Word: cohan
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Part of the overall effect of intelligence was undoubtedly achieved by restrained script-writers; much of it is due to the fact that an entertainer's life lends itself better to movies than does a composer's. Both "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (Cohan was primarily an entertainer) and now "The Jolson Story" illustrate the point. Where composers are just composers, and neither necessarily nor usually dramatic personalities, entertainers can entertain in biography as well as in person, and their lives generally have something public and spectacular about them...
George M. Cohan, who loved Broadway and despised Hollywood, turned out to have left his heirs more Hollywooden nickels than stage money. Largest single asset of his $827,384 net estate proved to be his interest in the Yankee Doodle Dandy cinema version of his life: $421,766. "Mr. Broadway's" interest in songs: $65,000; in plays...
...Speaight to act in them. It has had offers to broadcast over every big network and is now getting offers to televise. It has tried out shows for Gilbert Miller and declined to try them out for Arthur Hopkins. It has seen its homemade "musical biography" of George M. Cohan lead to a smash movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy. It has seen two other homemade musicals, Count Me In and Sing Out, Sweet Land!, produced on Broadway. Last month Lute Song, which Catholic University tried out last season, also opened on Broadway. Last week C.U.'s stage version...
...musical about Cohan, in 1939, that put C.U. on the map. Playwright Walter Kerr, then & now a member of C.U.'s drama department, got the idea when he found a sheaf of Cohan songs in an old trunk. Hollywood had had the idea before him, but in spite of waving $100,000 checks at Cohan, had got nowhere. Cohan let C.U. dramatize his life for nothing...
...doubled as an alligator; I've worked for the Shuberts; and I've been joined to Billy Rose in the holy bonds. I've painted the house boards and I've sold tickets and I've been fired by George M. Cohan. I've played in London before the King and in Oil City before miners with lanterns in their caps. . . . So what is it you'd like to know...