Word: cohan
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George Michael Cohan need grudge no man his artistic output. In his autobiography he scores himself 31 original plays, 14 collaborations, 500 songs ("conservatively"). "It's been a great life," he adds...
Life started for him in Providence, R. I., 55 years ago on, as he is always ready to remind you, July 4. He trouped with his family, The Four Cohans, in "Jerry Cohan's Irish Hibernia" when he was nine. His sister Josie was billed as "America's Youngest and Most Graceful Skirt Dancer." "Master Georgie" was featured for his "violin tricks and tinkling tunes." Aged 13, George traveled the country in Peck's Bad Boy, grew inured to the beatings he had to take in every town from boys who were irked by the Peck...
...strike organized by the White Rats, vaudeville union, marred the New York premiere of The Governor's Son, Cohan's first musical comedy, in 1901. But after that nothing stopped him. When critics belabored his offerings, when editorial writers fumed at his famed flag-waving act, Cohan began publishing The Spotlight, a weekly throwaway. "Week after week I'd go after them," he recalls. "Week after week they'd come back at me. They slipped me at least a million dollars worth of free newspaper advertising." In 1904 he went into partnership with Sam Harris. They...
George M. Cohan is no more arrogant than George V of England. Neither of them sees any reason for humility. Cohan probably has more friends than any one in the show business. His dressing room is a salon. While Hirano slides deftly about waiting for a sign that his employer needs a cigaret, actors, journalists, policemen, priests, all sorts of people arrive and depart. Mr. Cohan owns gold badges given him by both the New York and Chicago constabulary. A good Roman Catholic, he never denies a Catholic charity the right to produce his plays. Many an actor has popularity...
...Manhattan the Cohan home faces the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. There he writes his songs and plays. He turns out a play a year regularly. The last was Pigeons & People, a mad comedy which is now on the road. He writes his plays as rehearsals progress, pacing up & down the aisle dictating to a secretary and the actors. He moves about among the cast like a white-polled patriarch, stroking a girl's hair, giving an actor's arm a friendly squeeze. They love it. His motions are all deliberate, but even in his gravity there...