Background
George Cohan was born on July 4, 1878, in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Jerry John and Helen Frances (Costigan) Cohan.
(Mystery Comedy George M. Cohan Characters: 10 male, 4 fem...)
Mystery Comedy George M. Cohan Characters: 10 male, 4 female Interior Set One of the most famous of Cohan's plays happens in a lonely tavern on a wild stormy night where a mysterious vagabond, a woman and the State Governor and his family who have been held up a short distance away gather. Several persons are suspected of the crime and the mysterious vagabond takes infinite delight in observing developments as they take place about him. When suspense reaches an almost unbearable climax, the vagabond is at last located by the keepers of a nearby Sanitorium and it is learned that he, a madman, has been responsible for the vastly amusing and complicated series of misunderstandings.
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(Seven Keys To Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at Th...)
Seven Keys To Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at The Astor Theater, in NYC. Based on the novel of Earl Derr Biggers by the same title, Seven Keys To Baldpate has been revived and filmed many times. The first filmed version, in 1917, starred Cohan himself who starred also in a 1935 revival for the Player's Club. In films, it was remade 5 more times, the last in 1983 with the title House Of Long Shadows starring Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, John Carradine, and Peter Cushing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1461094151/?tag=2022091-20
(Complete book and lyrics to the classic 1904 Broadway mus...)
Complete book and lyrics to the classic 1904 Broadway musical. Hailed as the first American musical “Little Johnny Jones” changed musical theatre history. George M. Cohan, displeased that Broadway musicals at the time were European based, set out to write a truly American musical. Using the story of an American jockey, Cohan legitimized the use of American narratives for the musical theatre. While not a darling of the critics, the musical was a tremendous crowd pleaser and give Cohan his first break out hits with “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “The Yankee Doodle Boy.” Theatre Arts Press is proud to publish the first printed libretto of this classic American musical.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1515284999/?tag=2022091-20
Actor comedian composer dancer Entertainer lyricist playwright producer singer
George Cohan was born on July 4, 1878, in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Jerry John and Helen Frances (Costigan) Cohan.
Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer.
A legendary figure in American musical theater, Cohan was literally born to show business. His parents were traveling vaudevillians on the small-city circuit; Cohan was carried onstage as an infant in a skit of his father’s.
At age of nine, he spoke his first lines onstage. He began to write sketches at age eleven and songs at age thirteen; his first published song came at age sixteen. By then he was an old hand, having performed the lead role in Peck’s Bad Boy from the age of twelve.
Cohan, who handled the family’s business as well as wrote most of its material, was yearning for the bigger stage: Broadway.
George was a producer of his own and others’ plays. With Sam Harris, produced more than forty-five plays by Cohan and others during 1904-1920, and in 1937. He was starred in Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O’Neill 1933, and as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in I'd Rather Be Right, by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart during 1937-1938. George Cohan appeared in screen versions of several of his own plays.
In 1925, he had success in print with his autobiography, Twenty Years on Broadway, and the Years It Took to Get There: The True Story of a Trouper’s Life from the Cradle to the “Closed Shop, ’’—the term “closed shop” in the subtitle referred to his acrid dispute with the actors’ union.
(Seven Keys To Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at Th...)
(Complete book and lyrics to the classic 1904 Broadway mus...)
(Mystery Comedy George M. Cohan Characters: 10 male, 4 fem...)
Quotes from others about the person
“Never was a plant more indigenous to a particular part of the earth than was George M. Cohan to the United States of his day,” wrote songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II in a 1957 tribute to Cohan.
George married Ethel Levey, actress, in 1900. They divorced in 1907. He married second Agnes Nolan, a dancer, in 1909. They had 3 children: Mary Helen, Helen Frances, George M.