George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878[1] – November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.

George M. Cohan
Cohan in 1918
Born(1878-07-03)July 3, 1878
Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
DiedNovember 5, 1942(1942-11-05) (aged 64)
New York, New York, U.S.
Occupation
  • Entertainer
  • playwright
  • composer
  • lyricist
  • actor
  • singer
  • dancer
  • producer
Spouse(s)
​
​
(m. 1899; div. 1907)​

Agnes Mary Nolan
​
(m. 1907)​
ChildrenGeorgette Cohan
Mary Cohan
Helen Cohan
George M Cohan, Jr.

Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s, and continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940.

Known in the decade before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father of American musical comedy.[2] His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan in Times Square New York City commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre.[3]

Early life
Cohan and his sister Josie in the 1890s
The Four Cohans in 1915

Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been "born on the Fourth of July!"[1][4] George's parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk.

Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer.[5] He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848–1917),[6] mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916).[1] In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Peck's Bad Boy[5] and then joined the family act; The Four Cohans mostly toured together from 1890 to 1901. He and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his early years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."[5]

As a child, Cohan and his family toured most of the year and spent summer vacations from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where Cohan befriended baseball player Connie Mack.[7] The family generally gave a performance at the town hall there each summer, and Cohan had a chance to gain some more normal childhood experiences, like riding his bike and playing sandlot baseball. Cohan's memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, which is set in North Brookfield and contains one of his most famous songs, "Harrigan". As Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, Wilderness! in 1934, he told a reporter "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield."[8]

Career

Early career
Sam H. Harris (1928)

Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the family act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens.[5] Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans.[5] His first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy".[9]

Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs[2] noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His major hit songs included "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway," "Mary Is a Grand Old Name," "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch," "Life's a Funny Proposition After All," "I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune," "You Won't Do Any Business if You Haven't Got a Band," "The Small Town Gal," "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All," "That Haunting Melody," "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye", and America's most popular World War I song "Over There",[5] recorded by Nora Bayes and by Enrico Caruso, and others.[10] The latter song reached such currency among troops and shipyard workers that a ship was named "Costigan" after Cohan's grandfather, Dennis Costigan. During the christening, "Over There" was played.[11]

From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris,[5][12] including Give My Regards to Broadway and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year.[13] His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres. One of Cohan's most innovative plays was a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate in 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit.[14] Cohan further adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, as well as for TV and radio.[15] He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association.[5]

In 1925, he published his autobiography Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There.[16]

Later career
Cohan in a 1933 photograph by Carl Van Vechten.

Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of his tribute to vaudeville and his father.[5] In 1932, Cohan starred in a dual role as a cold, corrupt politician and his charming, idealistic campaign double in the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President. The film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, with songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was released by Paramount Pictures. He appeared in some earlier silent films but he disliked Hollywood production methods and only made one other sound film, Gambling (1934), based on his own 1929 play and shot in New York City. A critic called Gambling a "stodgy adaptation of a definitely dated play directed in obsolete theatrical technique".[17] It is considered a lost film.[18]

Cohan earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933), and in the role of a song-and-dance President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Rodgers and Hart's musical I'd Rather Be Right (1937). The same year, he reunited with Harris to produce a play titled Fulton of Oak Falls, starring Cohan. His final play, The Return of the Vagabond (1940), featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast.[19]

In 1940, Judy Garland played the title role in a film version of his 1922 musical Little Nellie Kelly. Cohan's mystery play Seven Keys to Baldpate was first filmed in 1916 and has been remade seven times, most recently as House of the Long Shadows (1983), starring Vincent Price. In 1942, a musical biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was released, and James Cagney's performance in the title role earned the Best Actor Academy Award.[20] The film was privately screened for Cohan as he battled the last stages of abdominal cancer, and he commented on Cagney's performance: "My God, what an act to follow!"[21] Cohan's 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed in 1943 with Jack Benny.[22]

Legacy

Although Cohan mainly is remembered for his songs, he became an early pioneer in the development of the "book musical", using his engaging libretti to bridge the gaps between drama and music. More than three decades before Agnes de Mille choreographed Oklahoma!, Cohan used dance not merely as razzle-dazzle, but to advance the plot. Cohan's main characters were "average Joes and Janes" who appealed to a wide American audience.[23]

1908 sheet music cover depicting Cohan & Sam Harris with minstrel show star George "Honey Boy" Evans.

In 1914, Cohan became one of the founding members of ASCAP.[24] Although Cohan was known as generous to his fellow actors in need,[5] in 1919, he unsuccessfully opposed a historic strike by Actors' Equity Association, for which many in the theatrical professions never forgave him. Cohan opposed the strike because in addition to being an actor in his productions, he was also the producer of the musical that set the terms and conditions of the actors' employment. During the strike, he donated $100,000 to finance the Actors' Retirement Fund in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. After Actors' Equity was recognized, Cohan refused to join the union as an actor, which hampered his ability to appear in his own productions. Cohan sought a waiver from Equity allowing him to act in any theatrical production. In 1930, Cohan won a law case against the Internal Revenue Service that allowed the deduction, for federal income tax purposes, of his business travel and entertainment expenses, even though he was not able to document them with certainty. This became known as the "Cohan rule" and frequently is cited in tax cases.[25]

Cohan wrote numerous Broadway musicals and straight plays in addition to contributing material to shows written by others—more than 50 in all.[5] Cohan shows included Little Johnny Jones (1904), Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905), George Washington, Jr. (1906), The Talk of New York and The Honeymooners (1907), Fifty Miles from Boston and The Yankee Prince (1908), Broadway Jones (1912), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913), The American Idea, Get Rich Quick Wallingford, The Man Who Owns Broadway, Little Nellie Kelly, The Cohan Revue of 1916 (and 1918; co-written with Irving Berlin), The Tavern (1920), The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923, featuring a 13-year-old Ruby Keeler among the chorus girls), The Song and Dance Man (1923), Molly Malone, The Miracle Man, Hello Broadway, American Born (1925), The Baby Cyclone (1927, one of Spencer Tracy's early breaks), Elmer the Great (1928, co-written with Ring Lardner), and Pigeons and People (1933).[5] At this point in his life, he walked in and out of retirement.[24]

Cohan's "Give My Regards to Broadway" statue in Times Square in New York City

Cohan was called "the greatest single figure the American theatre ever produced – as a player, playwright, actor, composer and producer".[5] On May 1, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal for his contributions to World War I morale, in particular with the songs "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There".[26] Cohan was the first person in any artistic field selected for this honor, which previously had gone only to military and political leaders, philanthropists, scientists, inventors, and explorers.

In 1959, at the behest of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a $100,000 bronze statue of Cohan was dedicated in Times Square at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor on Broadway.[3][27] He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970,[24] and into the American Folklore Hall of Fame in 2003. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard.[28] Cohan was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006.[29]

The United States Postal Service issued a 15-cent commemorative stamp honoring Cohan on the anniversary of his centenary, July 3, 1978. The stamp depicts both the older Cohan and his younger self as a dancer, with the tag line "Yankee Doodle Dandy". It was designed by Jim Sharpe.[30] On July 3, 2009, a bronze bust of Cohan, by artist Robert Shure, was unveiled at the corner of Wickenden and Governor Streets in Fox Point, Providence, a few blocks from his birthplace. The city renamed the corner the George M. Cohan Plaza and announced an annual George M. Cohan Award for Excellence in Art & Culture. The first award went to Curt Columbus, the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company.[31]

Personal life and death
Cohan's mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery

From 1899 to 1907, Cohan was married to Ethel Levey (1881–1955; born Grace Ethelia Fowler[32]), a musical comedy actress and dancer. Levey and Cohan had a daughter, actress Georgette Cohan Souther Rowse (1900–1988).[33] Levey joined the Four Cohans when Josie married, and she starred in Little Johnny Jones and other Cohan works. In 1907, Levey divorced Cohan on grounds of adultery.[34]

In 1908, Cohan married Agnes Mary Nolan (1883–1972), who had been a dancer in his early shows; they remained married until his death. They had two daughters and a son. The eldest was Mary Cohan Ronkin, a cabaret singer in the 1930s, who composed incidental music for her father's play The Tavern. In 1968, Mary supervised musical and lyric revisions for the musical George M!.[35][36] Their second daughter was Helen Cohan Carola, a film actress, who performed on Broadway with her father in Friendship in 1931.[37][38] Their youngest child was George Michael Cohan, Jr. (1914–2000), who graduated from Georgetown University and served in the entertainment corps during World War II. In the 1950s, George Jr. reinterpreted his father's songs on recordings, in a nightclub act, and in television appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle shows. George Jr.'s only child, Michaela Marie Cohan (1943–1999), was the last descendant named Cohan. She graduated with a theater degree from Marywood College in Pennsylvania in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, she served in a civilian Special Services unit in Vietnam and Korea.[39] In 1996, she stood in for her ailing father at the ceremony marking her grandfather's induction into the Musical Theatre Hall of Fame at New York University.[5] Cohan was a devoted baseball fan, regularly attending games of the former New York Giants.[5]

He died of cancer at the age of 64 on November 5, 1942 at his Manhattan apartment on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by family and friends.[5] His funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York and was attended by thousands of people, including five governors of New York, two mayors of New York City and the Postmaster General. The honorary pallbearers included Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Crowninshield, Sol Bloom, Brooks Atkinson, Rube Goldberg, Walter Huston, George Jessel, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Eugene O'Neill, Sigmund Romberg, Lee Shubert and Fred Waring.[40] Cohan was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, in a private family mausoleum he had erected a quarter century earlier for his sister and parents.[5]

James Cagney as Cohan in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy
Mickey Rooney as Cohan in the 1957 Mr. Broadway television special

Filmography

Cohan acted in the following films:[43]

Year Title Role Notes
1917Broadway JonesBroadway JonesFilm debut
Seven Keys to BaldpateGeorge Washington Magee
1918Hit-The-Trail HollidayBilly Holliday
1932The Phantom PresidentTheodore K. Blair/Peeter J. 'Doc' Varney
1934GamblingAl DraperFinal film

Notes
  1. Kenrick, John. "George M. Cohan: A Biography". Musicals101.com (2004), retrieved April 15, 2010
  2. Benjamin, Rick. "The Music of George M. Cohan", Liner notes to You're a Grand Old Rag – The Music of George M. Cohan, New World Records
  3. Mondello, Bob. "George M. Cohan, 'The Man Who Created Broadway', Was an Anthem Machine", NPR, December 20, 2018, accessed July 14, 2019
  4. Heroux, Gerard H. "George M. Cohan, 2013 Inductee: The Rhody Colossus", Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame Historical Archive, 2013, accessed February 16, 2016
  5. "Obituary: George M. Cohan, 64, Dies at Home Here". The New York Times, November 6, 1942. Archived from original on January 10, 2017
  6. Cullen, Frank; Hackman, Florence; and Neilly, Donald (eds.). Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, p. 243
  7. Macht, Norman L. "Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball", University of Nebraska Press, 2007, pp. 20 and 342 ISBN 0803209908
  8. "Give My Regards to North Brookfield: Creator of 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' Called Family Vacation Spot 'Home'", Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Massachusetts, July 2, 2000, accessed July 23, 2014 (fee required)
  9. Kenrick, John. "Cohan Bio: Part II:Little Johnny Jones". Musicals101.com (2002), retrieved April 15, 2010
  10. Duffy, Michael. "Vintage Audio - Over There", FirstWorldWar.com, August 22, 2009, accessed July 12, 2013
  11. Hurley, Edward N. "Chapter IX: Hog Island", The Bridge to France, J. B. Lippincott Company (1927) lccn 27011802 accessed August 29, 2015
  12. "Cohan & Harris". Internet Broadway Database listing, ibdb.com, accessed April 19, 2010
  13. "Over There, 1910-1920", Talkinbroadway.com, retrieved April 15, 2010
  14. "Play Reviews for Seven Keys to Baldpate", 2nd Story Theatre, accessed October 14, 2014
  15. Warburton, Eileen. "Keeper of the Keys to Old Broadway: Geroge [sic] M. Cohan's Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913)", 2nd Story Theatre, January 32, 2014, accessed October 14, 2014
  16. "Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took To Get There". Listing at openlibrary.org, retrieved April 15, 2010
  17. Koszarski, Richard (2008-08-27). Hollywood On the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff. Rutgers University Press. pp. 283–284. ISBN 978-0-8135-4552-3. Retrieved 2014-05-11.
  18. McCabe, p. 229
  19. Kenrick, John. "Cohan Bio: Part III: Comebacks". Musicals101.com, retrieved April 15, 2010
  20. Fisher, James (2011-06-01). Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater: 1930-2010. Scarecrow Press. p. 167. ISBN 9780810879508.
  21. Ebert, Roger. "Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)", RogerEbert.com, July 5, 1998, accessed July 4, 2011
  22. Maltin, Leonard. The Meanest Man in the World (1943), Leonard Maltin Classic Movie Guide via TCM.com, accessed July 17, 2018
  23. Hischak, Thomas S. Boy Loses Girl ISBN 0-8108-4440-0
  24. "George M. Cohan" Archived 2009-11-18 at the Wayback Machine. Songwritershalloffame.org, retrieved April 15, 2010
  25. "George M. Cohan, Petitioner v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent" Archived 2009-07-18 at the Wayback Machine. United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 39 F.2d 540 (March 3, 1930), retrieved April 22, 2010
  26. "The George Cohan Congressional Gold Medal", History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives, accessed July 5, 2018
  27. "George M. Cohan Statue". New York City Parks Department site, Nycgovparks.org, accessed April 19, 2010
  28. "George M. Cohan star location". Hollywoodchamber.net.vhost.zerolag.com, retrieved April 15, 2010
  29. "George M. Cohan" Archived 2010-09-08 at the Wayback Machine. Limusichalloffame.org, retrieved April 15, 2010
  30. "Many Honor Patriot Cohan". Spokane Daily Chronicle, July 4, 1978
  31. Dujardin, Richard C. "Sculpture of Providence native George M. Cohan is unveiled in Fox Point". The Providence Journal, July 4, 2009, accessed April 19, 2010
  32. Cullen, Frank. "Ethel Levey", Vaudeville Old & New, p. 679, Psychology Press (2004) ISBN 0415938538
  33. Kenrick, John. "George M. Cohan: A Biography", Musicals101.com, 2014, accessed December 27, 2015
  34. Levey remained a popular vaudeville headliner and raised Georgette on her own. See Kenrick, John. "Cohan Bio: Part II", Musicals101.com, 2014, accessed July 6, 2015
  35. "Mary Cohan Finally Elopes and Marries George Ranken", St. Petersburg Times, March 7, 1940
  36. George M! Archived 2011-10-01 at the Wayback Machine Tams-witmark.com, retrieved April 15, 2010
  37. "Helen Cohan", Internet Broadway Database, retrieved April 15, 2010
  38. "Helen Cohan", Internet Movie Database, retrieved April 15, 2010
  39. Cook, Louise. "Michaela Cohan", The Free Lance Star, October 25, 1968
  40. Miller, Tom. "The George M. Cohan Statue – Duffy Square", Daytonian in Manhattan, January 8, 2014, accessed July 23, 2017
  41. George M. Cohan Tonight! Archived 2012-10-11 at the Wayback Machine on the Internet Off-Broadway Database
  42. "George M. Cohan Shows". Georgemcohan.org, accessed 16 August 2010
  43. "George M. Cohan | American composer and dramatist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-09-22.

References
  • Cohan, George M. Twenty Years on Broadway. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924.
  • Gilbert, Douglas. American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times. New York: Dover Publications, 1963.
  • Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003 (pp. 15–23).
  • McCabe, John. George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973.
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