A very happy 250th Independence Day! I’m so grateful for my country, all its beauties, and all the blessings I’ve received from it. I’ll be especially praying today that God bless and guide America and all nations, and bring every nation closer to Him.
In honor of the day, I thought it would be fitting to highlight a few 4th-of-July themed scenes from classic movies. The first one is from what I consider to be THE 4th of July movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy. It’s about songwriter George M. Cohan, who wrote quite a few patriotic war-time songs and was in fact born on the 4th of July. Any 4th of July that we don’t watch this movie just feels like it’s missing something.
…for reasons unknown, WordPress will not let me embed the video. How vexatious.
Well, I’ll just link to it instead, I suppose. The song is “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” It’s a little bit like a mini US-history in 4 minutes with singing and dancing, and I absolutely love it. It gives me chills at points.
Next is a classic American anthem, God Bless America. The clip I’m sharing is from the movie This Is the Army, which I have not watched. (But its cast has greatly intrigued me – it stars George Murphy, Joan Leslie – both of whom I really liked in other movies – and Ronald Reagan!)
The song was first introduced by Kate Smith in 1938, but Irving Berlin originally wrote the ‘first draft’ of the song, if you will, while he was in the army during WWI. It’s a beautiful song which, again, just stirs the patriotic blood in me.
And lastly, there is a 4th of July sequence in Holiday Inn, and undoubtedly the best part of it – arguably the best part of the whole movie, in fact – is Fred Astaire’s firecracker dance.
It’s a classic case of “don’t try this at home, kids,” but man, is it cool to watch.
Happy 4th of July! How do you like to celebrate the 4th? Any patriotic songs/movie scenes you particularly like?
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Happy Independence Day!
My family usually celebrates the 4th with lots of food, fireworks, and a patriotic movie at the end of the day.
I love the scene in “National Treasure” when Ben recites the Declaration and decides to honor the Founding Fathers by protecting the Declaration of Independence – even if it lands him in trouble with the law.
That sounds lovely! We haven’t gotten to go watch fireworks in the past few years, and I must say I’ve really missed it. I haven’t seen “National Treasure”… I’d better go look it up!
Happy belated 4th!! I haven’t seen any of these movies, but Holiday Inn is on my list! I second Liz’s love of National Treasure, but I also love watching The Great Escape this time of year. Its not particularly patriotic, but theres a 4th of July scene thats epic and hilarious and its one of my favorite movies ever!
Let me know what you think of Holiday Inn when you see it! Obviously I’ve heard about The Great Escape a lot, but I’ve actually never seen it…maybe that needs to change 😉
Mr. Astaire . . . why are you . . . who are you . . . . . . . That was something else 😛 😛
Happy belated fourth!!! *fireworks*
It was rather, wasn’t it? ;P
Thank you, you too! *throws handful of firecrackers on floor*
Happy extremely belated 4th! The firecracker dance clip is wild! XD
My favorite American songs are America, the Beautiful and our actual national anthem. The star spangled banner’s lyrics are incredibly epic!
Also! I’ve tagged you for The Reader Problems Tag over on my blog: https://withjoyforthework.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-reader-problems-tag-another-tag.html.
Would love to have you join the fun, but of course, no pressure!
Thank you! It is, isn’t it? 😀
Oh, absolutely – our national anthem is so beautiful; I absolutely love it! And America the Beautiful is one of my favorites too.
Thanks so much for the tag! It looks like a really fun one; I look forward to doing it 😀