBDL (Jagger Before Dance Lesson)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEjkftp7J7I]

JADL (Jagger After Dance Lesson)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAzqSYQ9X9U]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eoSXpNZD9o]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQBKpV9emKc]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR7Q-Nu5klw]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxf-UHuGobI]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo5Ztlywfg]