A number of the biographical particulars of the movie are Hollywood-ized fiction, such as omitting the fact that Cohan divorced and remarried, combining Cohan's two wives, Ethel and Agnes, into a single character named Mary, and taking some liberties with the chronology of Cohan's life and the order of his parents' deaths. In one scene, after Cohan suffers a flop with an atypical non-musical drama, "Popularity", he composes a telegram apologizing to the public. He then walks out of the Western Union office to find newspaper sellers announcing the torpedoing of the "Lusitania". In reality, the failed play was staged in 1906, and the Lusitania's sinking occurred in 1915.