America’s Song-and-Dance Man: The Amazing George M. Cohan

George M. Cohan (James Cagney), in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” (Warner Bros.)

Other than those intimate with the history of American theater, most of us today don’t remember George M. Cohan (1878–1942) for his many achievements and honors.

Known as “The Man Who Owned Broadway,” Cohan wrote more than 300 songs and brought over 50 musicals and plays to the stage during his lifetime. In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt awarded him a Congressional Gold Medal for the morale boost his songs had given the nation and its soldiers during the World War I. Cohan literally spent his entire life in theater, from appearing as a baby in his parents’ vaudeville act to playing the role of the father in the 1933 production of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Ah, Wilderness!”

Today, in Times Square, you’ll find a statue of George Cohan, the only actor to be so honored, and fans of old movies know his story from “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the 1942 musical about Cohan’s life starring James Cagney.  Mention him to many Americans, however, and all you’ll get is a shrug and a blank look. Like so many of the cultural icons of the past, his name is dust in the wind.

George Cohan's statue in Duffy Square, at the northern part of Times Square, in New York City. (Public Domain)

What they do remember are his songs.

An Entertainer Is Born

Best known for hits like “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” and “Over There,” George Cohan surely felt a special affinity for his song “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” especially its chorus:

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle, do or die, A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s, Born on the Fourth of July. I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart, She’s my Yankee Doodle joy. Yankee Doodle came to London just to ride the ponies, I am the Yankee Doodle boy.

If you know the song, just reading these words may have you bouncing along with the rhythm.

And that song represents in a nutshell much about Cohan himself. Though his baptismal certificate shows the date of his birth as July 3, his mother and father always contended that their son was an Independence Day baby. The song also reveals his love of country, his brash personality, at least in public, and his ability to turn out a tune that so many of us instantly recognize 120 years after he wrote it.

The Education of a Trouper

Even before they were toddlers, Cohan and his older sister Josephine accompanied their parents, Jeremiah and Helen Cohan, known as Jerry and Nellie, on the vaudeville circuit, traveling all over the United States. Cohan played violin in the pit orchestra as a boy, an instrument and a task he disliked.

He received the rudiments of a formal education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and like so many of his time, deepened his knowledge through independent reading and his interactions with a wide variety of people. Certainly his family’s years on the road gave him a solid grounding in American geography and history.

At age 11, Cohan along with Josephine joined their parents on stage and soon won fame as “The Four Cohans.” During this time, the young Cohan gained a backstage reputation for his precocity, his stubbornness, and his volatile temper. The temper, he eventually got under control, but his abilities in all aspects of theatrical productions soared. By the time he was 21, Cohan was a successful songwriter and was beginning to write plays.

Curtain call for "The Four Cohans" in 1915. (Public Domain)

The Father of American Musical Comedy

To New York and Broadway, George Cohan brought the many gifts and talents he had picked up trouping around the country. He and Josie, for example, were well-known for what was then called eccentric dancing, stepping high and fast, a style which Cagney recreated in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Snappy lines and a fast-paced dialogues were also marks of vaudeville—techniques which Cohan incorporated into his plays and music.

James Cagney showcases his dancing skills as Broadway legend George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” (Warner Bros.)

The work schedule he followed as his reputation soared was remarkable. This was a man who danced and sang on his laurels rather than resting on them. One obituary writer remarked on his dedication to his profession, “In his heyday Mr. Cohan possessed an amazing energy. He would go on the road as the star of one play, take the cast of another with him, write a script late at night, and rehearse the second cast in the morning. He did most of his writing, either on the road or at home in his Fifth Avenue apartment, between midnight and dawn. Sometimes, when not acting, he would take rooms in an Atlantic City hotel to write a new play. He wrote with a pencil on yellow paper.”

In addition to this frenetic pace, Cohan married twice, with those unions producing four children, and was a baseball fan extraordinaire, going to every home game played by the New York Giants that he could squeeze into his hectic schedule.

When Cohan died in his Fifth Avenue home on Nov. 5, 1942, thousands of people, including such luminaries as Franklin Roosevelt, sent telegrams and letters of condolence to his wife, Agnes. Thousands of admirers also surrounded St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the day of his funeral, a crowd which included former New York governors and mayors, and an entire Who’s Who chorus of songwriters and musicians.

American Patriot

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was a time of American entrepreneurship, innovation, and patriotism. The animosities of the Civil War had faded, the country had gained territories in the Pacific, and Theodore Roosevelt’s years in the White House (1901–1909) gave the nation a president who was energetic and proud to be an American.

In many ways, the time was eminently suited for an entertainer like Cohan. Rarely has the United States laid claim to an artist who so loved America and its people. Though he could poke light fun at certain customs of the day, like his music, his plays generally reflected the pride he took in America and its virtues. It was a symbiotic relationship in which Cohan and American culture fit together perfectly.

Offstage

Beginning in his 20s, Cohan earned enormous amounts of money, and was generally wise in his investments and frugal in his expenditures. Consequently, he early on became a man of wealth.

Yet Cohan was no Ebenezer Scrooge. Quite the contrary. Though little publicized at the time, this “song-and-dance man,” as he liked to describe himself, was extremely generous, a soft touch for struggling actors and a long-term benefactor to friends and even acquaintances from his parents’ vaudeville days. As his obituary notes, “When a former partner was caught in the 1929 stock market crash, Mr. Cohan advanced several hundred thousand dollars to save him.”

Cohan in a 1933 photograph by Carl Van Vechten. (Public Domain)

Offstage and out of the public eye, Cohan displayed as well a modest and private side to his personality. When in 1940 doctors diagnosed him with terminal stomach cancer, the same disease that had killed his former partner and in-law Sam Harris, for the most part, Cohan kept news of the disease to himself, and, by force of will and personality, remained upbeat until his death. Speaking to a friend at his bedside, the dying Cohan’s last words—“Look after Agnes”— were centered on his wife.

While still an adolescent working an audience alongside his family, Cohan came up with a signature line to close their act and bring down the curtain: “Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”

For all the gifts George Cohan brought to the stage and to American culture, both his audiences and the country at large returned that thanks with a deep affection for the man and the artist.

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