Department of Music Lecture: “George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage”

Elizabeth Titrington Craft, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Utah

 Title:
“George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage”

Abstract:
Composer, lyricist, playwright, director, theater owner, and star performer George M. Cohan definitively shaped the burgeoning genre of musical comedy and the institution of Broadway in the early twentieth century. His songs and shows captured the spirit of an era when staggering social change gave new urgency to efforts to define Americanism. This lecture will situate Cohan as a central figure of his day and discuss a pivotal event in his career and Broadway history, the actors’ strike of 1919, demonstrating how Cohan’s unique position as Broadway performer and magnate made him a lightning rod in this highly publicized battle between business and workers.

Biography:
Elizabeth T. Craft is a musicologist and cultural historian who explores how music conveys sociopolitical values and constructs national identity, focusing especially on musical theater from the early twentieth century through the present. Her book Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage (Oxford University Press, 2024) examines how Cohan—a composer, lyricist, playwright, director, producer, and star performer—shaped the burgeoning genre of musical comedy, the institution of Broadway, and the American cultural landscape in the early twentieth century. Her work has also appeared in American Music, Studies in Musical Theatre, The Oxford Handbook of Arrangement Studies, The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical, The Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical, and Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction, 1900–2000.