George Cohan

George Michael Cohan, born July 3, 1878, in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents, was an American entertainer who worked as a playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and theatrical producer. Though his baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church recorded July 3 as his birth date, Cohan and his family consistently maintained that he had been born on the Fourth of July. He died on November 5, 1942.

Cohan's parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage as an infant, initially serving as a prop before learning to dance and sing. By age eight he was performing on violin and then as a dancer. His father, Jeremiah "Jere" Cohan, his mother, Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan, and his sister, Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo, formed the family act known as The Four Cohans, which toured together primarily from 1890 to 1901. In 1890, Cohan also toured as the star of Peck's Bad Boy before rejoining the family. He and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack, the same year Cohan sold his first songs to a national publisher. During his teenage years, he wrote more than 150 original skits and songs for the family's vaudeville and minstrel performances, and used quiet summers at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, to develop his writing further. Those summers, during which he befriended baseball player Connie Mack, later inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, set in North Brookfield and containing the song "Harrigan."

In 1901, Cohan wrote, directed, and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans. His first major Broadway hit came in 1904 with Little Johnny Jones, which introduced "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." From 1904 to 1920, working alongside his partner Sam H. Harris, Cohan created and produced more than 50 musicals, plays, and revues on Broadway, with productions running simultaneously in as many as five theatres. Among the works he produced with Harris were It Pays to Advertise in 1914 and Going Up in 1917, the latter becoming a hit in London the following year. In 1913, he staged a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate, which he also adapted as a film in 1917; the story was subsequently adapted for film six additional times, as well as for television and radio. Over the course of his career, Cohan published more than 300 songs, among them "Over There," which became America's most popular World War I song and was recorded by Nora Bayes and Enrico Caruso, among others. The song's reach extended to shipyard workers and troops alike, and a ship was named "Costigan" after his grandfather, Dennis Costigan, with "Over There" played at the christening. He was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. In 1925, he published his autobiography, Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There.

Following a dispute with Actors' Equity Association in 1919, Cohan stepped away from acting for a period. He returned to the stage in 1930 in a revival of The Song and Dance Man, his tribute to vaudeville and his father. In 1932, he starred in the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President, playing a dual role as a corrupt politician and his idealistic campaign double; the film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, featured songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was released by Paramount Pictures. He made one additional sound film, Gambling in 1934, based on his own 1929 play and shot in New York City. By the 1930s, Cohan moved in and out of retirement while earning recognition as a serious dramatic actor. He received acclaim for his performance in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, in 1933, and in 1937 starred as a song-and-dance President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Rodgers and Hart's musical I'd Rather Be Right. That same year, he reunited with Harris to produce Fulton of Oak Falls, in which he also starred. In 1938, Cohan appeared on Broadway in Pinocchio. His final play, The Return of the Vagabond in 1940, featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast, and Cohan continued performing as a headline artist until that year.

In 1942, the musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy was released, with James Cagney's portrayal of Cohan earning the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film was screened privately for Cohan as he was in the final stages of abdominal cancer. His life and music were also depicted in the 1968 Broadway musical George M!. A statue of Cohan stands in Times Square, New York City, honoring his contributions to American musical theatre. In 1912, he and Harris had acquired Chicago's Grand Opera House, renaming it George M. Cohan's Grand Opera House; it was later renamed Four Cohans Theatre in 1926 before reverting to its original name in 1928 when Cohan divested the property to the Shubert family.