| George M. Cohan Still Stands in Times Square |
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 George M. Cohan: July 3, 1878-November 5, 1942  The George M. Cohan statue stands in Times Square to pay tribute to the man who opened the Broadway show "Little Johnny Jones" The funny thing was, he’d already presented the show on Broadway, a year earlier. But at that time it had gotten lukewarm notices and played a disappointing 52 performances. Cohan wouldn’t settle for that. After all, he had specifically folded into the show all of the ingredients for a hit: flag-waving, rousing patriotic songs and show-stopping dance numbers. When it fizzled in the fall of 1904, he took it on the road, worked out all the bugs and went through all the effort and expense of remounting on Broadway all over again. This time he got it right. “I’ve always been an envious cuss,” wrote George M. Cohan, “As a kid in vaudeville I was often on the same bill with a hoofer that I thought was the best in the world, so I spent all my time trying to match him. It was the same with song-writing, play-writing, and acting – there was always somebody a lot better than I was, and I worked to close the gap between us. My notion is the guy that thinks he’s the tops isn’t going to do much climbing.” He had been competitive, difficult and pushy since childhood. Born on the Fourth of July just like his most famous lyric (in 1878), he joined his father Gerry, Mother Nellie, and sister Josie in the family vaudeville act by age 8. George was cocky beyond words. Before he hit puberty he was already bossing stagehands around and effecting his own negotiations with E.F. Albee, General Manager of the B.F. Keith vaudeville chain. As Cohan liked to tell it, he confidently told Albee to pay him “what he was worth” for his violin act. When Albee forked over six dollars, Cohan quit in a huff. By his late adolescence, Cohan was the manager of the family vaudeville act, a role unsuited for his mild-mannered father. In 1899, acting on behalf of his family, he severed ties with the B.F. Keith chain completely over a dispute about the act’s billing, effectively ending their career in big time vaudeville. It was just as well. From vaudeville, the family went straight into musicals written, directed and produced by their famous son. In addition to Little Johnny Jones, Cohan hit in big with 45 Minutes from Broadway (1906); Popularity (1906); The Talk of New York (1907);. 50 Miles from Boston (1908); The Yankee Prince (1908); The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909) , Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1910); Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913), and many others. For them, he penned the classic songs “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, “Give My Regards to Broadway”, “Life’s a Funny Proposition After All”, “45 Minutes from Broadway”, “Mary’s a Grand Old Name”,“It’s a Grand Old Flag”, “Harrigan”, and “Over There”, many of which we have come to know as well as “Happy Birthday”. Through talent and sheer force of will he imprinted his personality on the American consciousness, and it remains there a century later. And lest we forget, his statue stands next to the TKTS booth at Duffy Square to remind us. (Adapted from "No Applause: Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous"  , by Trav S.D., published by the Faber & Faber imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux in November, 2005) |
