The Flag-Waving Patriot (2024)

Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage

Elizabeth T. Craft

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780197550434

Print ISBN:

9780197550403

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Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage

Elizabeth T. Craft

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Elizabeth T. Craft

Elizabeth T. Craft

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Pages

15–45

  • Published:

    June 2024

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Craft, Elizabeth T., 'The Flag-Waving Patriot', Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage (New York, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 July 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197550403.003.0002, accessed 2 Sept. 2024.

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Abstract

Launching his career with a series of hyper-patriotic musicals—Little Johnny Jones (1904), George Washington, Jr. (1906), The Yankee Prince (1908), and The American Idea (1908)—George M. Cohan developed a reputation for so-called flag-waving and became an emblem of a Rooseveltian America. These shows broke new ground with their contemporary settings and characters, colloquial language, snappy tunes, and patriotic themes. Critics questioned whether Cohan’s flag-waving was art, entertainment, or propaganda, but his tactics received ringing endorsem*nt from the box office. Focusing on Little Johnny Jones (1904) and The American Idea (1908), this chapter demonstrates how they contributed to discourse about immigration and nationalism, modeling—and occasionally challenging—a Rooseveltian vision of America, with its ideal of “true Americanism.” Through the characters he played and the songs and shows he wrote, Cohan captured the period’s hopes and anxieties about race and nation, and he linked the emerging musical theater genre with American identity and nationalism.

Keywords: George M. Cohan, patriotism, nationalism, immigration, Theodore Roosevelt, Little Johnny Jones, The American Idea

Subject

American Music Popular Music

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Yankee Doodle Dandy. Elizabeth T. Craft, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197550403.003.0002

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