BEST BETS Saturday 8/19

NEWPORT BEACH

6:30 p.m.

Film

James Cagney, an actor best known for playing tough guys and hoodlums, was not a prime candidate to play America’s most beloved song-and-dance man. When Fred Astaire turned down the role of patriotic showman George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the part went to the less athletic but equally vibrant Cagney. And the gamble paid off, as this rare all-smiles performance netted Cagney his only best-actor Oscar.

* “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942), Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. 6:30 p.m. $4-$6. (949) 759-1122, Ext. 204.

LONG BEACH

Theater

8 p.m.

“You Never Can Tell” is not one of George Bernard Shaw’s most frequently done plays, and it’s a shame. The 1896 satire, on the Long Beach Playhouse’s Mainstage, is a delightful comedy with Shaw’s sociopolitical theories well in the background. The slight plot concerns a family that maybe shouldn’t get back together again, and the giddy romances that begin to blossom while a brother and sister try to coax Dad back into the fold. Though some of the characters’ ideas might seem irregular today, they were the mores of their time, and Shaw was already speaking about societal wrongs that must be made right. Shaw was very much a supporter of women’s rights and the equality of women, even at the end of the 19th century.

* “You Never Can Tell,” Long Beach Playhouse Mainstage, 5021 E. Anaheim St. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sunday, Aug. 27 and Sept. 3, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 16. $12-$15. (562) 494-1616.