Continued: OnStage: Hold the corn

If you think of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as corny Americana, James Rocco wants you to see the song, and its creator, in a new light. The programming chief at St Paul's Ordway Center believes that George M. Cohan not only helped create the warm, fuzzy patriotism associated with that song, but another form that's even more omnipresent.

"He almost single-handedly invented the American musical," said Rocco of the "Dandy" composer. "George M. Cohan was like the James Dean of his era ... a rebel who broke all the rules. He and his amazing influence deserve to be better known."

Rocco is seeing to that. With Jayme McDaniel, Rocco is directing and choreographing "Yankee Doodle," a musical biography of Cohan that launches the Ordway's new season when it opens Tuesday.

Using Cohan's songs and life story, the show centers on an actor, songwriter, producer, director and star who was born July 3, 1878, into an Irish-American entertainment family, although he celebrated his birthday on July 4.

When Cohan was coming of age at the turn of the 20th century, theater offerings were dominated by European-style operettas, minstrel shows and vaudeville olios, "which often consisted of singers, dancers, jugglers, animal acts and lowbrow comedians spraying seltzer in each other's faces," said Rocco.

Cohan mastered the variety of skills required for vaudeville, applying them to this new type of show. His first Broadway hit, in 1904, was "Little Johnny Jones," which contained songs such as "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." He went on to write more than 1,500 songs, including "Over There" and "You're a Grand Old Flag."

Inventor of book musical

Cohan is credited with inventing the book musical, setting melodramatic stories to music in a way that was distinct from opera. In structure, motifs, arrangements and themes, his songs have influenced such shows as "Hello, Dolly!" "Guys and Dolls," "Anything Goes" and even "Legally Blonde." There is a statue of him in New York's theater district.

For Rocco, Cohan was not an entirely unknown quantity. In a popular 1942 movie, James Cagney played the impresario. If he had not fallen out of favor, Cohan had, at least, become part of the corny background.

For Rocco and his creative collaborators, the idea of doing this musical, and using Cohan's music, most of which is now in the public domain, came on a beach in Cancun, Mexico, a decade ago.

"We were all reading biographies of George M. Cohan," said David Armstrong, who wrote the book for this musical and is producing artistic director of Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre. "And we came across this fascinating anecdote. Just before he died in 1942, Cohan got out of his sick bed and had his nurse take him to see the sanitized James Cagney movie about his life ["Yankee Doodle Dandy"]. But he only watched the film for 15 minutes, and instead went around to all the theaters he used to own in Times Square. He then went home and died, but he literally gave his regards to Broadway."

His real contribution was to give the nation a form that was truly American and spoke to everyday people in an ennobling way, said Rocco.

"There was vaudeville, on the one hand, which was mostly lowbrow, and opera on the other," he said. "He gave us that, even as he created the myth of Broadway as this Disneyland of theatrical dreams."

The fact that Cohan's songs became part of the fabric of Americana is ironic, said Rocco.

"He was Irish-American, and in those days, the Irish and the blacks and a whole litany of people were not welcomed in many quarters," he said. "Here is an outsider, someone at the margins, who defined the center. That's something that repeats itself in the nation time and again."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390