George M. 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 across a career spanning from the late nineteenth century through 1940. 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. His parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and Cohan joined them on stage as an infant, learning to dance and sing shortly after he could walk and talk.

Cohan began performing as a child of eight, starting on the violin before transitioning to dance. He became the fourth member of a family vaudeville act known as The Four Cohans, alongside his father Jeremiah "Jere" Cohan, his mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan, and his sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo. In 1890, he toured as the star of Peck's Bad Boy before rejoining the family act, which performed together primarily from 1890 to 1901. Cohan and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. During those years, Cohan also began writing original skits — eventually more than 150 — and songs for the family act, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. The family spent summer breaks from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where Cohan befriended baseball player Connie Mack. Those summers, which he recalled fondly, inspired his 1907 musical Fifty Miles from Boston, set in North Brookfield and containing the song "Harrigan." When Cohan returned to the town in 1934 while performing in Ah, Wilderness!, he told a reporter, "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield."

In 1901, Cohan wrote, directed, and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans, marking the beginning of a Broadway career that would extend to 1940. 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, Cohan created and produced more than 50 musicals, plays, and revues on Broadway in partnership with producer Sam H. Harris, 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 1912, Cohan and Harris 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. One of his most innovative productions was a 1913 dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate, which became a hit despite puzzling some audiences and critics; Cohan adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was subsequently adapted for film six additional times, as well as for television and radio.

Over the course of his lifetime, Cohan published more than 300 songs, becoming one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters of his era. His catalog included "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway," "Mary Is a Grand Old Name," "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye," and "Over There," which became America's most popular song of World War I and was recorded by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, and others. The song's reach extended to the naming of a ship called Costigan, after Cohan's grandfather Dennis Costigan, with "Over There" played at the christening. As a composer, Cohan was among 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.

After a period away from acting following his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association, Cohan returned to the stage and screen in the 1930s. He appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of 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, though it is now considered a lost film. Cohan earned particular acclaim as a serious dramatic actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, in 1933, and in 1937 he portrayed 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 Cohan also starred. His final Broadway production, The Return of the Vagabond in 1940, featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast.

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; upon seeing Cagney's performance, he remarked, "My God, what an act to follow!" Cohan died on November 5, 1942. His life and music were further commemorated in the 1968 Broadway musical George M!, and a statue in Times Square, New York City, stands in recognition of his contributions to American musical theatre. Broadway credits associated with Cohan include George M!, Billie, A Prince There Was, Fulton of Oak Falls, and Fifty Miles from Boston, among numerous other productions spanning his career from 1901 to 1940.