The musical is patriotic in tone and contains a number of quips aimed at European targets, such as, "You think I'd marry an heiress and live off her money?

Anthony Anstey, an American who runs a Chinese gambling establishment in San Francisco, offers Jones a bribe to lose the race deliberately, but he refuses.

Jones tells his friends who are returning to America, "Give My Regards to Broadway," but he stays in London to try to regain his reputation.

Jones returns to America with his name cleared, eager to propose marriage to Goldie, but he finds that Anstey has kidnapped her.

Only two of Cohan's original songs survived the transition to the screen ("Give My Regards To Broadway" and "Yankee Doodle Boy").

[17] James Cagney appeared in a play-within-a-play staging of numbers and dances from Little Johnny Jones in the 1942 film, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

[18] After previewing at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House and touring,[19] a 1982 revival, adapted by Alfred Uhry and starring Donny Osmond in the lead[20] closed at the Alvin Theatre after only one performance.

An adaptation of the show was produced by the Light Opera of Manhattan in the late 1980s, called Give My Regards to Broadway and was successful for that company.