GeorgeMCohan.org

George M. Cohan and Me...

How the George M. Cohan Project Came to be...

When I was nine years old, I watched James Cagney in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy. The film was shown eight times in one week on Channel Nine's Million Dollar Movie. I watched it all week, enthralled. It became my favorite movie; it remains so today. The stirring Cohan songs--"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Give My Regards to Broadway," "You're a Grand Old Flag"--simply got to me. I went to the encyclopedia to learn more about Cohan, wrote a 10-page report for school. The first report I ever wrote in my life! (My parents still have it.) I acted in shows in New York in those days. But I used to have vivid, recurring  color dreams of playing Cohan.

Cohan was the first important American songwriter of the 20th century--Irving Berlin's earliest, most important influence.  As I explored hundreds of Cohan songs, I was fascinated to see there was far more to him than was captured in either the 1942 film "Yankee Doodle Dandy" of the 1968 Broadway musical, "George M!," which I saw a couple of times. There were poignant Cohan songs (like "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living") and breezily cynical Cohan songs (like "Under Any Old Flag at All). One reason I've created my Cohan shows is to help expose wonderful music that has been all but lost.

I gathered materials on Cohan, thinking at first that I might write a book about him.  But his life was so colorful, so vivid.  And  because--as one veteran actor told me--his life was essentially lived on stage, I decided instead to create a show about him.  (And nine-time Tony-winner Tommy Tune--one of my heroes in this business--told me at a party we need more people writing shows; there aren't enough people aiming to write shows.) Well, I held auditions, seeking an actor who could play Cohan.  I saw some 60 actors--many of whom were good, in a cookie-cutter kind of way, but lacked the flair needed to portray this master showman.  I was about ready to give up, when Jon Peterson auditioned.  He sang one number, and I said, "That's it, you're my Cohan."  He asked what we would do now; this was a Friday afternoon.  I said, "Well, now I go home and start writing the script.  We start rehearsals on Monday, and open in three weeks."  He thought I was joking.  But on Monday, I began passing out pages of my far-from-finished script, and we began rehearsals.  Cohan always liked to start rehearsals before scripts were finished--he felt the pressure of the process added energy--and we were honoring the tradition.  I wrote the rest of the script as we rehearsed.

Three weeks later we opened. The show, titled "George M. Cohan: In His Own Words,"  was the unexpected hit of a theatrer festival I was producing (mounting 25 different productions in six weeks--143 performances in all.)  Jonny was a fantastic Cohan--not only winning great hands for the famous Cohan numbers, but moving people to tears with a touching rarity I'd dug up for him, "Life's a Funny Proposition After All." That song, which has languished in obscurity for decades, touched people as deeply as any of the famous songs. And we had some audience members crying every night, at show's end.