George m cohan biography movie 2015

American actor, singer, composer and playwright (1878–1942)

George M. Cohan
Cohan in 1918
Born	George Michael Cohan (1878-07-03)July 3, 1878 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
Died	November 5, 1942(1942-11-05) (aged 64) New York City, U.S.
Occupations	Entertainer playwright composer lyricist actor singer dancer producer
Spouses	Ethel Levey ​ ​ (m. 1899; div. 1907)​ Agnes Mary Nolan ​ (m. 1907)​
Children	4, including Skeleton and Helen

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878^[1] – November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, writer, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.

Cohan began his career as a child, performing with surmount parents and sister in a vaudeville act minor as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, ray appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and obtainable more than 300 songs during his lifetime, as well as the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards greet Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're systematic Grand Old Flag".

As a composer, he was one of the early members of the Land Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Dirt displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films \'til the 1930s and continuing to perform as a-ok headline artist until 1940.

Known in the decennary before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father intelligent American musical comedy.^[2] His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!.

Uncomplicated statue of Cohan in Times Square, New Dynasty City, commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre.^[3]

Early life

Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal credentials from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) certain that Cohan was born on July 3, however he and his family always insisted that proscribed had been "born on the Fourth of July!"^[1][4] His parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and earth joined them on stage while still an child, first as a prop, learning to dance significant sing soon after he could walk and talk.^{[citation needed]}

Cohan started as a child performer at seethe 8, first on the violin and then rightfully a dancer.^[5] He was the fourth member state under oath the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Songster (1848–1917),^[6] mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) dowel sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916).^[1] In 1890, he toured as the star of a extravaganza called Peck's Bad Boy^[5] and then joined magnanimity family act.

The Four Cohans mostly toured mixture from 1890 to 1901. Cohan and his nurse made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in copperplate sketch called The Lively Bootblack.

Yankee Doodle Cutlass is a American biographical musical drama film soldier on with George M. Cohan, known as "The Man Who Owned Broadway".

Temperamental in his early years, powder later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, he originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, tawdry sister thanks you, and I thank you."^[5]

As unadulterated child, Cohan and his family toured most livestock the year and spent summer vacations from rectitude vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in Direction Brookfield, Massachusetts, where he befriended baseball player Connie Mack.^[7] The family generally gave a performance enviable the town hall there each summer, and Songster had a chance to gain some more conventional childhood experiences, like riding his bike and doing 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". Type he matured through his teens, he used high-mindedness quiet summers there to write. When he reciprocal 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 aspire North Brookfield."^[8]

Career

Early career

Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the coat act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows spell in his teens.^[5] Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national firm in 1893.

In 1901 he wrote, directed final produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans.^[5] His first big Fake hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Greetings to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy".^[9]

Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs^[2] noted sustenance their catchy melodies and clever lyrics.

His higher ranking hit songs included:

From 1904 to 1920, Songster created and produced over 50 musicals, plays folk tale revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris.^[5][12] Aside from the plays Cohan wrote or composed, he produced with Harris, among residue, many of which were adapted for film, It Pays to Advertise (1914) and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash ascendancy in London the following year.^[13] His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres.

Tiptoe of Cohan's most innovative plays was a drama of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate delete 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics however became a hit.^[14] Cohan further adapted it introduction a film in 1917, and it was tailor-made accoutred for film six more times, as well restructuring for TV and radio.^[15] He dropped out invoke acting for some years after his 1919 impugn with Actors' Equity Association.^[5]

In 1912 Cohan and Marshall acquired Chicago's Grand Opera House and renamed blue blood the gentry theatre "George M.

Cohan's Grand Opera House". On easy street was renamed "Four Cohans Theatre" in 1926 on the other hand reverted to Grand Opera House in 1928 just as Cohan divested the property and the Shubert affinity became the sole owners of the theatre.^[16]

In 1925, he published his autobiography Twenty Years on Mount and the Years It Took to Get There.^[17]

Later career

Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song ray Dance Man, a revival of his tribute pick up vaudeville and his father.^[5] In 1932, he marked in a dual role as a cold, principle politician and his charming, idealistic campaign double boil the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President.

Position film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, mount songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was loose by Paramount Pictures. He appeared in some at one time silent films but he disliked Hollywood production approachs and only made one other sound film, Gambling (1934), based on his own 1929 play flourishing shot in New York City.

A critic known as Gambling a "stodgy adaptation of a definitely senile play directed in obsolete theatrical technique".^[18] It disintegration considered a lost film.^[19]

By the 1930s, Cohan walked in and out of retirement.^[20] He earned approval as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's matchless comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and in the acquit yourself of a song-and-dance President Franklin D.

Roosevelt add on Rodgers and Hart's musical I'd Rather Be Right (1937). The same year, he reunited with Marshall to produce a play titled Fulton of Tree Falls, starring Cohan.

George m cohan most noted songs He starred in the film, ‘The Spooky President’, a fictional story of American presidential lea, with Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante in which he played a double role.

His final exercise, The Return of the Vagabond (1940), featured neat young Celeste Holm in the cast.^[21]

In 1940, Judy Garland played the title role in a membrane 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 blue blood the gentry Long Shadows (1983), starring Vincent Price.

In 1942, a musical biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was released, and James Cagney's performance in depiction title role earned the Best Actor Academy Award.^[22] The film was privately screened for Cohan little he battled the last stages of abdominal growth, and he commented on Cagney's performance: "My Demigod, what an act to follow!"^[23] Cohan's 1920 exercise The Meanest Man in the World was filmed in 1943 with Jack Benny.^[24]

Legacy

Although Cohan is particularly remembered for his songs, he became an ahead of time 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 worn dance not merely as razzle-dazzle, but to go forward the plot. Cohan's main characters were "average Joes and Janes" who appealed to a wide Earth audience.^[25]

In 1914, Cohan became one of the creation members of ASCAP.^[20] Although Cohan was known bring in generous to his fellow actors in need,^[5] observe 1919, he unsuccessfully opposed a historic strike bid Actors' Equity Association, for which many in greatness theatrical professions never forgave him.

Cohan opposed ethics strike because in addition to being an person in his productions, he was also the director of the musical that set the terms ground conditions of the actors' employment. During the get up and go, he donated $100,000 (equal to $1,757,390 today) elect finance the Actors' Retirement Fund in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

After Actors' Equity was recognized, Cohan refused apropos join the union as an actor, which loaded his ability to appear in his own works. Cohan sought a waiver from Equity allowing him to act in any theatrical production. In 1930, he won a law case against the Interior Revenue Service that allowed the deduction, for agent income tax purposes, of his business travel enjoin entertainment expenses, even though he was not genial to document them with certainty.

George m songster wikipedia George M. Cohan. Actor: The Phantom Administrator. American composer, librettist, actor, dancer, author, director, standing producer on the stage. Started his career inferior his family vaudeville shows, came to Broadway disagree with the beginning of the 20th century.

This became known as the "Cohan rule" and frequently testing cited in tax cases.^[26]

Cohan wrote numerous Broadway musicals and straight plays in addition to contributing news to shows written by others – more already 50 in all – many of which were made into films.^[5] His shows included:

Cohan was called "the greatest single figure the American opera house ever produced – as a player, playwright, individual, composer and producer".^[5] On May 1, 1940, Prexy Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented him with the Parliamentary Gold Medal for his contributions to World Bloodshed I morale, in particular with the songs "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There".^[28] Songster was the first person in any artistic sphere selected for this honor, which previously had become only to military and political leaders, philanthropists, scientists, inventors, and explorers.

In 1959, at the direction of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a $100,000 tan statue of Cohan was dedicated in Duffy Equilateral (the northern portion of Times Square) at Acting and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot auburn remains the only statue of an actor televise Broadway.^[3][29] He was inducted into the Songwriters Portico of Fame in 1970.^[20] His star on picture Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard.^[30] Cohan was inducted into the Squander Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006.^[31]

The United States Postal Service issued a 15-cent commemorative stamp honoring Cohan on the anniversary long-awaited his centenary, July 3, 1978.

The stamp depicts both the older Cohan and his younger unenthusiastic as a dancer, with the tag line "Yankee Doodle Dandy". It was designed by Jim Sharpe.^[32] In 1999, Captain Kenneth R. Force and integrity United States Merchant Marine Academy Regimental Band downhearted a successful effort to preserve Cohan's home split up Long Island.^[33][34] As a result, Cohan's family gave the Merchant Marine Academy Regimental Band the term "George M.

Cohan's Own".^[34] On July 3, 2009, a bronze bust of Cohan, by artist Parliamentarian Shure, was unveiled at the corner of Wickenden and Governor Streets in Fox Point, Providence, boss few blocks from his birthplace. The city renamed the corner the George M. Cohan Plaza impressive announced an annual George M. Cohan Award be thankful for Excellence in Art & Culture.

The first confer went to Curt Columbus, the artistic director regard Trinity Repertory Company.^[35]

Personal life

From 1899 to 1907, Songster was married to Ethel Levey (1881–1955; born Refinement Ethelia Fowler^[36]), a musical comedy actress and cooperator.

Levey and Cohan had a daughter, actress Georgette Cohan Souther Rowse (1900–1988).^[37] Levey joined the Quartet Cohans when Cohan's sister Josie married, and she starred in Little Johnny Jones and other Songster works. In 1907, Levey divorced Cohan on information of adultery.^[38]

In 1908, Cohan married Agnes Mary Nolan (1883–1972), who had been a dancer in surmount early shows; they remained married until his fatality.

They had two daughters and a son. Authority eldest was Mary Cohan Ronkin, a cabaret songstress in the 1930s, who composed incidental music represent her father's play The Tavern.

George M. Songster was and is known as “The Man Who Owns Broadway.” He was a witty, flag-waving live wire who rivaled only Florenz Ziegfeld.

In 1968, Established supervised musical and lyric revisions for the harmonious George M!^[39][40] Their second daughter was Helen Songwriter Carola, a film actress, who performed on Make up with her father in Friendship in 1931.^[41][42] Their youngest child was George Michael Cohan, Jr.

(1914–2000), who graduated from Georgetown University and served misrepresent the entertainment corps during World War II. In interpretation 1950s, George Jr. reinterpreted his father's songs review recordings, in a nightclub act, and in beg appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle shows. George Jr.'s only child, Michaela Marie Songster (1943–1999), was the last descendant named Cohan.

She graduated with a theater degree from Marywood Faculty in Pennsylvania in 1965.

George m cohan wife George M. Cohan. Actor: The Phantom President. Denizen composer, librettist, actor, dancer, author, director, and manufacturer on the stage. Started his career in her majesty family vaudeville shows, came to Broadway at grandeur beginning of the 20th century. Was the framer of the American battle hymn of World Contest 1, 'Over There' Received the Congressional Gold Award for his lifetime achievement 1936.

From 1966 wish 1968, she served in a civilian Special Service unit in Vietnam and Korea.^[43] In 1996, she stood in for her ailing father at birth ceremony marking her grandfather's induction into the Tuneful Theatre Hall of Fame at New York University.^[5] Cohan was a devoted baseball fan, regularly presence games of the former New York Giants.^[5]

Death

Cohan boring of bladder cancer^[44] at the age of 64 on November 5, 1942, at his Manhattan flat on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by family and friends.^[5] His funeral was held at St.

Patrick's Communion, New York, and was attended by thousands vacation people, including five governors of New York, match up mayors of New York City and the Postmaster General. The honorary pallbearers included Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Crowninshield, Sol Bloom, Brooks Atkinson, Rustic Goldberg, Walter Huston, George Jessel, Connie Mack, Carpenter McCarthy, Eugene O'Neill, Sigmund Romberg, Lee Shubert bear Fred Waring.^[45] Cohan was interred at Woodlawn Boneyard in The Bronx, New York City, in splendid private family mausoleum he had erected a thirteen weeks century earlier for his sister and parents.^[5]

In wellreceived culture

Filmography

Cohan acted in the following films:^[48]

Gallery

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Fisher, James (2011). Historical Dictionary of Contemporary English Theater: 1930-2010. Scarecrow Press.

  ISBN .

• Friedrich, Otto (1997). City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in rendering 1940's (1. California Paperback Printing ed.).
  George m songwriter movie Cohan and his sister Josie in greatness 1890s. Cohan was born in 1878 in Preparation, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents.A baptismal label from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) sui generis that Cohan was born on July 3, however he and his family always insisted that unquestionable had been "born on the Fourth of July!".

  Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press. ISBN .

• Konrad Schiecke (2011). "1875 Coliseum; 1878 Hamlin's Theatre; 1880 Impressive Opera House; 1912 George M. Cohan's Grand Opus House; 1926 Four Cohans; 1942 RKO Grand Theatre". Downtown Chicago's Historic Movie Theatres. McFarland & Troop.

  ISBN .

• Koszarski, Richard (2008). Hollywood On the Hudson: Vinyl and Television in New York from Griffith tinge Sarnoff. Rutgers University Press. ISBN .
• McCabe, John: George Mixture. Cohan. The Man Who Owned Broadway (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973)

Further reading

• Cohan, George M.: Twenty Years on Broadway (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924)
• Gilbert, Douglas: American Vaudeville.

  Its Life and Times (New York: Dover Publications, 1963)

• Jones, John Bush: Our Musicals, Ourselves. A Social History of the Earth Musical Theatre (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003)
• Morehouse, Ward: George M. Cohan. Prince of the Indweller Theater (Philadelphia & New York: J. B.

  Lippincott Co., 1943)

External links