For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

FAMILY FUN: A yankee doodle dandy film series hosted by John Lithgow

James Cagney's Oscar-winning turn as musical patriot George M. Cohan kicks off this summer's family film series The Essentials Jr. on Turner Classic Movies.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM) isn't one of Hollywood's bigger musicals, being filmed in black-and-white during World War II, but it's surely one of the most heartfelt. Its portrait of the prolific songwriter (You're a Grand Old Flag, Over There) made the American Film Institute's list of America's top 100 movies.

This was also Cagney's favorite of the 70-plus pictures he made between 1930 and 1960, since Dandy gave him the chance to escape Hollywood's gangster pigeonhole and return to his origins. Though he'd started on Broadway as a lighthearted song-and-dance man, Cagney got to make only a handful of movie musicals in a factory town where studios preferred to cash in on his tough-guy appeal.

John Lithgow takes over as TCM's Essentials Jr. host this summer, presenting a varied slate of 13 time-tested films for parents and kids to enjoy together -- comedy, mystery, musical, Hitchcock suspense, even whatever-Elvis-does.

TCM's 2009 Essentials Jr. lineup:

June 7: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), starring James Cagney

June 14: To Have and Have Not (1944), Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall

June 21: Father of the Bride (1950), Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor

June 28: The Philadelphia Story (1940), Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart

July 5: Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), Jacques Tati

July 12: The African Queen (1951), Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn

July 19: An American in Paris (1951), Gene Kelly

July 26: High Noon (1952), Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly

Aug. 2: Heaven Can Wait (1978), Warren Beatty, Jack Warden

Aug. 9: Notorious (1946), Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman

Aug. 16: It Happened at the World's Fair (1963), Elvis Presley

Aug. 23: Gaslight (1944), Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman

Aug. 30: You Can't Take It With You (1938), James Stewart, Jean Arthur

Visit TCM's Essentials Jr. site for a printable schedule, film info, video clips and more.

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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