Flag Day

I wanted to recommend the obviously-titled The Flag on Flag Day. Francis X. Bushman stars in this 1927 silent two-reeler as George Washington in a fanciful telling of the story of how Betsy Ross came to create the first American flag during the Revolutionary War. It's interesting not only because it's got Bushman as George Washington, but because it's also in two-strip Technicolor. The color is actually pretty good, too, with Technicolor getting the blue of the American flag about as close as I've ever seen in two-strip. Sadly, though, it doesn't seem to be available on DVD.

Instead, another good Flag Day movie would be Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which James Cagney plays songwriter George M. Cohan, known for writing popular, and patriotic, music. Cagney is wonderful, and rightly earned his Oscar as Best Actor. Unfortunately, this movie is in black and white, and with the amount of musical numbers in it, it really cries for the Technicolor treatment. However, it's available on DVD, and is family-friendly, if a bit sappy.