SOURCE: "Tribute to Yankee Doodle Dandy," in The New York Times Magazine, May 5, 1957, pp. 14, 72, 78.

In the following essay, Hammerstein remembers Cohan as a writer and performer who personified popular American values and ideals of the time.

I was not one of George M. Cohan's close friends. I was just one of many Americans to whom he devoted his theatrical talents for nearly all of the sixty-four years of his life. An account of his impact on me should serve as a fair symbol of what he meant to millions of other theatregoers, thousands of other theatre workers.

To my friends, at school, George Cohan was "slick." Higher praise had we for no one. That was the word of the day. There is always one word which means "best." "Slick" has since been supplanted at various times by "keen," "hot," "cool," "terrific," "the most." In those early days of...