The George M. Cohan Statue -- Duffy Square

photo by Alice Lum

George M. Cohan was born on July 3, 1878—one day before the Fourth of July—with musical theater in his veins.   At a very early age he joined his family in their vaudeville act, “The Four Cohans,” that included his father, mother and sister.

By his teens, when the talented boy was not wowing audiences with his singing, dancing and acting, he was composing songs and plays.  In 1901 at the age of 23 he produced his first play in New York, The Governor’s Son.  Undaunted by its luke-warm reception, he followed-up with Running for Office in 1903.  The 20-member cast included the all four of the Cohans, and George introduced 15 new songs.  The manager of the Fourteenth Street Theatre touted it as “a real novelty.”



One song from The Governor's Son had the shocking title "Never Breathe A World of This To Mother [Father Who's Your Lady Friend?] -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Like The Governor’s Son, Running for Office was doomed to fade into theatrical oblivion.

Then the following year George produced Little Johnny Jones.  Things were about to change for the 26-year old George M. Cohan. 

As with his earlier projects, along with writing the play Cohan was his own song-writer and lyricist.  Among the 16 new songs in Little Johnny Jones were two standouts—“Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “Yankee Doodle Boy.”  The latter foreshadowed the patriotic songs Cohan would pen during World War I and which would become his hallmark.

One page from an advertising pamphlet for Little Johnny Jones promised "The prettiest girls and the funniest play that ever departed from Old Broadway." -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Little Johnny Jones was a hit with Broadway audiences as well as on the road.  Each time Cohan took the play to another city, he was pulled back to New York.  On August 1, 1905 The New York Times noted “George M. Cohan has come back to the New York Theatre with ‘Little Johnny Jones.’  Seven times already has this musical comedy been in New York, and this is its second visit to the New York Theatre.”

While his hit play was running, Cohan was busy working on a new musical.  In 1905 he simultaneously produced Forty-five Minutes from Broadway; and on February 11, 1906 The Times reported “George M. Cohan, who made the unique record of twelve engagements in New York in his own play, ‘Little Johnny Jones,’ in the eighteen months past, will return to this city to-morrow evening and present his new musical play ‘George Washington, Jr.,’ at the Herald Square Theatre."

The newspaper noted that “Like ‘Little Johnny Jones,’ Mr. Cohan wrote the book, lyrics, and music of ‘George Washington, Jr.,’ staged the piece himself, and plays the principal role.”  Cohan added to his list of patriotic songs with his new production.  “Mr. Cohan sings two new patriotic songs, ‘The Grand Old Rag,’ [later renamed "You’re a Grand Old Flag”] and a topical song, ‘If Washington Came to Life.’”

photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

By 1920 Cohan had written and produced more than 50 musicals, comedies, revues and dramas.  With the United States' entry into World War I, his patriotic fervor, expressed as music, detonated.  In 1917, shortly after hearing that the United States had declared war on Germany, he wrote “Over There.”  The tune became the virtual rallying song of Americans throughout the war; and was later resurrected during World War II.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

In February 1919 Cohan played the leading role in his A Prince There Was.  In its review, The New-York Tribune wrote less about the play than about its author and principal actor.  “No one is particularly concerned to find out whether Mr. Cohan is as good an actor as he is an acute and successful playwright and author.  As a matter of fact he is.  Accomplishments seldom come singly…He keeps in continuous operation a three-ring circus of which he is the sole performer.  Thus in one ring he is busily pyramiding the plays he is writing, in another he is juggling chaotic bits of the new musical piece he is producing and in the third he lightly trapezes into the performance of ‘A Prince There Was.’  These three rings cannot be kept going simultaneously, of course, but the successions are effected with the smooth continuity of a protean artist.”

Cohan's 1910 production The Man Who Owns Broadway included this lavish chorus scene -- photograph by Byron & Co. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWE24X85&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=579

One of the three rings of the Cohan circus was about to disappear.

Later that year the Actors’ Equity Association struck the Broadway theaters.   Cohan opposed the strike which sought restrictions which would hamper his appearing in his own productions.  Although while the strike continued he donated $100,000 to finance the Actors’ Retirement Fund, many theatrical professionals never forgave him.  He announced his retirement from acting that year.

The Sun opined on November 30, 1919 “As actor, playwright, dancer and singer he has enjoyed all the success that might come to any man.  And it is as playwright, in such work as ‘Get Rich Quick Wallingford’ and in ‘Seven Keys to Bald Pate’ that he has shown ability of a fine order…Mr. Cohan’s present retirement will never be regretted if it affords him the time to write plays as good as the best of those he has produced in the past.”

On June 29, 1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt added to Cohan’s many distinctions when he presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal for his patriotic songs that bolstered morale during World War I.  The song-writer was the first person in an artistic profession to receive the honor.

As he aged and his theatrical and musical successes continued, George M. Cohan was the embodiment of Broadway.  Throughout the decades he represented the profession at the funerals of its greatest names—Barrymore, Belasco and Gershwin among them.  In 1941 Broadway feared Cohan’s own funeral was imminent.

On October 18 he underwent an emergency operation for “an abdominal condition.”  The 63-year old was reported to be “gravely ill.”   That he was suffering from stomach cancer was not publicized for months.   While he was hospitalized, Warner Bros. was finishing up its musical spectacle based on Cohan’s life, Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Cohan was played by James Cagney.

The film was released in 1942.  George Cohan was by now severely ill and a private screening was held for him.  Reportedly his comment on Cagney’s portrayal was “My God, what an act to follow.”

Later that year, at 5:00 a.m. on November 6, “George M. Cohan, the Yankee Doodle Dandy of the American stage who gave his country its greatest song of the first World War, died,” as reported by The Times.  The newspaper called him “The great song and dance man—perhaps the greatest in Broadway history.”

The President of the United States sent a telegram to Cohan’s widow saying “A beloved figure is lost to our national life in the passing of your devoted husband.  He will be mourned by millions whose lives were brightened and whose burdens were eased by his genius as a fun maker and as a dispeller of gloom.”

Two days later St. Patrick’s Cathedral was overwhelmed by the crowds at Cohan’s funeral.  “Four thousand persons including many standees filled the edifice during the high mass of requiem.  Two thousand more, according to police estimates, gathered outside the cathedral, leaving the steps clear for the long procession of honorary pallbearers,” said The New York Times.

Among the dignitaries in the church were five Governors, two Mayors, the Postmaster General, and the former secretary to President Woodrow Wilson.  The honorary pallbearers included Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Crowninshield, Sol Bloom, Brooks Atkinson, Rube Goldberg, Walter Huston, George Jessel, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Eugene O’Neill, Sigmund Romberg, Lee Shubert, Jerry Vogel and Fred M. Waring among many others.

Before long a committee was organized to memorialize Cohan on Broadway.   On June 26, 1956 committee chairman Oscar Hammerstein announced the plans.  The city agreed to improve the block-long triangular Duffy Square and organizers were already collecting subscriptions towards the $75,000 statue.  Hammerstein announced that the base of the statue would bear the inscription “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

The Times noted that “Irving Berlin, who suggested the inscription, already has pledged $10,000, Mr. Hammerstein said.”

Georg John Lober was given the commission to sculpt the statue and architect Otto Langman worked on the granite base.  (The pair simultaneously worked on the Hans Christian Anderson statue in Central Park.)  

photo by Alice Lum

As the memorial was in work, Oscar Hammerstein commented on it in 1957.  “When I was told that there was talk of building a statue to commemorate George M. Cohan, I started immediately to wonder why it had not been done before.  And then I tried to think of how many statues of American actors, playwrights or song writers I had seen in the parks or streets of American cities.  I could think of none.  Perhaps there are a few.  I hope so.  Here, at any rate, is a man who deserves quite obviously to be so honored.  New York is the right city to have a statue of George M. Cohan, and the Broadway which he served so well is the right place in that city to harbor the statue.”

By November 21, 1957 when ground was broken the cost of the statue and base had risen to $100,000.  On September 11, 1959, following the last Broadway curtain’s drop that evening, the statue was finally unveiled.  “Ten thousand of the old throng, Broadwayites, entertainers, policemen and theatre-goers jammed into the area around Broadway and Forty-sixth Street for the unveiling of a bronze statue eight feet tall at the south end of Duffy Square,” reported The Times the following day.

George Jessel, wearing the obligatory cane and straw hat of a song-and-dance-man, acted as master of ceremonies.  Just past midnight, as the end of the ceremony ended, the 10,000 onlookers joined in song, belting out “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

photo by Alice Lum

The Father Francis P. Duffy Statue -- Times Square

photo museumplanet.com

“I am a very Irish, very Catholic, very American person, if anybody challenges my convictions.  But normally and let alone, I am just plain human.”

And that is how Father Francis Patrick Duffy described himself in the preface to his 1920 autobiography “Father Duffy’s Story.”   New Yorkers, however, disagreed.  Father Duffy was anything but “just plain human.”

Things started out calmly enough for the priest.  He was ordained in 1896 and, upon graduating from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, he was sent to St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York as Professor of Psychology and Ethics.  Duffy had been Army chaplain during the Spanish-American War and, after becoming pastor of Our Savior Catholic Church in the Bronx, was made chaplain of the 165^th National Guard Unit of the 42^nd Division – formerly the 69^th  Infantry Regiment  – the year World War I broke out in Europe.

And that’s when things changed for the Irish priest.

The unit was dubbed “The Fighting 69^th” by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and remembered in an Irish-American folk tune “The Fighting 69^th” for its Civil War exploits.  The 165^th would always be the 69^th to its soldiers.

With America’s entry into the war in 1917, the regiment was shipped off to fight.  Among the soldiers was poet Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant.  On the ship transporting the troops across the Atlantic, he described the men lining up for confession with Father Duffy “as long as the mess-line.”

If officers expected the chaplain to wait passively for the soldiers to return so he could administer rites and dispense priestly wisdom, they were wrong.  By the end of the war, Duffy was the most highly decorated chaplain in U.S. Army history – earning the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. and the Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre from the French military.

While on the front lines, Joyce Kilmer was writing the story of the regiment in battle.   A year after the unit’s deployment, the writer was killed at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918, at 31 years old.  Father Duffy picked up Kilmer’s notes and finished the project.

When the war was finally over, Duffy quietly returned to New York City to take up his duties as pastor of Holy Cross Church in Hell’s Kitchen, just a block from Times Square – a gritty area of mostly Irish immigrants living in poverty.  He died on June 26, 1932.

Almost immediately a movement was begun to honor the hero priest with a monument.    On September 10, 1935 the Municipal Art Commission gave preliminary approval to a model of a statue designed by sculptor Charles Keck to be erected in the large, triangular traffic island in Times Square where Broadway and 7^th Avenue intersect above 47^th Street.

The dramatic and powerful design depicted Duffy in the uniform of the 69th, helmet at his feet, holding a bible.  Behind the soldier-priest a monolithic green granite Celtic cross rose.

The monument was completed in the Spring of 1937 and as the city prepared for its unveiling, renowned photographer Berenice Abbot chanced upon the tightly-wrapped statue one day in April.    The unusual subject was too much to pass up and Abbot began assembling her tripod and setting up the shot.

Before long a curious crowd assembled to watch the photographer’s work.   A Times Square beat cop was not as interested in her art.  Berating her for causing a public disturbance he ordered her to move on.  Abbott took one hasty shot and packed up.  “I wasn’t smart about fighting back them,” she later lamented.

A few days later, on May 2, the statue was unveiled.  “Before the eyes of 30,000 persons massed in Times Square yesterday,” reported The New York Times, “white surpliced altar boys held aloft a crucifix and candles, there was unveiled the statue of a Roman Catholic priest in the uniform of a soldier of the A. E. F.”

Berenice Abbot's pre-unveiling shot produced a curious crowd and the ire of a Times Square cop.

The finished bronze statue is nearly 8 feet tall and the green granite cross tops 17 feet.  The traffic island on which it sits was renamed Father Duffy Square.   Only eight years after it was dedicated, the statue was nearly lost when the city considered melting it down in 1943 for scrap metal for the war effort.

In 1941, the year the U.S. entered World War II, sailors admire the Duffy statue.  Two years later the City would decide whether or not to destroy it for scrap metal -- Rodney McCay Morgan/New York City Parks Photo Archive

Father Duffy Square has seen dramatic changes since that Spring day in 1937 when the statue was unveiled.  Throngs of tourists and New Yorkers alike pass the monument daily in bustling Times Square.  The modern TKTS booth now forms the statue’s backdrop.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia presides over the dedication ceremonies on May 2, 1937 -- photo army.mil

The monument was restored in 1997 with money provided by the Times Square Business Improvement District when it was conserved and repatined.    The powerful depiction of Duffy was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.