Cohan, George M(ichael)

Cohan, George M(ichael) (1878–1942), American actor, manager, and prolific song-writer, an outstanding figure in the American musical theatre who also wrote plays. He appeared as a child with his parents and sister in an act billed as ‘The Four Cohans’, and at 15 was writing songs and skits for performance in vaudeville. In 1901 he made his first appearance in New York in The Governor's Son, for which he wrote book, music, and lyrics, and soon built up an enviable reputation with his musicals such as Little Johnny Jones (1904) and George Washington, Jr. (1906). In 1911 he opened his own playhouse, the George M. Cohan Theatre, with his comedy Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, appearing there later the same year in his musicals The Little Millionaire and Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway. Among his later successes were the comedy Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) and The Song and Dance Man (1923), in which he played a second-rate variety performer who thinks he is good. He was also a success in O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and Kaufman and Moss Hart's I'd Rather be Right (1937). From 1904 to 1920 he ran a successful producing partnership with Sam H. Harris (see SAM H. HARRIS THEATRE). Among Cohan's best known songs are ‘The Yankee Doodle Boy’, ‘Give My Regards to Broadway’, and ‘Over There’.