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M A George Biography & Facts
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 – November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s and continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940. Known in the decade before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan in Times Square, New York City, commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Early life Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that Cohan was born on July 3, but he and his family always insisted that he had been "born on the Fourth of July!" His parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk. Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848–1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Peck's Bad Boy and then joined the family act. The Four Cohans mostly toured together from 1890 to 1901. Cohan and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his early years, he later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, he originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you." As a child, Cohan and his family toured most of the year and spent summer vacations from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where he befriended baseball player Connie Mack. The family generally gave a performance at the town hall there each summer, and Cohan had a chance to gain some more normal childhood experiences, like riding his bike and playing sandlot baseball. His memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, which is set in North Brookfield and contains one of his most famous songs, "Harrigan". As he matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, Wilderness! in 1934, he told a reporter "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield." Career Early career Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the family act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans. His first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy". Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His major hit songs included: "Give My Regards to Broadway" "You're a Grand Old Flag" "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway" "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch" "Life's a Funny Proposition After All" "I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune" "You Won't Do Any Business if You Haven't Got a Band" "The Small Town Gal" "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All" "That Haunting Melody" "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye" "Over There", America's most popular World War I song, was recorded by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, and others. The song reached such currency among troops and shipyard workers that a ship was named "Costigan" after Cohan's grandfather, Dennis Costigan. During the christening, "Over There" was played. From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris. Aside from the plays Cohan wrote or composed, he produced with Harris, among others, many of which were adapted for film, It Pays to Advertise (1914) and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year. His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres. One of Cohan's most innovative plays was a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate in 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit. Cohan further adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, as well as for TV and radio. He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association. In 1912 Cohan and Harris acquired Chicago's Grand Opera House and renamed the theatre "George M. Cohan's Grand Opera House". It was renamed "Four Cohans Theatre" in 1926 but reverted to Grand Opera House in 1928 when Cohan divested the property and the Shubert family became the sole owners of the theatre. In 1925, he published his autobiography Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There. Later career Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of his tribute to vaudeville and his father. In 1932, he starred in a dual role as a cold, corrupt politician and his charming, idealistic campaign double in the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President. The film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, with songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was released by Paramount Pictures. He appeared in some earlier silent films but he disliked Hollywood production methods and only made one other sound film, Gambling (1934), based on his own 1929 play and shot in New York City. A critic called Gambling a "stodgy adaptation of a definitely dated play directed in obsolete theatrical technique". It is considered a lost film. By the 1930s, Cohan walked in and out of retirement. He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and in the role of a song-and-dance President Franklin D. Roo.... Discover the M A George popular books. Find the top 100 most popular M A George books.
Best Seller M A George Books of 2024
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The Afghanistan Papers
Craig Whitlock & The Washington PostA Washington Post Best Book of 2021The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year a...
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Modern Classics of Fantasy
Gardner DozoisWhile humanity has been telling fantastic stories for millennia, fantasy fiction has only come into its own as a genre in the latter half of the twentieth century, as the works of ...
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The Courage to Hope
Shirley SherrodIn the summer of 2010, Shirley Sherrod was catapulted into a media storm that blew apart her life and her job doing what she’d done for decades: helping poor, hardworking people li...
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The Layered Garden
David L. Culp, Adam Levine & Rob Cardillo“Gardenmaking, in its finest form, is a celebration of life and of love. David and his book epitomize this.” Lauren Springer Ogden Brandywine Cottage is David Culp's beloved t...
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The First Congress
Fergus M. BordewichThis “fascinating” (Chicago Tribune), “lively” (The New York Times) history tells how the First Congress and the Washington administration created one of the most productive and fa...
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Great Novels of E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster & Louis AuchinclossA renaissance of E. M. Forster is certainly under way. The success of the many films based upon his novels demonstrates Forster’s appeal to the modern audience and his aptitude for...
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One Fine Day
Matthew ParkerThis critical historical exploration shows a portrait of the British Empire at both the peak of its global reachand the moment it began to topple. September 29, 1923. Once t...
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Old Venus
George R.R. Martin & Gardner DozoisSixteen allnew stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multipleawardwinning editor Gardner Dozois From pulp adventu...
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The Life, Poetry and Influence of Sappho
Sappho & David M. Robinsoneartnow presents to you this meticulously edited Sappho collection. This edition includes complete poems by Sappho, one of the greatest poets of Ancient Greece . This book include...
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Operation Barras
William FowlerThe inside story of the most daring SAS rescue mission everIn September 2000 eleven British soldiers were captured by a notorious militia gang in Sierra Leone. The socalled 'West S...
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How to Lead
David M. RubensteinThe New York Times Bestseller #1 Wall Street Journal BestsellerThe essential leadership playbook. Learn the principles and guiding philosophies of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Ruth Bade...
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Once Upon a Time
Elizabeth BellerThe life and legacy of Carolyn BessetteKennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., are reexamined in this captivating and effervescent biography that is perfect for fans of My Travels wi...
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Vertigo 42
Martha GrimesThe inimitable Richard Jury returns in the latest in the bestselling mystery series: “Martha Grimes has written a whodunit with terrific characters and a grand plot mixed with her ...
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Speeches That Changed the World
Simon Sebag MontefioreComprehensively updated with many new speeches including Earl Spencer's lament to "The extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana", Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech of 1956 signalling ...
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Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
Gail CrowtherNamed a Best Book of 2021 by the Los Angeles TimesA vividly rendered and empathetic exploration of how two of the greatest poets of the 20th centurySylvia Plath and Anne Sextonbeca...
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Chasing Gold
George M TaberFor the entire history of human civilization, gold has enraptured people around the globe. The Nazis was no less enthralled by it, and felt that gold was the solution to funding Hi...
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Medea and Other Plays
Euripides & Philip VellacottMedea/Hecabe/Electra/HeraclesFour devastating Greek tragedies showing the powerful brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatredThe first playwright to depict suffering with...
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Life of George M. Horton
George Moses HortonLife of George M. Horton, The Colored Bard of NorthCarolina is a short autobiography by the famous AfricanAmerican poet.
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Proximity
M.A. GeorgeShe's an alien whose home world doesn't even know she exists.He just inherited a planet, and now he's running from it.She has spent a lifetime hiding in plain sight.He wants to esc...
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The Trade Trap
Mathias DöpfnerGlobal business leader Mathias Döpfner offers a “compelling” (Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for Financial Times) and revolutionary road map to reshape global trad...
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Choice Cuts
Mark Kurlansky“Every once in awhile a writer of particular skills takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight.” That’s how David McCullough described Mark Kurla...
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State of Emergency
Tamika D MallorySocial justice leader Tamika D. Mallory states her case for action and reveals “the power we all have to win transformative change” (Marc Lamont Hill, New York Times bestselling au...
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Possible Minds
John BrockmanScience world luminary John Brockman assembles twentyfive of the most important scientific minds, people who have been thinking about the field artificial intelligence for most of ...
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Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
Brian RafteryFrom a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999“a terrifically fun snapshot of American film culture on the brink of the Mil...
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The Genesis Machine
Amy Webb & Andrew HesselNamed one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FARThe next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies. Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how...
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JFK Jr.
RoseMarie Terenzio & Liz McNeilThe first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate, comprehensive look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing neverbeforetold stories and insights, hi...
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The Library Book
Tom Chapin & Michael MarkWhat’s the best way to cure a gloomy day? A trip to the library! Based on the hit song by Tom Chapin and Michael Mark, here is an affectionate, exuberant, uproarious celebration of...
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The Ultimate Engineer
Richard JurekFrom the late 1950s to 1976, the U.S. human spaceflight program advanced as it did largely due to the extraordinary efforts of Austrian immigrant George M. Low. Described as the “u...
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Kentucky Maverick
Carlton Jackson“An absorbing story about how the Lincoln veteran George Watt managed to escape from Nazioccupied Belgium.”San Francisco Review of Books November 1943: American flyer George...
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Old Mars
George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, Michael Moorcock, Joe R. Lansdale & James S. A. CoreyFifteen allnew stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multipleaward winning editor Gardner Dozois Burroughs’s A Pr...
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The Controversialist
Martin PeretzFeatured in the Wall Street JournalFrom his deep involvement in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s to his almost forty years at the head of the New Republic, Marti...
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Proximity
M. A. George"M.A. George blended just the right amount of scifi and romance together to create a compelling debut novel that leaves readers needing the second installment in the series immedia...
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Hotel Mavens
Stanley Turkel, CMHSThe word maven is defined by Wikipedia as a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. Since the 1980s it has become more common when the New Y...
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Citizen Cohn
Nicholas Von Hoffman & Stephen K. BannonNo one so famous or controversial led so many secret lives. Loathed by some, and well respected by others, Roy Cohn was known as the toughest and most brilliant lawyer in America. ...