Joan Leslie turns 86

Today marks the 86th birthday of actress Joan Leslie, who started her career as a teenager back in the early 1940s. Indeed, she was only 17 when she appeared opposite James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In the past, I've recommended Leslie as Ida Lupino's kid sister in The Hard Way, but she also played Henry Travers' daughter in High Sierra, and one of Robert Alda's love interests in Rhapsody in Blue Surprisingly, I've never done a full-length blog post on either High Sierra or Yankee Doodle Dandy. For today, however, just a picture is going to have to do. I'm fairly confident that's from the number where Leslie and Cagney sing the "Harrigan" song, a scene that shows up from time to time in one of the "Word of Mouth" type interstitials that TCM likes to show between movies.