Yankee Doodle

When The Sun asked readers to send in favorite Fourth of July stories, Catherine Anselmi (right, with some of her marchers) of Baltimore was among the first to respond. I have many Fourth of July memories," wrote Anselmi, 79, a longtime resident of Federal Hill who now lives in senior housing on Light Street. "Kids ... all wanted to come to Aunt Cass' to march. We marched to a record, singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Over There," "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "God Bless America" and then stood and pledged allegiance to the flag.

Iona Brown, 63, a British violinist who was music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1987 to 1992, died of cancer Saturday at her home in Salisbury, England, said her husband, bassist Bjorn Arnils. Ms. Brown was one of the few women in classical music to hold a leading position in an orchestra. Because of severe arthritis, Ms. Brown stopped playing the violin after a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending in Tokyo in 1998. She then concentrated on conducting, her husband said.

NEW YORK -- James Cagney's Oscar (for "Yankee Doodle Dandy") is not for sale, but just about everything else in his estate is on the block.This morning at 10 a.m., the William Doyle Gallery will auction off 637 items from Cagney's estate at the St. Ignatius Loyola Church, 980 Park Ave. They include the tweed caps cocked so jauntily on his head in dance numbers; a pair of tap shoes; an autographed photo of him smashing a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face in...

With the exception of "1776," the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards musical that tells the tale of the writing of the Declaration of Independence with humor and song, there can be no better theatrical complement to the Fourth of July than a show by George M. Cohan.The youngsters of the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre capped off this year's Independence Day celebration Tuesday evening with an energetic, high-stepping presentation of George "45 Minutes from Broadway," into which director Bob Rude appropriately inserted such patriotic fare as Cohan's "Grand Old Flag," "Over There" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

* Tomorrow: Crustacean Crawl 4-miler, Goucher College, 7 p.m., 566-RUN2.* Saturday: Place for Your Pace, Loch Raven, 8 a.m.; Grandma's Marathon, Duluth, Minn.* June 23: Baltimore Bud Light Triathlon, Gunpowder Falls State Park, 7:30 a.m.; Mill 10-K, Havre de Grace, 8 a.m., 939-0821; San Francisco Marathon; Cascade Runoff 15-K.* June 26: BRRC Summer Track Series, McDonogh, 6:30 p.m.* June 27: WRRC Twilight Series 3-miler, 7 p.m., 348-7509.* June 29: Crofton 10-K, Crofton.* June 30: Yankee Doodle 4-miler, Lake Montebello, 8 a.m., 566-RUN2.

* Tonight: WRRC Twilight Series 3-miler, 7 p.m., 348-7509.* Saturday: Place for Your Pace, Loch Raven, 8 a.m.; Crofton 10-K, Crofton.* Sunday: BRRC Yankee Doodle 4-miler, Lake Montebello, 8 a.m., 566-RUN2; Tri-State Track Meet, South Hagerstown High.* July 4: Arbutus Firecracker 10-K, Arbutus, 8 a.m., 242-0809; Firecracker 5-K, Kingsville, 8 a.m., 592-6616; Dundalk Heritage 6-K, Dundalk, 7:30 a.m., 494-8649; Frederick's Fourth 5-K, 7 p.m., 371-9562; Choptank River Run, Cambridge, 7:30 p.m., 228-4211.

If you thought there weren't any more awards left for "Schindler's List" to win, think again. Steven Spielberg's epic collected a record seven prizes recently in the Hollywood Reporter's 23rd Annual Key Art Awards.What's key art, you ask? Any advertising art keyed to the release of a movie, such as trailers, posters, print ads, billboards and standees.And what, while we've got the dictionary open, is a standee? No, not something you stand on, although many theater managers would certainly, vigorously like to. A standee is one of those free-standing cardboard displays in a theater lobby or video store.

Also in that section was an incorrect name for the subject of the film "Yankee Doodle Dandy." The correct name is George M. Cohan.The Sun regrets the errors.A trio of great movies dominates the airwaves tonight."NewsRadio" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Dave grapples with the problem of what to do when your upstairs neighbors are particularly noisy -- an especially nettlesome problem, one assumes, when you're a radio station. Also, here's a look at what can happen when you don't figure out a song's lyrics quite right.

The day of my first piano lesson, I picked out "Yankee Doodle," right hand only. It would be insane to start a  beginner with one of Bach's partitas or one of Lizst's Hungarian rhapsodies. One starts simply and progresses by stages as far as one's inclination, abilities, application, and instruction go. Yet in teaching writing and editing to undergraduates, I find many who have not managed to advance very far beyond the "Yankee Doodle" stage. I fault two things: misguided instruction and the prevalence of fussbudgetry.

From the beginning, British-comedy fans loved the work of Peter Sellers for its wit and sure attack and for its fillip of emotion. But it took a brilliant young American director with a hip, cosmopolitan temperament to exploit Sellers' talent fully. For his 1962 movie version of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita -- playing tomorrow at noon at the Charles Theatre -- Stanley Kubrick chose Sellers to play what could have been a subordinate role: not Humbert Humbert (James Mason), the French-literature professor obsessed by the title nymphet (Sue Lyon)