Popular Culture
- President John F. Kennedy, from Massachusetts, bought a pony for his little daughter Caroline while he was in the White House. The family named the pony "Macaroni", after the pony in Yankee Doodle.
- The Voice of America begins and ends all broadcasts with the interval signal of "Yankee Doodle."
- The song featured in a famous sequence in the 1942 James Cagney film, Yankee Doodle Dandy.
- The title of the song has also been parodied in the Looney Tunes Cartoon Yankee Doodle Daffy.
- At the conclusion of the 1981 Wimbledon Championships, in which American tennis star John McEnroe had defeated his long-time rival Björn Borg, TV commentator Bud Collins took note of the July 4th holiday and also McEnroe's red-white-and-blue attire, and quipped "Stick a feather in his cap and call him 'McEnroe-ni'!"
- The song featured in the 1963 film, The Great Escape. The scene also references the painting Spirit of '76 (Yankee Doodle) by Archibald Willard.
- The 1965 children's cartoon Roger Ramjet adopts Yankee Doodle as its theme song: "Roger Ramjet and his Eagles/Fighting for our freedom/Fly through in and outer space/Not to join 'em, but to beat 'em/Roger Ramjet, he's our man/Hero of our nation/For his adventures, just be sure/and stay tuned to this station". Ramjet's four child sidekicks, the "American Eagle Squadron", are named Yank, Doodle, Dan and Dee.
Read more about this topic: Yankee Doodle
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“And all the popular statesmen say
That purity built up the State
And after kept it from decay;
Admonish us to cling to that
And let all base ambition be,
For intellect would make us proud....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If you’re anxious for to shine in the high esthetic line as a man
of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant
them everywhere.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a
transcendental kind.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)