George M. Cohan

One of his most famous songs notwithstanding, George M. Cohan’s birthday was yesterday. But “born on the third of July” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Still, the family knew the show business potential of just the right birthday, even if George didn’t have the impulse for it when he was in the process of being born. Certainly no one could say that about him in later years, when he was known as “the man who owned Broadway.” He wrote so many great songs that it’s hard to realize that some of them are his.

Cohan was born into a vaudevillian family, initially serving as a plot in his parents’ act and learning to sing and dance as he learned to talk and walk. At age eight, he joined his parents onstage; along with his older sister, Josie, they were billed as the Four Cohans. Summers were spent at his grandparents’ house in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, giving him the only semblance of a normal childhood he would have. The rest of the year, the Cohans were on the vaudeville circuit. By the time he was fifteen, he was selling his first songs and writing for the family’s act.

World War I would resound to Cohan songs. “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” “When You Come Back.” And, most notably, “Over There.” By then, he was Tin Pan Alley’s biggest star, having written musicals starting in 1901, with The Governor’s Son. Over the years, he would write dozens of musicals and over three hundred songs and become one of the biggest names in the business. Some people credit him with developing the book musical, where there’s a real story and not just a collection of songs, and he incorporated dance into the plots.

Some of Cohan’s shows were adapted into movies, sometimes with Cohan performing in them. He was in five movies—three silent, which feels like a waste of a Cohan play, and two sound films. Gambling was based on one of Cohan’s plays; The Phantom President was not. He apparently did not care for Hollywood. Still, his plays have been adapted to the screen, either big or small, nearly forty times, most recently with Rock and Doris (try to) Write a Movie, starring Marilu Henner and Joe Regalbuto, from 2024. Alas, it doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere.

And, yes, he was portrayed by James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Cagney himself had an interesting career, playing heavies and light song-and-dance men, and Cohan was well within his talents. Cohan himself was at the time dying of cancer, but he was given a private screening of the movie and apparently said that Cagney would be a tough act to follow. It’s probably the way the most people know the name “Cohan” these days, and they may or may not realize that not only was he a real person, he wrote about half the songs from the movie. Quite a legacy.