SOURCE: "George M. Cohan," in Complete Book of the American Musical Theater, Henry Holt and Company, 1958, pp. 53-60.

The son of veteran vaudevillians, George Michael Cohan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 3, 1878. He was only an infant when he made his first stage appearance, carried on as a human prop for his father's vaudeville sketch. When he was nine, George made a more official stage bow, billed as "Master Georgie" in a sketch starring his parents in Haverstraw, New York. In 1888 the act was further extended to include still another Cohan, George's sister, Josephine. "The Four Cohans" soon became headliners across the country, and as time passed it was George Michael who was its spark plug. He was not only the principal performer, but also business manager and the writer of most of the songs and dialogue. By the time the century closed, the act boasted still a fifth Cohan in the person of the singing comedienne, Ethel Levey, who became George M. Cohan's wife in the summer of 1899.

In 1901 Cohan expanded one of his vaudeville sketches into a full-length musical comedy, The Governor's Son, produced at the Savoy Theatre in New York on February 25, 1901, starring the five Cohans. Cohan's début on the musical-comedy stage was not particularly auspicious, since the play lasted only thirty-two performances. In 1903 Cohan made a second attempt at expanding a vaudeville sketch into a Broadway musical comedy, and once again met failure.

Then in 1904 Cohan entered into a producing partnership with Sam H. Harris. Their first venture was a completely new George M. Cohan musical, Little Johnny Jones. As was often to be his practice in the future, Cohan not only helped produce the play and wrote book, lyrics, and music, but he also starred in it. At first Little Johnny Jones did not do well in New York, since the critics were hostile, but after a successful out-of-town tour, it returned to New York to establish itself as a hit.

For the next decade the firm of Cohan and Harris—and sometimes other producers—put on musicals by Cohan in which he often starred. Generally they were the cream of the season's crop. In 1906 there were Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway and George Washington, Jr., two of Cohan's best musicals. After that came The Talk of the Town (1907), The Yankee Princess (1908), The Man Wbo Owns Broadway (1910), The Little Millionaire (1911), and Hello Broadway (1914).

Everything about Cohan was personalized. He injected a new note of brashness and informality into the American stage. As a performer he wore a straw hat or a derby slightly cocked over one eye, and in his hand he held a bamboo cane. He sang out of the corner of his mouth with a peculiar nasal twang; he danced with a unique halting kangaroo step. He had his own way of gesturing—with an eloquent forefinger. The way he strutted up and down the stage—often with an American flag draped around him—was singularly Cohanesque; so was the way he could create a bond between himself and his audiences with informal, at times slangy, salutations or little speeches or homey monologues.

As a writer of musical-comedy texts and songs he also introduced a fresh, new manner. The plays, like their author, were jaunty, swiftly paced, vivacious. As Heywood Broun once wrote, Cohan became "a symbol of brash violence in theatrical entertainment, a disciple of perpetual motion." Cohan was not equally gifted in all the departments in which he functioned. He himself once confessed his limitations by saying: "As a composer I could never find use for over four or five notes in any musical number … and as a playwright, most of my plays have been presented in two acts for the simple reason that I couldn't think of an idea for the third act." He also once remarked, "I can write better plays than any living dancer, and dance better than any living playwright." He had his limitations, and for all his bravado and self-assurance he recognized them. But he knew the theater and his audience, and he was a superb showman. He might frequently be "a vulgar, cheap, blatant, ill-mannered, flashily dressed, insolent smart Alec," as James S. Metcalf described him in Life magazine at the time, but he did succeed in bringing into the musical theater a new exuberance, a healthy vitality, a contagious excitement.

Up to 1919 Cohan continued to dominate the Broadway theater as producer, writer, composer, and actor. Several of his nowmusical plays were also outstanding hits, particularly Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1910), Broadway Jones (1912), and Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913). In 1917 he wrote the song destined to become one of America's foremost war hymns, "Over There," inspired by America's entry into World War I. By 1919 he was at the height of his fame and power—one of the richest and most influential figures in the American theater.

But in 1920 he began to lose interest in the theater. One reason was his bitterness in losing a major battle with the Actors Equity Association, which in 1919 had called a strike to compel theater managers to recognize it as a bargaining representative for its members. Cohan lined up against Equity and expected all his actor-friends to do likewise. Their alliance with Equity appeared to him as personal betrayal. The complete victory of Actors Equity represented a personal defeat to Cohan, and he became a tired and bitter man. He withdrew his membership from both the Friars and Lambs Clubs; he refused to speak any longer to many who had been his lifelong friends; he dissolved the prosperous firm of Cohan and Harris.

But he did not withdraw completely from the stage, though at one point he threatened to do so. He continued writing and appearing in plays, both musicals and nonmusicals. Two nonmusicals were minor successes: The Tavern (1920) and Tbe Song and Dance Man (1923). Most of the others were failures. "I guess people don't understand me no more," he remarked, "and I don't understand them.--

What Cohan was suffering from was not merely the aftermath of his defeat by Equity, with its shattering blow to his ego. No less poignant to him was his discovery that the theater had been moving so rapidly forward that it was leaving him behind. Both on the musical and the nonmusical stage there had emerged writers with creative imagination, subtlety of wit, technical mastery, and inventiveness of ideas. Their best work was mature, slick, sophisticated. Cohan's plays and Cohan's songs—compared to theirs—seemed old-fashioned, and many of the audiences no longer responded to them. An unhappy episode in Hollywood in 1932, where Cohan went to star in the Rodgers and Hart screen musical The Phantom President and where he was continually ignored and slighted, accentuated for him his loss of caste in the theater.

Yet he was not forgotten, nor was he a man without honors. In the 1930's he was starred in two Broadway plays: Eugene O'Neill's homespun American comedy, Ah, Wildnernessl, and the Rodgers and Hart musical satire, I'd Rather Be Right, in which he was cast as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both performances were acclaimed, and there were even some to consider him one of the foremost actors of the American stage. In May, 1940, by a special act of Congress, he received from President Roosevelt a special gold medal. And in 1942 his rich career in the theater was brilliantly dramatized on the screen in Yankee Dobdle Dandy, with James Cagney playing Cohan.

Cohan was gradually recovering from an abdominal operation in 1942 when he insisted that his nurse allow him to tour Broadway in a taxi. Accompanied by the nurse, he cruised around Union Square, then up to Times Square and through its side streets. He stopped off for a few minutes at the Hollywood Theatre to catch a scene from Yankee Doodle Dandy. It was almost as if he were reviewing for the last time the highlights of his career.

A few months later—on October 5,1942—he died. "A beloved figure is lost to our national life," wired President Roosevelt. Mayor La Guardia said: "He put the symbols of American life into American music." And Gene Buck hailed him as "the greatest single figure the American theater has produced."

1904 LITTLE JOHNNY JONES, a musical comedy, with book, lyrics, and music by George M. Cohan. Produced by Sam H. Harris at the Liberty Theatre on November 7. Staged by George M. Cohan. Cast included George M. Cohan, Ethel Levey, Jerry and Helen Cohan, and Donald Brian (52 performances).

During a visit to England seeing the sights, Cohan decided he must write a musical comedy using two locales that had impressed him. One was the pier at Southampton; the other, the court of Cecil Hotel in London. Back in America, he heard about Tod Sloan, an American jockey who had ridden in the Derby for the King of England in 1903. Cohan put two and one together and in short order came up with his first original musical comedy, Little Johnny Jones.

Johnny Jones (George M. Cohan) comes to London to ride in the Derby. There he meets and antagonizes Anthony Anstey (Jerry Cohan), an American gambler who has made a fortune running Chinese gambling houses in San Francisco. When Johnny loses the Derby race, he is pursued to Southampton by angry mobs who accuse him of being crooked and having thrown the race. A detective who poses throughout the play as a drunkard and who is merely called "The Unknown," proves Johnny's innocence at the same time that he uncovers Anstey's role in destroying Johnny's reputation and his iniquitous activities in San Francisco's Chinatown. Now fully cleared, Johnny is able to win back the love of his estranged sweetheart, Goldie Gates (Ethel Levey).

Johnny Jones was Cohan's first starring vehicle, and he rose to the occasion by underplaying his part and by abandoning many of the little tricks and the absurd costume that up to now had been his trademark. With his first breezy entrance song, "Yankee Doodle Boy," the "new Cohan" won the hearts of his audience completely; and he solidified that affection with his equally vivacious rendition of another Cohan classic, "Give My Regards to Broadway," and his delivery of a sentimental sermon in verse, "Life's a Funny Proposition After All." Of the remaining numbers in the Cohan score the best were "GoodBye, Flo," sung by Ethel Levey, and an amusing ditty presented by six coachmen, "Op in My 'Ansom."

1906 FORTY-FIVE MINUTES FROM BROADWAY, a musical comedy with book, lyrics, and music by George M. Cohan. Produced by Klaw and Erlanger at the New Amsterdam Theatre on January 1. Cast included Fay Templeton, Victor Moore, and Donald Brian (90 performances).

The setting is New Rochelle, a New York suburb "fortyfive minutes from Broadway." A local miserly millionaire has died and no will has been found. It had been assumed that his wealth would go to his housemaid, Mary Jane Jenkins (Fay Templeton), but due to the absence of a will the fortune passes to the dead man's only living relative, Tom Bennett (Donald Brian). Tom arrives in New Rochelle to claim his legacy, accompanied by his showgirl sweetheart, Flora Dora Dean (Lois Ewell), her nagging mother, Mrs. David Dean (Julia Ralph), and his secretary Kid Bums, former loafer and horse player (Victor Moore). Because of Kid Bums' bad manners and outspoken behavior, Tom gets into a fight with his sweetheart and her mother at a party at the Castleon mansion. Meanwhile, Kid Burns falls in love with the housemaid, Mary Jane. In an old suit of clothes Kid Bums finds the dead man's will in which the fortune goes to Mary Jane. When Kid Bums refuses to marry an heiress, Mary Jane destroys the document.

On the morning of the premiere of Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway, the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce called an emergency session to pass several resolutions regarding this musical: (1) to institute a boycott; (2) to send out press releases denouncing the play as libelous to their community and its inhabitants. The Chamber of Commerce objected particularly to the title song which said that the town did not have a single cafe and which spoke of the males as having "whiskers like hay." After the show opened, the commotion in New Rochelle died down as the town came to realize that the play was succeeding in making New Rochelle famous.

Most of the critics did not like Cohan's new musical. The editor of Theatre reflected the prevailing opinion when he called it "rubbish" and added, "Mr. Cohan had little art" and intended only "to catch the unthinking crowd." But like Little Joinwy Jones, the new musical, despite a comparatively short Broadway run, was a triumph on its road tour and returned to Broadway as a major success.

For Fay Templeton, the starring female role marked her first appearance in a so-called "clean play"—for twenty years before this she had been a burlesque star. She was a hit; and so was Victor Moore in the first of his many Broadway triumphs as a comedian, after many years in vaudeville and stock companies.

The best songs from the score are still remembered, including the title song, "Mary's a Grand Old Name," and "So Long, Mary."

1906 GEORGE WASHINGTON, JR., a musical comedy with book, lyrics, and music by George M. Cohan. Produced by Sam H. Harris at the Herald Square Theatre on February 12. Staged by George M. Cohan. Cast included the Four Cohans and Ethel Levey (81 performances).

Described as "an American play," George Washington, Jr., had for its central theme the rivalry of two Senators in Washington, D.C.: James Belgrave (Jerry J. Cohan) from Rhode Island, and William Hopkins (Eugene O'Rourke) from the South. When Senator Hopkins makes a determined effort to expose corruption in the Senate, Belgrave decides to go off to England to buy his way into British society by inducing his son, George (George M. Cohan) to marry Lord Rothburt's daughter. But George is in love with Senator Hopkins' lovely niece, Dolly Johnson (Ethel Levey). Disgusted by his father's Anglophile tendencies, young George becomes a super-patriot and assumes the name of the first President of the United States. As it turns out, the lord and his "daughter" are frauds, hired by Senator Hopkins to get the goods on his rival. This fact is uncovered by young George, who sets his father wise. Senator Belgrave now becomes an intense patriot. Since Senator Hopkins is in love with Belgrave's widowed sister, he is ready to forget his hostility and at the same time give his blessings to George and Dolly.

The pace of the play is so swift, the dialogue so amusing, and the songs so effective that the editor of Theatre—who had recently referred to Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway as "rubbish"—said that there was "plenty that is genuinely and legitimately diverting" and called the play "mighty good entertainment."

The outstanding song in George Washington, Jr., is "You're a Grand Old Flag," in which Cohan institutes a routine for which he became famous and which he would repeat in many later plays—draping an American flag around his body and running up and down the stage singing the praises of flag and country. Strange to recall, a scandal followed the first performance of this song in the play. The idea for the song first occurred to Cohan when a G.A.R. veteran told him he had been a colorbearer during Pickett's charge at Gettysburg; pointing to the American flag, the old man said, "she's a grand old rag." In writing his song Cohan kept the expression "grand old rag." One day after opening night, several patriotic societies arose to denounce Cohan for insulting the American flag by referring to it as a rag. (Cohan insisted that this protest had been instigated by a New York drama critic who had been denied seats for his show.) When Cohan changed "rag" to "flag" all was forgiven, and the furor died down.

Two other songs became popular in 1906: Dolly Johnson's "I Was Born in Virginia" and "You Can Have Broadway." A high spot of the production was Cohan's delivery of some homey philosophy in a versemonologue entitled "If Washington Should Come to Life."

1911 THE LITTLE MILLIONAIRE, a musical comedy with book, lyrics, and music by George M. Cohan. Produced by Cohan and Harris at the Cohan Theatre on September 25, 1911. Staged by George M. Cohan. Cast included George M. Cohan, Jerry Cohan, Helen Cohan, and Lila Rhodes (192 performances).

The late Mrs. Spooner has left a will specifying that her fortune can be shared by her husband and son only if they get married. Since Robert Spooner, the son (George M. Cohan) loves Goldie Gray (Lila Rhodes) the demands of the will present no problem to him. However his friend Bill Costigan (Tom Lewis) is sure that Goldie is interested only in Robert's fortune, and does everything he can to break up the love affair. In this he is unsuccessful, since Goldie loves Robert for himself alone. To fulfill the requirements of the will, the father—Henry Spooner (Jerry Cohan)—courts and wins Goldie's aunt, Mrs. Prescott (Helen Cohan).

A pattern already established by Cohan in his musicals was here rigidly followed. The play was filled with sentimental recitations, topical songs and ballads, flag numbers, and eccentric dances. One of the leading song hits was a comedy number, "We Do All the Dirty Work"; other popular musical items included "Oh, You Wonderful Girl," "Musical Moon," and "Barnum Had the Right Idea."

1914 HELLO BROADWAY, a musical comedy with book, lyrics, and music by George M. Cohan. Produced by Cohan and Harris at the Astor Theatre on December 25. Cast included George M. Cohan, William Collier, Louise Dresser, and Lawrence Wheat (123 performances).

Cohan described Hello Broadway as "a crazy quilt patched and threaded together." It was a burlesque in the style of those made famous by Weber and Fields in which Cohan plays the part of George Babbitt, the millionaire son of a Jersey City soap manufacturer, who returns to America from China in the company of his friend, Bill Shaverham (William Collier). The plot, however, was incidental to its satirical trimmings. Many of the current plays were burlesqued broadly. Cohan did a take-off of Leo Dietrichstein; Louise Dresser, of Mrs. Patrick Campbell as she had appeared in Shaw's Pygmalion; William Collier, of Pauline Frederick. Cohan's best songs were "I Wanted to Come to Broadway," "That Old-Fashioned Cakewalk," and for one of his famous flag routines, "My Flag."