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(July 3, 1878 – November 5, 1942)
 George
Michael Cohan was a United States entertainer, playwright, composer,
lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, director, and producer of Irish
descent. Known as "the man who owned Broadway" in the decade before
World War I, he is considered the father of American musical comedy.
Cohan was born in Providence, Rhode Island to Irish Catholic
parents. A baptismal certificate indicated that he was born on July
3, but the Cohan family always insisted that George had been "born
on the Fourth of July!" George's parents were traveling Vaudeville
performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, at
first as a prop, later learning to dance and sing soon after he
could walk and talk.
He completed a family act called The Four Cohans, which included his
father Jeremiah "Jere" Cohan (1848–1917), mother Helen "Nellie"
Costigan Cohan (1854–1928), and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo
(1874–1916). Josie, who died of heart disease at a young age, was
married to Fred Niblo Sr. (1874–1948), an important director of
silent films, including Ben Hur (1925), and a founder of the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Their son, Fred Niblo Jr.
(1903–1973) was an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
By his teens, Cohan became well-known as one of vaudeville's best
male dancers, and he also started writing original skits and songs
for the family act. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his
first songs to a national publisher in 1893. Cohan had his first big
Broadway hit in 1904 with the show Little Johnny Jones, which
introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee
Doodle Boy".
Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters,
publishing upwards of 1500 original songs, noted for their catchy
melodies and clever lyrics. His other major hit songs included
"You're a Grand Old Flag", "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",
"Mary's a Grand Old Name", "The Small Town Gal", "I'm Mighty Glad
I'm Living, That's All", "That Haunting Melody", and the popular war
song, "Over There".
From 1906 to 1926, Cohan and Sam Harris also produced over three
dozen shows on Broadway, including the successful Going Up in 1917,
which became a smash hit in London the following year.
In 1925, Cohan published his autobiography, Twenty Years on Broadway
and the Years It Took to Get There.
In 1932, Cohan starred in a dual role (as a cold, corrupt politician
and his charming, idealistic campaign double) in the Hollywood
musical The Phantom President, co-starring Jimmy Durante and
Claudette Colbert, with songs by Rodgers and Hart.
He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's 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).
His final play, The Return of the Vagabond (1940) featured Celeste
Holm in the cast; she was either 21 or 23 years old at the time.
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.
His 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed with Jack
Benny in 1943. |
