Home About us Products Services Contact us Bookmark
:: wikimiki.org ::
Herald Square

Herald Square

] Herald Square is formed by the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue (officially named Avenue of the Americas) and 34th Street in New York City. The area was named for the New York Herald, a famous newspaper originally headquartered there. The area is a retail hub. The most notable attraction is Macy's department store, the largest in the United States (and according to Guinness World Records the largest in the world). Macy's archrival Gimbel Brothers was also located in the neighborhood until 1986. Other past retailers in the area included E.J. Korvette and Abraham & Straus. Its name is widely remembered from a lyric in a well known George M. Cohan song Give My Regards to Broadway, in reference to the newspaper. Category:Manhattan Category:Newspaper headquarters

Broadway

Broadway may mean:
- Broadway (New York City), a major street in Manhattan, New York City: the world's most famous Broadway.
- Broadway theatre, theatrical productions produced in one of forty professional New York theatres
- Broadway, Norfolk
- Broadway, Suffolk
- Broadway, Worcestershire
- Broadway is a neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey
- Broadway (software), a programming tool
- Broadway, Seattle, Washington, a street and business district on Seattle's Capitol Hill
- Broadway, Sydney, a street south of the city of Sydney, Australia
- Broadway Shopping Centre, Sydney, a shopping centre in Sydney, Australia
- Broadway is the main shopping street of Newmarket, New Zealand
- Broadway, a character in the Walt Disney animated series Gargoyles named after the street
- Broadway is a street in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, New Kowloon, Hong Kong
- Broadway (cinema) is a chain of cinemas in Hong Kong
- Broadway (chip) is the code name of a chip to be manufactured by IBM for Nintendo's next generation "Revolution" gaming console.
- A station on the Detroit People Mover
- Broadway, a nickname for the poker hand consisting of a straight from ten to ace.
- Broadway is an alternative spelling of Broadwey, a suburb of Weymouth, England
- Broadway (song), is a song and released as a single by American rock band Goo Goo Dolls There are also streets named Broadway in other cities not listed above. There is, for example, a street called Broadway in San Francisco, and another one in Baltimore.

Avenue of the Americas

Sixth Avenue is a major avenue in New York City's borough of Manhattan. Although the Avenue's official name was changed to Avenue of the Americas in 1945 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New Yorkers seldom use this term and calling the avenue by that name has even become a cliché of sorts for something a tourist in the city might do but not a resident New Yorker (such as mispronouncing "Houston Street.") Traffic on Sixth Avenue moves uptown (northbound). At its southern end, Sixth Avenue intersects Church Street diagonally a few blocks south of Canal Street. Its northern end is at 59th Street (Central Park South) where equestrian bronzes of Simón Bolívar and José Martí flank the traffic entrance to Central Park at Center Drive (closed to traffic during restricted times, such as weekends). What would be Sixth Avenue north of Central Park, above Central Park North (110th Street), is called Lenox Avenue or Malcolm X Boulevard. Sixth Avenue is served by the IND Sixth Avenue subway line. The PATH train to New Jersey also runs under Sixth Avenue. Formerly the elevated IRT Sixth Avenue Line ran up Sixth Avenue, darkening the street and reducing its market value. After the "el" came down, Sixth Avenue was rebuilt during the 1960s as an all-but-uninterrupted avenue of corporate headquarters housed in glass slab towers of International Modernist style, of which the outstanding example is the CBS Building at 52nd Street, by Eero Saarinen (1965), dubbed "Black Rock" from its dark granite piers that run from base to crown with a break; it is Saarinen's only corporate tower. Eero Saarinen Sights moving up Sixth Avenue include Greenwich Village, with the polychrome High Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse; the surviving stretch of grand department stores of 1880 to 1900 that runs from 14th Street to Herald Square, ending with Macy's department store; Bryant Park followed by the corporate stretch, with the rear of Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.
06



Macy's

Macy's is the name of a chain of American department stores including a flagship store in New York City that it has long billed as the "world's largest." The company is also well-known for sponsoring Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, an annual parade in New York City. Macy's is part of Federated Department Stores.

History

Macy's was founded in 1851 by Rowland Hussey Macy as a dry goods store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts. In 1858, Macy moved to New York City and founded a new store named R.H. Macy & Company on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue, which later moved to 18th Street and Broadway on the "Ladies' Mile", the 19th century elite shopping district, where it remained for nearly 40 years. In 1896, Macy's was acquired by Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan, who had previously sold merchandise in the store. In 1902 the flagship store moved slightly uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway. Although the store initially consisted of just one building, it expanded through new construction and merging, eventually occupying the entire block bounded by 7th Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, 34th Street on the south and 35th Street on the north. The only exception is one small brownstone on the corner of 34th and Broadway, which remains a separate property, though Macy's rents it annually for a legendary sum, and always camouflages the facade with giant signs. Guinness World Records lists Macy's Herald Square flagship as the world's largest department store building, with 198,500 m² (2,150,000 ft²) of selling floor. However, some claim that other stores are larger, such as the GUM store in Moscow, Russia, or Marks & Spencer's Marble Arch in London. The same property problem presented itself when Macy's built a store on Queens Boulevard in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, This resulted in a architecturally unique round department store on 90% of the lot, with a small privately owned house on the corner. It was a case literally of the "little lady who wouldn't sell".

Expansion

Macy's underwent a period of expansion during the 1920s and 1930s. The company went public in 1922, and began to open up branch stores. Acquisitions were also made outside of the New York region. Department Stores in Toledo, Ohio (LaSalle & Koch) 1924, Atlanta, Georgia (Davison-Paxon-Stokes) 1929, Newark, New Jersey (L. Bamberger & Co.) 1929, San Francisco, California (O'Connor Moffat & Company) in 1945, and Kansas City, Missouri (John Taylor Dry Goods Co.) in 1947, were purchased during this time. O'Conner Moffat was renamed Macy's California in 1947. Macy's began opening stores outside of its historic New York City-Long Island trade area in 1983 with a location at Aventura Mall in North Miami, Florida, followed by several locations in Houston, Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana and Dallas, Texas. Davison's was renamed Macy's Atlanta in early 1985 with the consolidation of Macy's Midwest (former Taylor and LaSalle's stores in Kansas City and Toledo respectively), but late in 1985 turned around and sold the Ohio stores to Elder-Beerman of Dayton, Ohio and the Missouri and Kansas stores to Dillard's of Little Rock. Bamberger's which had aggressively expanded throughout New Jersey and into the Greater Philadelphia Mero Area in the 1970's and the Baltimore Metro area in the early 1980's was renamed Macy's New Jersey in 1986. In 1986 Edward Finkelstein, Chairman & CEO of R.H. Macy & Co., Inc. led a leveraged buy-out of the company and subsequently engaged in a takeover battle for Federated Department Stores, Inc. in 1988 that it lost to Canada's Campeau Corp., walking away with the purchase of Federated's California-based, fashion-oriented Bullock's and its high-end Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin divisions. It followed up with a reorganization of its divisions into Macy's Northeast (former Macy's New York and Macy's New Jersey), Macy's South-Bullock's (Macy's Atlanta plus Macy's New York operations in Texas, Florida and Louisiana), Macy's California and I. Magnin-Bullocks Wilshire, with the Bullocks Wilshire stores renamed I. Magnin in 1989. Subsequently R.H. Macy & Co., Inc. filed for bankruptcy in January 1992 at which point its banks brought in a new management team, which shut several underperforming stores and jettisoned two-third's of the luxury I. Magnin chain. Bullocks Wilshire

Merger with Federated Department Stores

R.H. Macy & Co. merged with Federated Department Stores on December 19, 1994. Federated promptly shutdown the remainder of the I. Magnin chain, converting several to Macy's or Bullock's and selling 4 in Carmel, Beverly Hills, San Diego and Phoenix to Saks Fifth Avenue. Federated also merged its Abraham & Straus/Jordan Marsh division with the new Macy's East organization based in New York, renaming the Abraham & Straus stores in metropolitan New York with the Macy's nameplate in 1995 and the erasing the Jordan Marsh moniker in New England in early 1996. Federated followed that by leading a mid-1995 bid to acquire the bulk of the Woodward & Lothrop/John Wanamaker organization in the mid-Atlantic region, a bid it pursued half-heartedly (and soon lost to a bid led by long-time rival and future acquisition target May Department Stores) as it soon agreed to purchase Broadway Stores, Inc. from its majority shareholder, Sam Zell, thereby gaining a dominant position in southern California and a strangle-hold on the northern California marketplace. It promptly subsumed The Broadway, Emporium and Weinstock's stores in California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico into its newly enlarged Macy's West unit (now including the Bullock's franchise), selling several redundant locations to non-competitors like Sears. In 2001 Federated dissolved its Stern's division in the New York metropolitan area, with the bulk of the stores being consolidated with Macy's East. Additionally in July 2001 it acquired the Liberty House chain with department and specialty stores in Hawaii and Guam, consolidating it with Macy's West. In early 2003 Federated closed the majority of its historic Davison's franchise in Atlanta (operating as Macy's since 1985), rebranding its other Atlanta division Rich's with the unwieldy name Rich's-Macy's, and rapidly followed suit in May 2003 with similar rebranding annoucements for its other nameplates, Burdines in Florida, Goldsmith's in Memphis, Lazarus in the lower Midwest and The Bon Marché in the Pacific Northwest. On March 6, 2005, Bon-Macy's, Burdines-Macy's, Goldsmith's-Macy's, Lazarus-Macy's, and Rich's-Macy's stores were renamed as simply "Macy's". Macy's has 424 stores throughout the U.S., as of July 2005[http://www.fds.com/company/aag_1_2.asp].

Merger with May Department Stores

On February 28, 2005, at a time when Macy's had about 400 stores, Federated agreed to terms of a deal under which it would acquire May Department Stores for $11 billion in stock, creating the nation's second largest department store chain with $30 billion in annual sales and over 1,000 stores. On July 28, 2005, Federated announced that, based on the success of converting its own regional brands to the Macy's name, it proposed to similarly convert 330 regional department stores owned by the May Company, named variously Famous-Barr, Filene's, Foley's, Hecht's, The Jones Store, Kaufmann's, L.S. Ayres, Meier & Frank, Robinsons-May, or Strawbridge's, pending approval of the merger by federal regulators. Where Macy's stores were in close proximity to other May company stores, some redundant stores would close while others might be converted to Bloomingdale's, another brand owned by Federated. On September 20th, 2005, Federated announced that all of its Marshall Field's stores would become Macy's by the end of 2006, becoming the new Macy's North division. The announcement was met with much negativity; the city of Chicago considers the change to be a slap in the face, and the people of the Midwest have lost yet another venerated and well-respected brand. If completed as envisioned by the Fall of 2006, Macy's would have approximately 730 stores in the United States. Lord & Taylor will remain a separate brand for now. Federated has announced that it will issue a decision about Lord & Taylor by the end of the 2005 fiscal year, i.e. the end of January, 2006.

Divisions

Lord & Taylor mall in Atlanta.]] Atlanta.]] As of July 2005, Macy's stores are organized into five divisions.[http://www.fds.com/company/aag_1_2.asp] (Bloomingdale's is a sixth retail division of Federated. There are also seven administrative divisions that provide corporaste support services). In 2006, there will be a sixth division in the Macy's stores once Federated Department Stores rebrands all Marshall Field's stores as Macy's. The announcement was made by Federated on September 20, 2005.
- Macy's Central — 71 stores/14,100 employees in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
- Macy's East — 94 stores/29,100 employees in Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Puerto Rico.
- Macy's Florida — 61 stores/9,800 employees in Florida.
- Macy's Northwest — 52 stores/7,200 employees in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
- Macy's West — 146 stores/31,100 in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Guam. The division also operates the macys.com Web site.
- Macy's North — will have 62 stores/25,000 employees in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin (will rebrand in 2006 from Marshall Field's to Macy's).

Trivia

Macy's has entered the popular psyche of the United States in a number of ways:
- The movie Miracle on 34th Street is set in Macy's, and remains a holiday season staple on US television. Remakes of the movie are often (but not always) set in Macy's.
- The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the most famous and most watched Santa Claus Parade, has been sponsored by Macy's for over 75 years. Among New Yorkers it is often referred to as "The Macy Day Parade". The first Macy's parade was held in Haverhill in 1854, but was only attended by about 100 people.
- The phrase "Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?" used in the USA as a put-off to inquiring people (the implication being that a company does not give information out to its competitors). Gimbel's was the other large department store, directly across 34th Street from Macy's. It has since folded.
- Macy's has also been sponsoring fireworks displays in New York for decades, usually on Independence Day.
- The star in the Macy's logo comes from a tattoo that Mr. Macy got as a boy.

External links


- [http://www.macys.com Macys.com]
- [http://www.fields.com Marshall Field's]
- [http://www.keepitfields.org Keep it Field's campaign] Category:Retail companies of the United States Category:New York City landmarks Category:Manhattan Category:Department stores of the United States

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which specializes in selling a wide range of products without a single predominant merchandise line. Department stores usually sell products including apparel, furniture, appliances, and additionally select other lines of products such as paint, hardware, toiletries, cosmetics, photographic equipment, jewelry, toys, and sporting goods. Certain department stores are further classified as discount department stores. Discount department stores commonly have central customer checkout areas, generally in the front area of the store. Department stores are usually part of a retail chain of many stores situated around a country or several countries.

History

retail chain Hudson's Bay Company in Canada was the first store to include departments, however by modern standards it would not be considered a department store because of the size and range of items that were stocked. The first true department store was founded by Aristide Boucicaut in Paris. He founded Bon Marché in 1838, and by 1852 it offered a wide variety of goods in "departments" inside one building. Goods were sold at fixed prices, with guarantees allowing exchanges and refunds. By the end of the 19th century, Georges Dufayel, a French credit merchant, had served up to three million customers and was affiliated with La Samaritaine, a large French department store established in 1870 by a former Bon Marché executive. In New York City in 1846, Alexander Turney Stewart established the Marble Palace on the east-Broadway, between Chambers and Reade streets. He offered European retail merchandise at fixed prices on a variety of dry goods, and advertised a policy of providing "free entrance" to all potential customers. Though it was clad in white marble to look like a Renaissance palazzo, the building's cast iron construction permitted large plate glass windows. In 1862 Stewart built a department store on a full city block at Broadway and 9th Street, opposite Grace Church, with eight floors and nineteen departments of dress goods and furnishing materials, carpets, glass and china, toys and sports equipment, ranged around a central glass-covered court. Within a couple of decades, New York's retail center had moved uptown, forming a stretch of retail shopping from Marble Palace, that was called the "Ladies' Mile". In 1858 Rowland Hussey Macy founded Macy's as a dry goods store. Benjamin Altman and Lord & Taylor soon competed with Stewart as New York's first department stores, later followed by "McCreary's" and, in Brooklyn, "Abraham & Straus" (The Straus family would be in the management of both Macy's and A&S. Similar developments were under way in London (with Liberty & Co) and in Paris (with La Samaritaine) and in Chicago, where department stores sprang up along State Street, notably Marshall Field and Company, which remains the second-largest store in the world (after Macy's). In 1877, Wanamaker's opened in Philadelphia. Philadelphia's John Wanamaker performed a 19th century redevelopment to the former Pennsylvania Railroad terminal in that city, and eventually opened a modern day department store in the building. On March 1, 1869 Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution was opened in Salt Lake City as a new community store that became the first incorporated department store in America in 1870. A new 3-story brick and iron store was built in 1876, noted for its unique architecture and striped awnings. This store was replaced by an enclosed shopping center in 1973, and the new Zion department store preserved the gilt-edged ornate facade of the old store. In 1999 the May Department Stores bought a 14-store ZCMI chain and changed its name to "Meier & Frank", a May property with eight stores in Oregon and Washington. In 1881, Joseph Lowthian Hudson opened a small men's clothing store in Detroit. After 10 years he had 8 stores in the midwest and was the most profitable clothing retailer in the country. In 1893 he began construction of the immense department store at Gratiot and Farmer streets in Detroit. The 25-story tower was added in 1928, and a 12-story addition in 1946, giving the entire complex 49 acres of floor space. In 1954 the company became a suburban shopping center pioneer when it built Northland 13 miles northwest of Detroit. In 1969 it merged with the Dayton Corporation to create Dayton-Hudson headquartered in Minneapolis. George Dayton had founded his Dayton's Daylight store in Minneapolis in 1902 and the AMC cooperative in 1912, built the Southland Shopping Center in 1956, and started the Target discount store chain in 1962. The new corporation closed the flagship Hudson department store in downtown Detroit in 1983, but expanded its other retail operations. It acquired Mervyn's in 1978, Marshall Field's in 1990, and renamed itself the Target Corporation in 2000. By 1890 a new world of retailing had been created as department stores had a clear market position as universal providers. General stores eventually became department stores as small towns became cities. The most prominent department stores emerged from small shops. The department store created several of North America's first large businesses. The department store is also largely responsible for the standard store design seen today, because of its size it required new building materials, glass technology and new heating, amongst other architectural innovations. The store layouts made shopping easier for consumers irrespective of their social or economic background. The department store also offered new customer services never before seen such as restaurants, restrooms, reading rooms, home delivery, wrapping services, store hours, new types of merchandise displays, and so forth. Some department stores leased space to individual merchants, along the lines of the new change in late 17th-century London, but by 1900 the smaller companies were purchased or eventually replaced by the larger companies. In some ways they were very similar to our modern malls, where the property owner has no direct interest in the actual department store itself, other than to collect rent and provide utilities. Today only the most specialized departments are leased out. This could include photography and photo finishing, automotive services, or financial services. However this is rare, even a store's restaurant is usually run by the department store itself today. Before the 1950s the department store held an eminent place in both Canada and Australia, during both the Great Depression and World War II. However, since then they have suffered from strong competition from specialist stores. Most recently the competition has intensified further with the advent of larger scale superstores (Jones et al. 1994; Merrilees and Miller 1997). However competition was not the only reason for the department stores weakening strength; the changing structure of cities also affected them as the compact and centralized 19th century city with its mass transit lines converging on the downtown, was a perfect environment for department store growth.

Discount store

A discount store is a type of department store, which sell products at prices lower than those asked by traditional retail outlets. Most discount department stores offer wide assortments of goods; others specialize in such merchandise as jewelry, electronic equipment, or electrical appliances. Discount department stores are more popular in the United States than other countries. Following World War II, a number of retail establishments in the United States began to pursue a high-volume, low-profit strategy designed to attract price-conscious consumers.

Countries

United States

World War II In the United States, retail brands and companies such as Dillard's, Federated Department Stores, Sears, J.C. Penney, and Nordstrom are considered department stores, while retail brands such as K-Mart and Wal-Mart are discount department stores. Other general merchandise retail establishments that combine a general line of groceries and other product lines characteristic of department stores are considered warehouse clubs or supercenters. Warehouse clubs require a nominal annual membership fee, while supercenters do not. Sam's Club and Costco are examples of warehouse clubs.

United Kingdom

Costco, England]] In 1906, Harry Gordon Selfridge a junior partner in Marshall Field's, left America to set up a department store, Selfridges in London. After it opened in 1909 it stimulated wide-ranging changes to British retail practice. The term "department store" is used somewhat more narrowly in the UK than in the US, generally only being applied to stores with a very wide range of departments situated in city and town centre or indoor shopping centre locations. Examples would include Debenhams, Fenwick, John Lewis and House of Fraser.

See also


- List of department stores
- Distribution
- Depato (Japanese department stores)
- Retailer
- Marketing

References


- Susan P Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1988), ISBN 025206013X
- Abelson, Elaine S. When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
- Barth, Gunther. "The Department Store ," in City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
- Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Culture: Saleswomen, Managers and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
- Ershkowicz, Herbert. John Wanamaker, Philadelphia Merchant. New York: DaCapo Press, 1999.
- Gibbons, Herbert Adams. John Wanamaker. New York: Harper & Row, 1926.
- Hendrickson, Robert. The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.
- Schlereth, Thomas J. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
- Spang, Rebecca L. The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2000. 325 p.

External links


- [http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/soc/shoppingcenter4.html History of The Department Store]
- [http://www.lowermanhattan.info/history/didyouknow/did_you_know_that_62478.asp A.T. Stewart's]
- [http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/charm/dept.store.pdf The Wonderful World of the Department Store in Historical Perspective: A Comprehensive International Bibliography Partially Annotate, Robert D. Tamilia Ph.D.] — Long detailed paper describing the history of the department store (PDF)
- [http://www.allaboutstuff.com/All_Kinds_of_Trivia/The_First_Department_Store.asp The First Department Store article at allaboutstuff.com ] Category:Distribution, retailing, and wholesaling
- Category:Marketing ko:백화점 ja:百貨店



George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan (July 1878 – November 5, 1942) was a United States entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, director, and producer of Irish descent. Known as "the man who owned Broadway" in the decade before World War I, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. Cohan was born in Providence, Rhode Island to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that he was born on July 3, but the Cohan family always insisted that George had been Born on the Fourth of July! George's parents were traveling Vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, at first as a prop, later learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk. He completed a family act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" Cohan (1848-1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854-1928), and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1874-1916). Josie's husband, Fred Niblo Sr. (1874-1948) was an important director of silent films, including Ben Hur (1925), and was a founder of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Their son, Fred Niblo Jr. (1903-1973) was an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. By his teens, Cohan became well-known as one of Vaudeville's best male dancers, and he also started writing original skits and songs for the family act. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. Cohan had his first big Broadway hit in 1904 with 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 1500 original songs, noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His other major hit songs included "You're a Grand Old Flag," "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," "Mary's a Grand Old Name," "The Small Town Gal," "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All," "That Haunting Melody," and "Over There." His 1936 song "Johnny Q. Public of the U.S.A." popularized a new nickname for the average citizen. An avid baseball fan, he also composed the official march of the St. Louis Cardinals. Cohan was the pioneer of the musical theater libretto. He is mostly remembered for his songs, later interpolated into musicals such as Anything Goes, Hello Dolly!, The Producers, and Guys and Dolls,. However, he invented the "book musical," becoming the first showman to bridge the gaps between drama and music, operetta and extravaganza. More than three decades before Agnes De Mille choreographed Oklahoma!, Cohan used dance not merely as razzle-dazzle but to advance the plot. The engaging books of his musicals supported the scores that yielded so many popular songs. As a storyteller, Cohan's main characters were "average Joes" and Janes. Characters like Johnnie Jones and Nellie Kelly appealed to a whole new audience. He wrote for every American, instead of highbrow Americans. [] In 1914, he became one of the founding members of ASCAP. In 1919, he unsuccessfully opposed a historic strike by Actors' Equity Association, for which many in the theatrical professions never forgave him. During the strike, he donated $100,000 to finance the Actors' Fund Home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Cohan wrote numerous other Broadway musicals and straight plays, in addition to contributing material to shows written by others -- more than 50 in all. Cohan shows included Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905), George Washington, Jr. (1906), The Talk of New York and The Honeymooners (1907), Fifty Miles from Boston and The Yankee Prince (1908), Broadway Jones (1912), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913), The Cohan Revue of 1918 (co-written with Irving Berlin), The Tavern (1920), The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923, featuring a young Ruby Keeler in the chorus), The Song and Dance Man (1923), American Born (1925), The Baby Cyclone (1927, one of Spencer Tracy's early breaks), Elmer the Great (1928, co-written with Ring Lardner), and Pigeons and People (1933). He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and in the role of a song-and dance President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Rodgers and Hart's musical, I'd Rather Be Right (1937). His final play, The Return of the Vagabond (1940) featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast. In 1925, Cohan published his autobiography, Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There. In 1932, Cohan starred with Jimmy Durante and Claudette Colbert in the Hollywood musical The Phantom President, later remade as Dave with Kevin Kline. In 1940, Judy Garland played the title role in a film version of his 1922 musical Little Nellie Kelly. Cohan's mystery play Seven Keys to Baldpate was first filmed in 1916 and has been remade seven times, most recently as House of the Long Shadows (1983), starring Vincent Price. His 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed with Jack Benny in 1943. In 1942, a musical biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was released, and James Cagney's performance in the title role earned the Best Actor Academy Award. The film was privately screened for Cohan as he battled the last stages of abdominal cancer. He died on November 5, 1942 at his New York City home, 993 Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After a large funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, Cohan was interred at the Bronx's Woodlawn Cemetery, in a private family mausoleum he had erected a quarter-century earlier for his sister and parents. Cohan is probably the most honored American entertainer. In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented him with a Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his contibutions to World War I morale, in particular the songs "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There." In 1959, at the behest of composer Oscar Hammerstein II, a $100,000 bronze statue of Cohan was dedicated in Times Square, at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor in New York City. He was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1970 and into the American Folklore Hall of Fame in 2003. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard. The United States Postal Service issued a 15-cent commemorative stamp honoring Cohan on his 100th birthday in July 1978. Many of these honors were accepted posthumously by Cohan's large family. In 1899, he had married Ethel Levey (1881-1955), a musical comedy actress who bore him a daughter, Georgette Cohan Souther Rowse (1900-1988). George and Ethel divorced in 1907 and she spent much of her subsequent career in England. He married again in 1907 to Agnes Mary Nolan (1883-1972), who had been a dancer in his early shows; they remained married until his death. They had two daughters and a son. Mary Cohan Ronkin (1909-1983) had a brief career as a cabaret singer in the 1930s, later composed a score for her father's non-musical play The Tavern, and in 1968 supervised musical and lyric revisions for the Broadway play George M! Helen Cohan Carola (1910-1996) made several movies, including Lightnin (1930) starring Will Rogers, and was one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1934. George M. Cohan, Jr. (1914-2000) graduated from Georgetown University and served (along with Sammy Davis Jr.) in the entertainment corps during World War II. In the 1950s, George Jr. reinterpreted his father's songs on recordings, in a nightclub act, and in television appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle shows. George Jr's only child, Michaela Marie Cohan (1943-1999), was the last descendant named Cohan. She graduated with a theater degree from Marywood College, Scranton, Pa., in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, she served in a civilian Special Services unit in Vietnam and Korea. In 1996, she stood in for her ailing father at the ceremony marking her grandfather's induction into the Musical Theatre Hall of Fame, at New York University.

Pop culture


- James Cagney revived his role as Cohan in the 1955 film The Seven Little Foys, starring Bob Hope as the vaudevillian Eddie Foy. Cagney performed this role free of charge as an expression of his gratitude to Eddie Foy Sr., who had done Cagney a favor during Cagney's early vaudeville days.
- Mickey Rooney played Cohan in Mr. Broadway, a television special broadcast on NBC on May 11, 1957. The same month, Rooney released a 78 RPM record: the A-side featured Rooney singing Cohan's best-known songs; the B-side featured Rooney singing several of his own compositions, such as the maudlin "You Couldn't Count the Raindrops for the Tears".
- Actor Mark Baker portrayed Cohan in the British film After the Ball (1957).
- Joel Grey starred on Broadway in a biographical revue of Cohan's music, George M! (1968), which was adapted into a CBS television special in 1972.
- Donny Osmond took the Cohan role in a 1982 Broadway adaptation of Little Johnny Jones, so bad that it ran only one night.
- Allan Sherman sang a parody-medley of 3 Cohan tunes on an early album: "Barry (That'll Be the Baby's Name)"; "H-o-r-o-w-i-t-z"; and "Get on the Garden Freeway" to the tune of "Mary's a Grand Old Name", "Harrigan" and "Give My Regards to Broadway", respectively.
- Barry Bostwick (yes, that's the baby's name) usually works "Yankee Doodle Boy" into his opening medley of patriotic songs during the annual TV show, A Capitol Fourth.
- Michael Flatley's dance extravaganza Celtic Tiger (2005) features Cohan's song "The Yankee Doodle Boy" as its grand finale.

External links


- [http://www.members.tripod.com/davecol8/ George M. Cohan In America's Theater]
- [http://www.musicals101.com/cohan.htm George M. Cohan on musicals101.com]
- [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=213 Find-A-Grave profile for George M. Cohan]
- F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, "Dancing after retirement: Cohan plays Roosevelt, 1937", New York Daily News, March 20, 2004. [http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/big_town/v-bigtown_archive/story/175602p-152906c.html] Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M. Cohan, George M.

Category:Manhattan


- Manhattan New York Main article : Manhattan

Henry Vars

Henry Vars (
- 29. Dezember 1902 in Warschau, † 1. September 1977 in Los Angeles; eigentlich Henryk Warszawski, später bekannt als Henryk Wars) war ein US-amerikanischer Komponist polnischer Herkunft. Vars wurde in einer musikbegeisterten jüdischen Familie im damals russischen Warschau geboren. Nach einem kurzen Studium an der Warschauer Akademie der Schönen Künste wechselte er mit einem Stipendium an das dortige Musikkonservatorium, das er 1925 beendete. Anschließend arbeitete er als Solist und Dirigent in verschiedenen Warschauer Cabarets und Musicaltheatern. 1930 schrieb er - bereits stark beeinflusst vom Jazz seine erste Musik für den Film Na Sybir (Nach Sibirien), einen der ersten polnischen Tonfilm(e) überhaupt. Es folgten bis 1939 ca. 50 weitere Filmmusiken, womit er etwa ein Drittel aller polnischen Filme dieses Jahrzehnts mit Musik unterlegte. Viele seiner Songs wurden Hits, vorgetragen von in Polen so bekannten Künstlern wie Eugeniusz Bodo oder Hanka Ordonówna. In seiner Bedeutung für die nationale Musikproduktion kann er bedenkenlos mit der eines Irving Berlin für die USA verglichen werden. Vars, der auch eine militärische Ausbildung genossen hatte, wurde zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs in die polnische Armee eingezogen und geriet kurzzeitig in deutsche Kriegsgefangenschaft, aus der er fliehen konnte. Anschließend begab er sich ins sowjetisch besetzte Lemberg, wo er die Jazzband Tea Jazz gründete. Ende 1941 trat er zusammen mit seinen Musikern dem Zweiten Polnischen Korps der Anders-Armee bei, mit der er dann 1943 die UdSSR verließ und nach Westen gelangte. Nach Kriegsende emigrierte er in die USA, wo er seinen Namen in Vars änderte. Zunächst schlug er sich trotz einiger Empfehlungsschreiben mit verschiedenen Hilfsarbeiten durch und lebte in tiefer Armut. Erst 1951 bekam er wieder die Möglichkeit, Filmmusik zu schreiben. Es entstanden in den folgenden Jahrzehnten Melodien und Lieder für zahlreiche Western, aber auch für B-Movies und Horrorfilme. Zu den Interpreten seiner Lieder gehörten aber auch Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Brenda Lee oder Dinah Shore. Den meisten Erfolg hatte er jedoch mit der Titelmusik für die amerikanischen Fernsehserie Flipper aus dem Jahre 1963 und Daktari von 1966. Einer seiner bekanntesten Songs aus der Vorkriegszeit (Umówiłem Się z Nią na Dziewiątą) fand auch Eingang in Roman Polańskis Film Der Pianist.

Weblinks


- [http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/PMJ/issue/4.1.01/schubert4_1.html Linda Schubert: The Film Scores of Henry Vars in the United States: An Overview]
- [http://german.imdb.com/name/nm0890206/ Henry Vars in der Internet Movie Database ] Vars,Henry Vars,Henry Vars, Henry Vars,Henry Vars,Henry

gry strategiczne SYLWESTER zakady bukmacherskie thrifty car rental Praga appartamenti










































:: RELATED NEWS ::

All Rights Reserved 2005 wikimiki.org