Word: cohane
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When Death, the prompter, as it must to all actors, called exit last week George M. Cohan did not have to wonder what his notices would be like: his career had been vividly reported to millions while he lived. Five months before death (of cancer) Cohan had seen a runoff of his own cinemapotheosis, Yankee Doodle Dandy (TIME, June 22), with James Cagney outdoodling the actor he portrayed. The picture turned the jauntiness and the flag-waving, the Cohan tunes and the Cohan tricks, into a nostalgic tintype of an era. No one typified that era more than Cohan himself...
Songwriter, actor, dancer, vaudevillian. playwright, Cohan was never equaled-even by Noel Coward-for sheer versatility. But his many talents had a single aim, a showman's aim: to please the crowd. "First think of something to say," his formula ran, "Then say it the way the theatergoer wants to hear it-meaning, of course, that you must lie like the dickens." Of pure Irish stock, he never plugged the wearing of the green-it was always the red, white & blue...
...child of troupers, Cohan was born in Providence July 4, 64 years ago, when Jerry and Nellie Cohan had $1 between them. At eight he was fiddling in the orchestra for a thriller "so melodramatic they had to pump blood out of the cellar before they could finish the third act." At 13 he played lead in Peck's Bad Boy, He was always part of The Four Cohans-once voted the most popular act in vaudeville. Cocky and conceited, he was a hellion in his youth. "Great actors are born," he said once. "I know. I was born...
...Cohan & Harris. Cohan hit Broadway at 23 in his own show, The Governor's Son. Joining at 26 with the late Sam H. Harris in as profitable a partnership as Broadway has ever known, Cohan clicked off such popular hits as Little Johnny Jones, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, The Miracle Man. He tossed off song hits like You're a Grand Old Flag, Yankee Doodle Boy, Give My Regards to Broadway. Sometimes he had six or seven productions a year-writing one while rehearsing another and acting in a third. During World War I he wrote Over There...
Walter Houston, Joan Leslie, and Francis Langford play supporting roles effectively, but it's Cagney's show from beginning to end. He dominates it as completely as Cohan would probably do if he were there. When the time for handing out prizes rolls around. Cagney's performances ought to give him a running head-start. And the movie won't b far behind...