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George M. Cohan [biography]
Dates: 1878-1942
Birth Date: Jul 3, 1878
Death Date: Nov 5, 1942
Place of Birth: Providence, RI
Place of Death: New York, NY
George M. Cohan, the vaudeville-to-Broadway actor, dancer, playwright, and composer who blended Irish musical and literary traditions into an American musical theatre style of singing and dancing, was born George Michael Cohane in the Irish-populated Fox Hill-Corkie Hill section of Providence Rhode Island, the only son of Jeremiah John "Jerry" Cohane and Helen Frances "Nellie" Costigan. Jeremiah John "Jerry" Cohane was born on January 31, 1848 in Boston; his father's surname O'Caomhan was simplified to Keohane, which in turn became Cohan at the time of the entry into the United States; he was the son of Michael Keohane and Jane Scott Keohane from County Cork, Ireland who migrated to America in the mid-1700s and settled in Massachusetts. Helen Frances "Nellie" Costigan was a first-generation Irish Catholic-American born in Providence, Rhode Island. As a young fellow after the Civil War the elder Jerry Cohan, who had always been fascinated by clog steps and Irish reels, turned from harness-making to the profession of the stage. Working in blackface as an "Ethiopian Comedian" and billing himself as "Jerry, the Gaelic Harper, Irish Fiddler and Sweet Singer," he worked in the minstrel companies of Chase & Howard, Huntley & Swinell Morris Brothers' minstrels, La Rue's Carnival Minstrels and the McEvoy Hibernians. Writing his own songs, inventing his dances, and staging and managing his acts, he was advised in his early years to stick to dancing, at which he was particularly talented, and throughout his life was particularly prideful about the fact that he competed against the great "wooden shoe" clog dancer Dick Sand (George R. Sands) to the clog championship of St. John, N.B. and won. Soon after Jerry married Nellie (June 1874), Jerry took a job organizing Hibernicons, an entertainment of Irish vaudeville songs, dances, and rapid-fire sketches that sought to maintain Irish song and dance traditions in America; and soon after, despite the paucity of Nellie's stage experience, organized themselves "Mr. And Mrs. Jerry Cohan," performing vaudeville sketches incorporating rich rapid-fire patter, songs, and a clog dances. They toured with the Irish variety show The Molly Maguires, which Jerry took under his own management. After their daughter Josephine, who would flower into the most talented dancer, was born, and by the time little George was eight, the Cohan brother and sister became working members of the family act which they named The Four Cohans. By 1889 "The Cohan Mirth Makers" appeared in a program that included Jerry and Nellie's clever one act sketch, "Retiring from the Stage"; Jerry in "The Dancing Philosopher"; Josephine as Queen of Terpsichore and George as The Lively Bootblack in "Master Cohan's Own Conception of Buck and Wing Dancing," concluding with the four in the song and dance comedy "Goggles Doll House," in which George and Josie as "Dancing Dolls" leapt "into rhythmic life." They played this musical sketch over the next two years in 600 one-night stands throughout the country.
At age thirteen George's portrayal of Hennery, the incorrigible boy who makes life a roaring hell for his parents and neighbors, in Peck's Bad Boy (adapted from George W. Peck's novel, Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa) founded the physical and emotional life of a stage character—a ruddy-faced little man (five-feet-six and weighing around 135 to 140) pounds) with Irish-blue eyes and cocky enthusiasm but a heart of gold who danced "with his arms, legs, hands, feet, ankles," and walked in a cockeyed prance with a grimace and a wagging finger. With his nasal out-of-the-corner-or-the-mouth talking and his cock-eye prancing across the stage, Cohan made a unique adaptation of the minstrel show walkaround and cakewalk strut and also Irish American humor. One farcical sketch The Four performed during an intense period of touring and which made its New York debut at Keith's Union Square Theatre in 1893) was the twenty-minute fast-paced production of The Lively Bootblack. The lyrics in George sang the lyrics (composed by his father) set the 4/4 strutting rhythm of the tune:
I'm called the Lively Bootblack
For my style and occupation,
When work is done I like to play
By way of recreation.
My cousin is an actor boy;
He's often been before you;
I know you're fond of dancing,
So a specimen I'll show you.
He then threw himself into a vigorous, board-pounding Irish reel concluding with a double heel slap, an unabashed signal for applause,. But at the debut of this number at Keith's Union Square Theatre in the Cohans' New York debut, no applause came. Trying to appear unruffled he continued into the second verse of the song:
I sneaked into a fancy ball
With whiskers made of false hair.
The dancers couldn't dance at all;
I taught them how to waltz there.
He then fell into a spirited waltz clog, with another applause-begging finish. When the audience, unimpressed with the performance and preferring to read the newspaper while sitting in the house seats, refused applause, he walked to downstage center and recited the pathos-soaked poem, "The Bootblack's Dream," still with no response from the audience. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, gritting his teeth through a forced smile, "I will now offer for your approval my own conception of the most difficult terpsichorean art, commonly known as buck and wing dancing." Calling to attention the fact that the steps were of my own invention, and that no other living dancer had ever been able to master the same routine," Cohan proceeded with what has been described as "a dexterous buck and wing," topped by a finish that became a Cohan trademark-- a spirited run up the side of the proscenium arch and back to center stage for a breathless bow. While this flash ending was met with stunted applause, it became Cohan's signature move throughout his dancing career, winning an encore for his waltz clog.
At age seventeen, while the Cohans were playing a one-week engagement at the Court Theatre in Buffalo, New York, Cohan claims to have accidentally in performance created a style of tap dancing step that made him the most imitated vaudeville dancer at the turn of the century. Intending to dance an Essence (an early form of the Soft Shoe) to something other than the usual tune of "Coming Thru the Rye" which was played in flowing 6/8 time, the accompanist misunderstand and instead played an unusually slowed-down tune in 2/4 time, forcing Cohan to switch from the whispering shuffles and walking and steps of soft shoe to the harder and noisier buck and wing steps, which he dragged out (in order to accommodate the slower tempo) by leaping from one side of the stage to the other (instead of remaining center stage as was customary). Laughter stimulated him to exaggerate the steps. As Cohan later recalled: "I did a jump with my scissors grinder step and threw my head back at the same time. It got a scream of laughter. I repeated this a moment later and got a second big laugh…I faked a couple of funny walks to fit in the spots where I to eliminate certain steps on account of the slow tempo and each of the walks got hearty laughs and rounds of applause. I finished with an eccentric walking step, throwing my head back with the hair flying all over my face and made an exit with the end of the strain instead of ending with the old-fashioned break." Cohan claims that he performed this eccentric dance to the same music for twenty years and that it "revolutionized American buck dancing, but also set the hoofers to doing away with jug sand (used for soft shoe dancing on sand.
The "grinder step" that Cohan notes references the Irish step grind, which consisst of four taps of the ball of the feet, transferring weight from one foot to the other after each tap and proceeded by a hop of the supporting leg; what Cohan was perhaps doing in his "scissors grinder step" was slashing the legs outwards and closed in, scissor-like, on the preliminary hop before making multiple cramp-rolling sounds on the ball of the feet. Cohan, who did not receive any formal dance training, inevitably learned to dance from his father Jerry, whose parentage was from Country Cork, Ireland. The predominant feature of this so called Southern or Munster style of stepping poised the dancer on the ball of the foot. Cohan's style of buck-and-wing, which he claimed to have revolutionized, incorporated more aerial steps (hops, jumps, leaps) that with addition of his "cock-eyed prancing" style of strutting, claimed more horizontally covering of the stage space while remaining rhythmically precise.
After splitting with Keith, the Cohans set their sights on a transition from vaudeville to the Broadway stage, turning to George to take over all writing, which he did with Money to Burn, a lively one-act about a spendthrift, and The Professor's Wife, a farce. Next came the one-act sketches, Running for Office and The Governor's Son, which were expanded into full-length plays (and played in downtown New York theatres) with plot complications that made it a vehicle for the family and over two dozen actors, including a role for his wife, Ethel Levey, a singing comedienne. The evening-length version The Governor's Son opened at New York Savoy's Theatre (February 25,1901). Set in a resort inn, the action consisting of couples dividing and reuniting, Jerry and Nellie playing the roles of a mature couple who, at the end of one day being married, have had one-hundred-twenty-four fights just in one day of marriage because of his jealousy. George played Algy Wheelock, the bright and brash son of the governor of the state who would dash on, dance, and dash off and was paraised by one critic for his "clever capable legs that prance uniquely with apparent disregard of others members." (McCabe 54) With Running For Office (April 27, 1903, 14th Street Theatre) was staged by Cohan with such unrelenting rapidity that the audience scarcely had time to draw its breath between laughs (Cohan was obsessed with the rapid entry and exit of allo characters, particularly the chorus people; "Speed! Speed! And lots of it. That's the idea of the thing. Perpetual motion!" he commented after the opening night of the production); Cohan's alternation of stroll pace to a running tempo became one of his permanent contributions to American musical theatre. (McCabe 56) Runing For Office also began the Cohan habit of infusing his already colloquial dialogue with current slang.
With the opening of Little Johnny Jones on Broadway at the Liberty Theatre on 42nd Street (November 7, 1904), with Cohan playing the title role as a cheeky Englishman affianced to an American girl, singing "I'm A Yankee Doodle Dandy," the jingly exuberant prototype of Cohan's bragadiccio song-and-dance man was set (the Irishness, the nonsense strain, the jingly exuberance) while also embracing the ambitions of being a total man of the theatre): Forty-five Minutes From Broadway (1906) in which a suburban housemaid gives up an inheritance so she won't lose the big city smart-aleck she loves, starred Fay Templeton with Victor Moore, included the catchy song-and-dance, "Mary's a Grand Old Name," one can here the 6/8 jig under the 4/4 bar of a softshoe:
For it is Mary, Mary,
Plain as any name can be.
But with propriety
Society wil say "Marie"…
Cohan directed all his productions to run at a quick pace, never giving an audience the chance to feel bored."Speed! Speed!, and lots of it; that's my idea of the thing. Perpetual motion." When they came to New York in 1900, American musical theatre lacked definition. New York theatergoers had their choice of three basic forms of musical shows: operettas, with boringly undeviating formulaic plots; musical vaudeville (and its close kin, burlesque) which had abounding energy and little artistry; and musical farce, with its unsophisticated treatment of immigrants."Irish-Americans were regarded as especially colorful types Irish American were regarded as especially colorful musical sketches of life in New York's Five Points section. It was to the farced-based, roughly vigorous, Harrigan and Hart and Charles Hoyt tradition of American plays with music that Cohan looked for inspiration when he first began to write for Broadway.
[Sources: John McCabe, George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway (1973); Ward Morehouse, George M. Cohan: Prince of the American Theatre (1943); Helen Brennan, The Story of Irish Dance; Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]