This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] David Armstrong: Some years ago, there was, born on the 4th of July, an American boy. That young fellow who was born on the 4th of July has since become the greatest individual single figure in the American stage. George M. Cohan. Did you ever see two Yankees part upon a foreign shore? When the good ship is just about to start for old New York once more? The tear-dimmed eye says goodbye, their friends without a doubt. And the man on the pier shouts loud and clear as the ship strikes out. Give my regards to Broadway. Tell all the boys at 42nd Street that I will soon be there. Whisper of how I'm yearning to mingle with the old-time throng. Give my regards to old Broadway and say that I'll be there, there long.

Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a particular focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artist who invented it. I'm David Armstrong, and this is the final episode of a three-part conversation with author Elizabeth T. Craft regarding her recent book, Yankee Doodle Dandy, George M. Cohan, and the Broadway Stage, the first major work about Cohan in 50 years. If you missed the first two episodes in this series, you may want to catch up with those before listening to this one. In this episode, Elizabeth Craft and I discuss the final decades of Cohan's remarkable career, during which he continued to establish and define the very nature of celebrity, including the impact he had on a young Oscar Hammerstein II and the next generation of Broadway innovators.

Elizabeth also shares with us how during the 1920s, in a series of hit musicals, Cohan for the first time put his Irish-American heritage and identity at the center of his work, which was not without controversy. Along the way, she clears up the mystery behind Cohan's claim that he was born on the 4th of July, provides us with an inside view of the making of the classic 1942 Cohan bio-musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, and sums up his enduring legacy as the primary inventor of the myth of Broadway. If you're a fan of Broadway Nation, I invite you to join patrons such as Ruth Oberg, whose generous longtime support helps to make this podcast possible. If you're interested, there'll be information at the end of the episode about how you, too, can become a patron.

Here we go. The 20s are this huge sea change in American culture. The Jazz Age comes in. Cohan is not a part of that, and yet somehow he's able to remain a major figure, even though he's decidedly old-fashioned and out of step with a lot of what's happening. Yes, he kind of marvels at jazz, but doesn't know how to write it. His was the era of ragtime, but he finds a new route to success in these Irish American themed musicals. And that indeed is your next section, the Irish American, where, again, he sort of doesn't entirely abandon the Yankee Doodle boy persona, but now brings his Irish identity much further forward.

[3:52] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. I wondered when I started looking into him, well, what happened? You know, we have these patriotic themed musicals and we have some other things around business and other themes. And we have these Irish American. What changed? In part, the market changed. Irene was a huge hit in 1919. In the 20s, these Cinderella themed shows became a big hit. All of these sparked by Irene. I think it's something that I've noted recently. I was just looking at some of this yesterday. Actually, Irene runs three times longer than any other show has ever run. Massive. Massive. So it has this impact that we just don't appreciate today. Irene is this quaint little show, you know, from 1919, but it's Oklahoma of its day and influences all these shows, Sally and Sunny and all these shows that come after it. And Maya Cantu, who's also been a guest on the show, has a wonderful book about these Cinderella shows and the theme of Cinderella and musical theater.

[4:46] David Armstrong: Absolutely. So Cohan jumps onto this train, but he does it specifically with all Irish American heroines for him. He also a little earlier had a show called The Voice of McConnell about an Irish tenor. That was a play with music. So he's starting to see the success of Cinderella themes. This is partly because the position of the Irish in American society has shifted. They are more accepted. They are not fully welcomed into the American elite, but they have a firm footing in American society. Although Catholicism is still highly suspect. I was taken by that quote in your book. You say after the war, a revived, organized Ku Klux Klan targeted Jewish and Catholic as well as black Americans. That's right.

They are more established, but they're still not seen as fully American, not seen as fully respectable. And there is a group of people who does not think that they should be there, that they are not truly Americans and is trying to drive out Catholics, Jewish and black Americans. And his shows spoke to the concerns of the time within the Irish American community. And for outside audiences, they portrayed the Irish and the U.S. as good Americans. It felt like initially, well, am I reading too much into these shows? They're like they're Cinderella shows, rags to riches. The heroine gets rich. She lives happily ever after. But a Time magazine article makes this passing remark about the rise of Rosie O'Reilly that these shows by Cohan were an obvious defy to the Ku Klux Klan. Wow. Just thrown into a review as if we don't even need to explain this. Everyone knows it. So I found that really fascinating that others were seeing them through this lens as well during the time.

[6:28] David Armstrong: It's the same old song they sing. I love you. The boys are all mad about Nellie, the daughter of Officer Kelly. And it's all day long. Flowers all dripping with dew. And they join in the chorus of Nellie Kelly. I love you. And specifically, the four shows we're talking about are The Voice of McConnell, which you mentioned was the earlier show they wrote for Chauncey Alcott, who was a big Irish star of the day. But then the three Cinderella shows are Little Nellie Kelly, The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly and The Mary Malones. In that show, something happens to the leading actor and Cohan has to step into the leading male role. You say for the very first time he's playing an Irish character on a Broadway stage.

[7:30] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes, this was in the late 20s. He had gone all that time writing Irish characters, playing these patriotic and these other characters. He had never himself played an Irish-American character. And even then, only because he basically had to save the show. He seemed in the teens and 20s to embrace his Irish identity more. He joined some organizations that dealt with Irish-American history and other things. Now that he was successful, he could kind of embrace that part of his heritage, I imagine, without the fear of being pigeonholed as an ethnic playwright or type. So in your next section, which is very much related to the earlier section, The Entertainer, this section is called The Celebrity.

Although we're surrounded by celebrities today, we're in the age when anyone can be a celebrity. It still takes a great deal of invention to pull it off of some kind. But I love this quote you had. From the moment he bounded onto the Broadway scene at the turn of the century to his death, he was a megastar of his day. During the period when the very nature of celebrity was being reshaped by changing technology, business practices and notions of individuality.

[9:37] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. All of the changes that we've talked about that were reshaping society were also reshaping fame and celebrity. Trains and steamships could now transport celebrities around the world. There was more affordable print media. This meant that there were more newspapers, more magazines, including a lot that were dedicated solely to theater. It was like the People magazine or Hollywood magazines of the day. That are hungry for content.

[9:56] David Armstrong: Absolutely. They've got to have something to sell to their readers. The role of the press agent becomes very important. These press agents would generate material for the print media to keep their clients in the public eye. And the magazines are keeping their sales up. And Cohan was very savvy at navigating all of this. He put out his own with Harris. They put out their own newsletter, a house organ called The Spotlight, where they would talk about other shows and things of the day, but also plug their own shows. And Cohan was very savvy in hiring a good team, including publicists like Eddie Dunn, Walter Kingsley, Charles Washburn. These names were new to me. They're not the people we think of as, you know, they're not the Jerome Kern of the 1920s. But they were very important in the ecosystem that was Broadway and in keeping in what people knew about Broadway and its stars. And Cohan and Harris lean into advertising in a way that was new to a certain extent as well.

[10:55] Elizabeth T. Craft: They did, and they didn't mind the occasional stunt. One fun find in my research was an article in a Dutch newspaper. Cohan was famous beyond U.S. borders, that told about a particular scheme that they had received and reported as news. A man from Pennsylvania had come into some money and used it to be millionaire for a day in New York City, including attending Cohan's new musical, The Little Millionaire, and being a guest of Cohan's at a dinner party. But then they discovered that Cohan cooked up the whole scheme to advertise his shows and commented on that he was very keen on publicity. So then the fact that he's publicizing himself then becomes part of the publicity about him. So he's like David Merrick before there's David Merrick. He's finding these angles to promote the shows.

[11:41] David Armstrong: Absolutely. I'm always interested in the impact theater artists have on especially the immediate next generation. And you quote extensively Oscar Hammerstein II talking about being such a fan of Cohan, and I'd never come across that before.

[11:57] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. He seemed to idolize Cohan. Oscar Hammerstein II was young when Cohan was in his heyday and he was the fresh new thing on Broadway. And Hammerstein writes in a piece from much later about how much he and his buddies all wanted to be like Cohan with his quick wit and his sophisticated, casual manner. He was fashionable. He was jaunty. He describes his clothes that he wore.

[12:21] David Armstrong: Yes. He dressed very stylishly in all the ways that annoyed some of the critics. The younger generation coming up thought it was very hip and cool and wanted to emulate him. And later in the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein II heads the effort to get a Cohan statue in Manhattan.

[12:38] Elizabeth T. Craft: So the reason that statue is there in the center of Times Square is a great deal to do with Oscar Hammerstein II.

[12:44] David Armstrong: Absolutely. And he had to fight against some resistance that still came from the equity strike. There were some people who felt like that was not the person who should be at the center of Times Square.

[12:54] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. He had the Library of Congress has the letters with him reaching out to people to raise the money. Oscar Hammerstein II was so well-loved. Many said, if you're doing it, I'll give you money. And some remembered Cohan and were happy to give. Others weren't for various reasons. But equity sent a check in the amount of a lifetime membership, which Cohan, you know, symbolic of the fact that Cohan would never join. Hammerstein actually returned it and said, no, I'm not going to let you poke at George and his grave. Thank you. But no, thank you. So funny.

[13:26] David Armstrong: Certainly by the 50s, people had not fully forgiven him for his role in the equity battle. I've heard mention of it even in recent times.

[13:33] Elizabeth T. Craft: It's so interesting that still lingers there, even if people don't fully understand what it was about.

[13:38] David Armstrong: Yes. It got reduced to he was on the wrong side without any understanding of any nuance that might have been happening.

[13:45] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. You delve into a very tricky aspect of Cohan, which is, was he actually born on the 4th of July as he said he was? And the most recent biography, I think, made a case for that.

[13:59] David Armstrong: It was true, sort of came down to that. Well, that's how the family always celebrated it. Why should we not believe them? But it doesn't seem to have been true.

[14:08] Elizabeth T. Craft: That's right. It's a little sad to realize, but it was not. He was born on the third. Another scholar researcher had found a baptismal certificate showing that it was the third. But as the last biographer, John McCabe, noted, documents can be wrong. And his parents always said he was on the 4th of July and they're very honest. But in researching for this book and with the help of a historian named Scott Scandage, who shared some documents with me, there's a Jerry's diary went up for auction at one point, and it shows very clearly celebrating George's birthday on the third. And there are birth records. They were a little hard to trace because they weren't from Rhode Island. They were in Boston. And it shows very clearly that he was born on the third of July. But hey, why let a few hours get in the way of a good story?

[14:53] David Armstrong: Exactly. As well, they say print the legends. George was printing his own legends at the time. Yes. And in fact, you call him Broadway's press agent. And I guess his major client was himself. How much do you think he's responsible for inventing the brand, the idea of Broadway?

[14:37] David Armstrong: Not just the place in New York, it was American theater, including The Road. So yes, he helped sell the idea of this mythical thing called Broadway that went beyond the industry or even the artistry of it to have this bigger symbolic value in American culture.

[14:55] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yeah, it's interesting because Broadway is so much more than just a street or an industry. It's an idea, it's a concept, it's a way of life.

[15:03] David Armstrong: It's a dream.

[15:05] Elizabeth T. Craft: He's starting that idea and it's not just the song, "Give My Regards to Broadway," although it has a great deal to do with it, but that's in his first show and he continues that throughout his career.

[16:01] David Armstrong: The final section of your book is The Great American Service of Yankee Doodle Dandy. Explain that title just a little bit to us.

[16:09] Elizabeth T. Craft: This chapter is about the biopic from 1942, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring Jimmy Cagney. And for many people, if you know Cohan at all, you picture Cagney.

[17:06] ♪ Musical number: "Harrigan" — performed by James Cagney ♪

[17:08] Elizabeth T. Craft: That's how folks know about Cohan. But as Yankee Doodle Dandy was being created and then filmed, World War II is brewing and then begins. They had already thought about patriotism as one of the themes, but it really became about the patriotism and it became a wartime movie and it became, as Warner Brothers said, a great American service. It was a why we fight movie. Why are we going to fight this war? This is why. Because of these values, because of these ideas.

[17:35] David Armstrong: And in a way, it was also about Cohan's great American service to the country.

[17:40] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. In it, we see the president giving Cohan the Congressional Gold Medal. This is an award that he actually got for his service to the country in the form of his patriotic songs. That's the framing device for the film. And the theme is that his songs and his service in the realm of Broadway were as important to the nation as any military gesture. And in fact, "Over There," his World War I era song became newly important in World War II to the point that government documents talk about that. His songs were very important fodder in the battles of these wars.

[18:16] David Armstrong: I know it's a line of dialogue in the movie, but I think Roosevelt says to him, dancing on the stage is as important as anybody picking up a gun and going to fight.

[18:23] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes. But the film wasn't necessarily initially going to be so much about that. The filmmakers really struggled with what angle to take. They struggled to work with Cohan. It was fairly unusual for the subject of the musical biopic to still be alive and want to be involved. And he did want to be involved.

[18:43] David Armstrong: And he did want to be involved.

[18:45] Elizabeth T. Craft: He provided his own script. The film's early screenwriter, Buckner, said that Cohan was taking it very seriously and in fact was independent as hell about this film. He was not the easiest to work with. As we've already said, he wanted to be in charge. And so giving up that creative control, especially for someone to tell the story of his life, was very difficult for him and then difficult in turn for those creating the film to work around the constraints that he gave. They couldn't talk about his personal life, or at least certain aspects of it. The fact that he had been divorced and remarried, that was off limits.

[19:21] David Armstrong: So none of his actual wives were allowed to be mentioned in the movie.

[19:24] Elizabeth T. Craft: Correct. There was actually a lawsuit about this from Ethel Evie, but it was a kind of funny example of a legal suit because she was upset about the film, but she was actually not portrayed. In some ways, she was upset that she wasn't there, even though she was very important in his career. But she was cut out. They ended up coming up with a fictional romance with a character named Mary, which worked very well with his song titles.

[19:50] David Armstrong: So they made up a wife and he agreed to it?

[19:53] Elizabeth T. Craft: Made up a wife and he agreed to it. They weren't sure initially about the patriotism thing. They had the same concerns that early critics did. It kind of seems like he's using the flag to sell himself. This doesn't look so great. And we're in the 30s when this is happening, so that makes a lot of sense. But then overnight, America enters the war and they turn on a dime, basically.

[20:15] David Armstrong: Yes.

[20:16] Elizabeth T. Craft: All of a sudden, patriotism is the angle and they sell Cohan on it because they're almost at wit's end in creating this. They're almost ready to just pull the plug. But they try again and say, this is really important now more than ever. This is the film we're going to make. Cohan agrees to it. And we have this amazing film. And we talked about some of the elements that are not true to life that are really veer far from the actual facts. But there's a lot about it that actually is mostly true and really represents Cohan's career and especially his style of performing.

[20:47] David Armstrong: Yes, they took a lot of care with the research for this film. So the theatrical history, a lot of it is fairly accurate. The performance scenes, the dancing style. Cagney worked with Johnny Boyle, who was a performer, a dancer from some of Cohan's shows and who had staged dances for Cohan. So that part, we do get a glimpse of authenticity in the dancing and movement style.

[21:12] Elizabeth T. Craft: So when we see Cagney dance in that film, we are seeing as close as you can get to actually seeing Cohan to a great extent.

[21:18] David Armstrong: Yes, I think so.

[21:19] ♪ Musical number: "Yankee Doodle Dandy" — performed by James Cagney ♪

[21:46] Elizabeth T. Craft: It's so hard to know what Cohan looked like on the stage. We have reviews and written descriptions. We have that one recording of him dancing in "I'd Rather Be Right." And from all of these things and seeing what people said about the film, having already seen Cohan, it seems like as close a representation as we can get of his dancing style and way of moving on the stage.

[22:13] David Armstrong: Yeah, and that tiny clip does feel reminiscent of Cagney in the movie. Most of the people working on the film were around to see Cohan when he was performing. And Cagney probably saw Cohan.

[22:25] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes.

[22:26] David Armstrong: Yeah. So that's really interesting. So Cagney could talk to other people and say, does this seem right? Does this seem right?

[22:31] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yeah. And he seemed to be very concerned to replicate Cohan.

[22:34] David Armstrong: Yes.

[22:35] Elizabeth T. Craft: To be authentic in that regard.

[22:36] ♪ Musical number ♪

[22:49] David Armstrong: Interestingly, most of those other biopics, and this was a wave of biopics from especially the 40s, everybody got one. Starts with Ziegfeld, the great Ziegfeld, but almost every vaudeville figure gets one. The Dolly sisters, although almost all of them are third rate and are entirely forgotten today. This picture, however, still is very much with us and still has a lot of stature. Where does this picture stand today?

[23:11] Elizabeth T. Craft: It was rightly awarded multiple awards, got three Academy Awards for Cagney, for the music, for the sound recording. It's been inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. It is seen as a great American film, as a classic. Certainly part of its legacy is the patriotism. It shows up every 4th of July on movie channels. And that's kind of how it circulates. A lot of times it's interesting to see how it circulates in the social media and online world as well, with little clips on YouTube and whatnot.

[23:45] David Armstrong: Yeah, I mean, it's constantly being excerpted places, which is really interesting.

[23:49] Elizabeth T. Craft: Yes.

[23:50] David Armstrong: And it's a testament to Cagney's amazing performance and the hard work and artistry of the team making it, because it could come across. Patriotism is hard today. It's hard to sell. It's very politicized. But the fact that this film from this particular moment of war has stood the age of time is a testament, I think, to how well it was made.

[24:13] Elizabeth T. Craft: And kind of amazing that it has continued Cohan's legacy. He would have persisted probably anyway, just because, if nothing else, the songs. But the movie guaranteed he would be with us strongly still today. It gives us an image. He's captured for posterity and not just on a sound recording or through sheet music, but through a film that we can go watch again and again.

[24:31] David Armstrong: They used to say immortalized and celluloid. And that really is exactly what happened here.

[24:37] Elizabeth T. Craft: It's just not himself. But through Cagney's performance, Cohan was immortalized and celluloid.

[24:42] David Armstrong: Yes, yes. But I would hope that people would use this as a jumping off point, too, because there is so much more. And, you know, it's not just the romance that's not captured in the film, even though the performance style is. The music has changed a lot. The musical style is drastically different in 1942 than it would have been in the aughts. Cohan's songs live on, but they are changed to fit the musical style of each new generation, which is, of course, the testament to a great song is that it can sustain in that way.

[25:12] Elizabeth T. Craft: You've written the book. You've now had a chance to talk about it and meet a lot of people who've read the book. What do you see as Cohan's legacy? Why are we still talking about him literally a hundred years later?

[25:24] Elizabeth T. Craft: The songs. We still sing the songs, right? It's been a hundred years. You might be annoyed when you hear "You're a Grand Old Flag." You might feel that swelling of patriotism. But it's still here. It's still sung by schoolchildren. "Give My Regards to Broadway" is a classic. It's an anthem. It is still the anthem of the American theater. There's no Tony Awards that doesn't play it. There's no big theatrical event that does not feature that song. It's a great song. In my epilogue, I write about Patti LuPone singing it and the ways that it lives on. So his songs are a big one. The way that he Americanized and helped make the musical the musical. All of the ways that we've talked about that his fingerprints are there, even if we didn't always know who was doing those things or that he was one of the ones pioneering these different things. And then the mythologization of Broadway. He's the one who made Broadway Broadway. And they're all intertwined. But these are the three big legacies to me.

[26:21] David Armstrong: Absolutely. Elizabeth Craft, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you today on Broadway Nation. We are delighted to hear more about one of my heroes, George M. Cohan.

[26:28] Elizabeth T. Craft: Thank you so much, David.

[26:31] ♪ Musical number: "Give My Regards to Broadway" ♪

[27:02] David Armstrong: If you love this podcast and want to delve even deeper into the world of Broadway musicals, I invite you to become a patron of Broadway Nation. For as little as $7 a month, you can receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the interviews featured on this podcast. I often record twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited public episodes. And you also have the exclusive opportunity to hear additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host, Albert Evans. And all patrons will receive special on-air shout-outs and acknowledgments of your vital support. To join, simply go to broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. That's all one word, broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. Or simply click the link in the show notes to this episode.

[27:52] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.