Genius in friendship, genius in stagecraft, Genius in life! Even in choosing a partner He fattened his average, Batting four hundred By taking a kindred irreverent soul, Graduated out of the whirlpool That wrecks all but the strongest, Born on the eastern edge Of Manhattan, Sam H. Harris, man of business, Who to the skill of the trader Adds the joy in life And the sense of humor, Coupled with pleasure in giving And helping That Cohan demands of his pals. Together they plan wonderful projects, And the artist soul And the soul of commerce Are an unbeatable union. Best of all about Cohan Is his congenital manliness. He sees Americans As our soil and our air and our water Have made them; Types as distinct as the Indian. He follows no school, Knows little of movements artistic. A lonely creator, His friends are not writing men, Reformers, uplifters or zealots. He writes the life he has lived So fully and zestfully, And over it all plays like sheet lightning A beneficent humor. Growth is his hall-mark, Hard work his chief recreation; Not Balzac could toil with labor titanic More terribly. George M. Cohan, Excelling in everything-- Beloved son, brother, father, partner, friend, Our best-beloved man of the theatre. DAVID BELASCO King David of old slew the Philistines; Our David has made them admirers and patrons; He has numbered the people Night after night in his theatres. Will he ever, I wonder, send forth for the Shunammite? Many there be who would answer his calling, For he has shown ambitious fair women To acting's high places. As Rodin in marble saw wondrous creations To be freed by the chisel, So Belasco in immature genius and beauty Sees the resplendent star to be kindled At his own steady beacon. Too varied a mind for our comprehension, Too big and too broad and too subtle To be understood of the bourgeois American Whom he has led decade after decade By a nose ring artistic. Capable of everything, he has worked With the ease of a master, giving the public Marvelous detail, unfailing sensation and poses pictorial; Preferring the certain success to arduous striving For the more excellent things of the future. Like David his forebear, a king but no prophet, Amazingly wise in his own generation. A wizard in art of the everyday, Lord of the spotlight and dimmer, But nursing the unconquerable hope, the inviolable shade Of what in his dreams Oriental He fain would do, did not necessity drive him. His the fascination of a great personality. Who knoweth not him of the clerical collar? Hair of the sage and eyes of the poet, Features perfectly drawn and as mobile As those of the inspired actor; With speech so much blander than honey And insight that maketh his staged stumbling in bargains Cover the shrewdness of a masterly trader. None better than he knoweth the crowd and its likings, As to using the patter of drama artistic, That's where he lives. With incense and color and scenery He refilleth the bottle of art so that the contents