SOURCE: "A Minor Poet of Broadway: George M. Cohan," in The American Theater as Seen By Its Critics, edited by Montrose J. Moses and John Mason Brown, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1934, pp. 187-91.

In the following excerpts, which are from reviews that were published between 1906 and 1933 in various publications, Ruhl surveys the progress of Cohan's musicals as well as his performance in Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!

If New York had a Montmartre and Mr. George Cohan were a Frenchman, one can almost imagine him wearing baggy clothes and a Windsor tie, and stalking up and down between the tables of his cafe chantant of an evening, singing his songs of Broadway. People would take him seriously, admire his lyrics because they were so "instinct" with the spirit of a certain curious fringe of society, and words and music would doubtless be published in limited de-luxe editions for...