George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878

Early life

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 Cohan was born on July 3, but he and his family always insisted that he had been "born on the Fourth of July!" His 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. He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848–1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). 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. His 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 he 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."

Career Early career 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.

Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His most popular songs included: "Give My Regards to Broadway" "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" "When You Come Back and You Will Come Back" "Over There", America's most popular World War I song, The 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.

From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris. Aside from the plays Cohan wrote or composed, he produced with Harris, among others, many of which were adapted for film, It Pays to Advertise (1914) and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year. 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. 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. He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association.

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

Later career

Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of his tribute to vaudeville and his father. It is considered a lost film.

By the 1930s, Cohan walked in and out of retirement. He 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.

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. 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!" Cohan's 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed in 1943 with Jack Benny.

Legacy Although Cohan is mainly 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.

In 1914, Cohan became one of the founding members of ASCAP.

Cohan wrote numerous Broadway musicals and straight plays in addition to contributing material to shows written by others – more than 50 in all – many of which were made into films. His shows included:

The Governor's Son (1901) Running for Office (1903) Little Johnny Jones (1904) Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905) Popularity (1906) George Washington, Jr. (1906) The Honeymooners (1907) Fifty Miles From Boston (1908) The Talk of New York (1907) The Yankee Prince (1908) Cohan and Harris Minstrels (1908) The Fortune Hunter (1909) (produced and directed) The American Idea (1909) (produced and directed) The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909) Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1910) The Aviator (1910) (produced) The Little Millionaire (1911) The Only Son (1911) (produced) The Red Widow (1911) (produced) Officer 666 (1912) (produced) Broadway Jones (1912) Hawthorne of the USA (1912) (produced) Stop Thief (1912) (produced) Nearly Married (1913) (produced) Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) The Beauty Shop (1914) (produced) It Pays to Advertise (1914) (produced) The Miracle Man (1914) Hello, Broadway! (1914) Young America (1915) (produced) The House of Glass (1915) Hit-the-Trail-Holiday (1915) The Cohan Revue of 1916 (and 1918; co-written with Irving Berlin) Honest John O'Brien (1916) The Intruder (1916) (produced) Captain Kidd Jr. (1916) (produced) The Willow Tree (1917) (produced) A Tailor-Made Man (1917) (produced) The King (1917) (produced) Going Up (1917) (produced) Cohan Revue of 1918 (1918)

The Little Teacher (1918) (produced) Once Upon a Time (1918) (produced) Three Faces East (1918) (produced) The Matinee Hero (1918) (produced) A Prince There Was (1918) The Voice of McConnell (1918) Mis'Nelly of N'Orleans (1919) (produced) The Royal Vagabond (1919) The Acquittal (1920) Genius and the Crowd (1920) (produced) The Tavern (1920) The Meanest Man in the World (1920) Mary (1920) (produced) Nemesis (1921) (produced) The O'Brien Girl (1921) (produced) Little Nellie Kelly (1922) So This is London (1922) Two Fellows and a Girl (1922) The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923, featuring a 13-year-old Ruby Keeler among the chorus girls) The Song and Dance Man (1923) American Born (1925) The Home Towners (1926) Yellow (1926) (Produced) Baby Cyclone (1927, one of Spencer Tracy's early roles) The Merry Malones (1927) Los Angeles (1927) (produced) Whispering Friends (1928) Elmer the Great (1928) (produced; written by Ring Lardner) By Request (1928) (produced) Billie (1928) Vermont (1929) (produced) Gambling (1929) The Rhapsody (1930) (produced) Friendship (1931) Pigeons and People (1933) Ah, Wilderness (1933) (Actor) (written by Eugene O' Neill) Dear Old Darling (1936) Fulton of Five Oaks (1937) I'd Rather Be Right (1937) (acted) The Return of the Vagabond (1940) George M! (1968)

Cohan was called "the greatest single figure the American theatre ever produced – as a player, playwright, actor, composer and producer". 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 Duffy Square (the northern portion of Times Square) at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor on Broadway. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Cohan was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006.

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. In 1999, Captain Kenneth R. Force and the United States Merchant Marine Academy Regimental Band led a successful effort to preserve Cohan's home on Long Island. As a result, Cohan's family gave the Merchant Marine Academy Regimental Band the name "George M. Cohan's Own".

Personal life

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

In 1907, 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! Their second daughter was Helen Cohan Carola, a film actress, who performed on Broadway with her father in Friendship in 1931. 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. 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. at the age of 64 on November 5, 1942, at his Manhattan apartment on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by family and friends. 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. Deffaa has written and directed five other plays about Cohan.

Filmography Cohan acted in the following films: Year Title Role Notes1917 Broadway Jones Broadway Jones Lost film Seven Keys to Baldpate George Washington Magee 1918 Hit-The-Trail Holliday Billie Holiday Lost film1932 The Phantom President Theodore K. Blair/Peeter J. 'Doc' Varney 1934 Gambling Al Draper

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