Each month, Jason Fortner spotlights one or more musical theatre composers and/or lyricists, offering his own unique perspective on the songwriting legends of musical theatre. Send your comments/questions on this column to happgood@aol.com.

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Did you know that the tune of the US National Anthem is actually a British drinking song? Alan Jay Lerner & Leonard Bernstein knew this and featured a variation of that version in their short-lived (7 performance) "backstairs at the White House" musical, 1600 PA AVE. The song was originally known as To Anacreon In Heaven and Lerner had British soldiers, bent on burning down the Presidential home, sing this tune during the siege of Washington, DC in 1814. As the historical documents (and musical libretto) goes, James & Dolly Madison had an elegant dinner laid out for 40 guests and after fleeing for their lives, the invading British soldiers gleefully ate the feast left behind and then set fire to the mansion. An unexpected rainstorm doused the Brits' hopes of destroying the house, but it caused enough damage to close it for a few years of repairs.

This is just one of the many little told tales of the White House between the years 1800 and 1900 that the musical presents. Although telling any historical tale is daunting onstage, this complex show featured far too many characters, Presidents, First Ladies, servants and scandals for Broadway audiences to easily digest, and the hard work behind it was soon lost forever. It opened on May 4th, 1976, intended to be a part of the Bicentennial Celebration, but it closed just days later. In the past decade a concert version of the best of this epic show entitled A WHITE HOUSE CANTATA has been performed with great success and has helped preserve the embarrassment of riches this all American flop provides.

A much more successful Broadway slice of American history was 1776, a surprise hit of the 1968-69 season by songwriter and former American History teacher Sherman Edwards and book writer Peter Stone. Featuring an amazing ensemble cast (many of whom were featured in the Warner Brothers film as well) this patriotic musical succeeds in the most challenging task put before a writer - creating tension and drama for an audience that knows the outcome before the opening number! Mr. Edwards & Mr. Stone did this deftly and flawlessly, creating an edge of your seat theatrical experience that was enthralling and highly entertaining, transforming the Founding Fathers from cardboard cut-outs to flesh & blood men. (This was the first National Tour I ever saw of a Broadway musical and I was one thrilled grade school kid indeed!)

Of course, Presidents have always found their way into Broadway musicals, sometimes in the flesh and sometimes only as lyrics or references. George M. Cohan returned to the Broadway stage (after vowing to quit it for good shortly after the formation of the Actor's Equity Union) as F.D.R. in 1937's I'D RATHER BE RIGHT, but his refusal to take direction and his secret rewriting of lyrics drove Rodgers & Hart crazy. (In a special deference to his "return" to the stage after 18 years, Equity allowed Cohan to perform in the show without joining the union, the first and only time this has happened for a Broadway leading man.) As patriotic writers go, Cohan wrote a slew of great American songs including You're A Grand Old Flag, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Over There, all featured in his shows and later in the biographical musical GEORGE M!

A much better behaved FDR was featured in Strouse & Charnin's ANNIE (and the lesser known sequel ANNIE WARBUCKS), plus the Stephen Sondheim / John Weidman ASSASSINS features a number by and about FDR's attempted assassination by Giuseppe Zangara entitled How I Saved Roosevelt. Another Presidential Roosevelt, Teddy, has been featured in a few musicals as well, popping up as one of the 5 characters in 1980's TINTYPES, a musical valentine to the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, and as the star of TEDDY & ALICE, a 1987 musical about Teddy and his strong willed daughter Alice featuring new lyrics by Hal Hackady to tunes by his long dead collaborator the great bandleader & composer John Phillip Sousa. [Of course the most famous "Teddy" of them all is the crazy brother who thinks he's "Teddy Roosevelt" in the long running Broadway comedy ARSENIC & OLD LACE. ]

Of all the later Broadway writers none was more patriotic than the Siberian born Israel Isidore Baline, better known to the world as Irving Berlin. From his ubiquitous God Bless America, the proceeds of which he donated to the Boy Scouts of America, on through his Broadway & Hollywood scores, Irving's love for America is prominent.

His wartime shows YIP YIP YAPHANK (1918) and THIS IS THE ARMY (1942) raised a great deal of war relief funds, while his 1949 musical MISS LIBERTY featured a dramatized account of the creation of the Statue of Liberty. In 1950's CALL ME MADAM Ambassador Sally Adams was always on the phone with "Harry" (Truman) and the trio They Like Ike stopped the show and became a rallying cry for Eisenhower's presidential bid. Berlin's final original show for Broadway, 1962's MR. PRESIDENT featured Robert Ryan & Nanette Fabray as the President & First Lady who were "not the Kennedy's" (but resembled them a little bit).

Speaking of Presidential bids, Miss Carol Channing performed an altered lyric to Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! and sang Hello, Lyndon to Mister Johnson at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, a tune that some say helped him to win the nomination. (After election LBJ was mentioned a lot in late 60's protest musicals, the most successful of which was Rado, Ragni & McDermot's HAIR.) And speaking of women and the presidency, the 1980 show ONWARD, VICTORIA told the musical story of Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President in 1872. This 1 performance flop featured music by Keith Hermann and lyrics by Charlotte Anker & Irene Rosenberg. A woman presidential candidate actually won in one Broadway musical, and she was the most unlikely candidate of them all…Miss Mona in THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE GOES PUBLIC, the 16 performance flop of 1994, music & lyrics by Carol Hall. Another fictional President is John P. Wintergreen, the star of TWO Broadway musicals, the Gershwins’ Pulitzer Prize winning OF THEE I SING (1931) and its' less successful sequel LET 'EM EAT CAKE (1933).

The American experience is featured again and again on Broadway, with such subjects as immigration featured in shows as varied as ALL AMERICAN (1962), RAGS (1986), RAGTIME (1998) and THE EDUCATION OF H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (1968). Our various wars have been chronicled in such shows as DEAREST ENEMY (1925), BEN FRANKLIN IN PARIS (1964) and ARMS & THE GIRL (1950) (American Revolution), SHENANDOAH (1975), MAGGIE FLYNN (1968), THE CIVIL WAR (1999) (Civil War), LITTLE ME (1962), KING OF HEARTS (1978), OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! (1964) (WWI), OVER HERE! (1974), LOVELY LADIES, KIND GENTLEMEN (1970), & SOUTH PACIFIC (1949) (WWII) and many more. Lots of famous Americans have been characters in musicals, everybody from John Paul Jones (in the prematurely dead PLEASURES & PALACES) to Henry Ford (in RAGTIME) to Ohio sharpshooter Annie Oakley and showman Buffalo Bill Cody in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. The winner in this category might just be Emma Goldman, the radical activist who is a featured character in no less than three musicals - TINTYPES, RAGTIME and ASSASSINS. These shows have helped tell the story of the USA on stage, while musical revues such as INSIDE U.S.A. (1948) and WHAT'S A NICE COUNTRY LIKE YOU DOING IN A STATE LIKE THIS? have poked fun at our nation's foibles and follies.

Even the seemingly outlandish subject of the opening up of Japan by the American fleet of Commodore Perry in July 1863 has been the subject of a Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman's PACIFIC OVERTURES (1976). The always challenging John Michael LaChiusa has created an intriguing evening of musical theatre with FIRST LADY SUITE, a look at various Presidential wives in four thought provoking segments that break with the norms of musical comedy to delve deeper into these women's lives. The variety of possibilities is as varied as America itself.

Perhaps the best example of a real American tune is a song by immigrant Kurt Weill (music) and Maxwell Anderson (lyrics) from their 1938 show KNICKERBOCKER HOLIDAY. In it Washington Irving and Brom Broeck compare notes:

How Can You Tell An American?

Has He Any Distinguishing Flavor?

Could You Spot Him On An Elephant in Turkistan

Or Floating On A Raft Fifty Miles At Sea

As You'd Know A Single Leaf From The Sassafras Tree

By It's Characteristic Savor?...

It isn't that He's Black or White

It isn't that he Works With Tools

It's only that it takes away his appetite

To live by a Book of Rules.

Yes, it's just that he hates and he damns all the features

Of any mortal man set above his fellow creatures.

And he'll hate the undertaker when at last he dies

If he hears a note of arrogance above him where he lies

He does his own living, he does his own dying

Does his loving, does his hating, does his multiplying

Without the supervision of a governmental plan -And that's an American!