The Life and Music of George Gershwin: Part 2
by Steven Gaber
Rosalie
Less than two months after "Funny Face” debuted,
the brothers were hired by Ziegfeld to write the music
for his new show, "Rosalie". Sigmund Romberg was co-
composer and PG Wodehouse co-lyricist. Because of
the obligation to frequently revise "Funny Face",
Gershwin found his creative time cut short and tried to
extricate himself from the show. Ziegfeld pleaded with
George for a few songs for his stars, Marilyn Miller and
Jack Donahue, so they ransacked their bag of earlier
tunes and offered seventeen, ten of which were
chosen. Even the song unceremoniously booted from
two previous scores, "The Man I Love", found a home
in "Rosalie" and began its splendid march to melodic
immortality. "Rosalie" was a remarkable success for
Ziegfeld despite his investment of sixty players in the
orchestra and sixty-four in the chorus. It reached New
York on January 10, 1928 at the New Amsterdam
Theatre and ran for 327 performances.
Treasure Girl
1928 resumed with another flop as "Treasure Girl"
opened to dismal reviews and closed after sixty-eight
performances. Book and casting were the major
hitches. Billboard found the book "vapid, humourless,
and absolutely inane". The casting of Gertrude
Lawrence, such a success in "Oh, Kay!", failed because
the role called for wisecracks and caustic dialogue, not
grace and charm. Gertrude Lawrence was not a good
candidate for screwball comedy. None of Gershwin’s
songs from "Treasure Girl" have made their way into
lasting success.
Study in Europe and An American in Paris
George, Ira, and Ira’s wife Leonore overlooked this
failure with a fifteen-week European tour. George
hoped to "benefit my technique as much as possible
from a study of European orchestral methods". While
he did meet with such European giants as Kurt Weill
and his wife Lotte Lenya, Sergei Prokofiev, and
Sergei Rachmaninoff, he did not manage to find a tutor
willing to alter any of his techniques. The time was
hardly wasted because he had the opportunity to
experience Paris, far from the comforts of his customary
New York City apartment. Walter Damrosch, who
had commissioned the "Concerto in F", wanted him to
write another serious work and George chose a tone
poem based on the French capital, a suitable subject
for what developed into "An American in Paris". A tone
poem refers to a piece of music for orchestra that
represents a particular story, image or mood and
customarily follows a programme, often with a written
description.
"An American in Paris" comprises five sections, each
with its own theme. The score was completed on
August 1 and George’s orchestration was finished a
couple of weeks before the December 13 world
premiere. George scored the piece creatively and
richly and included such orchestral rarities as a
baritone saxophone, a bass clarinet, bells, a triangle, a
woodblock and, of course, its unique taxi horns which
Gershwin had brought back from Paris. Reviews were
excellent and it was generally deemed better crafted,
less pretentious, and a marked advance over the
"Concerto in F". Other orchestras soon took up the
piece and it was added to the permanent repertoire.
This tone poem has become one of the most performed
and recorded orchestral works of the twentieth
century.
Showgirl
Early in 1929 Ziegfeld once again came calling on the
Gershwin brothers for still another backstage musical,
"Showgirl". Casting included the comic trio of Lew
Clayton, Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante as well as a
nineteen-year-old native of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia,
Ruby Keeler. Unlike their experience with "Rosalie" the
previous year, the Gershwins struggled mightily with
Ziegfeld’s demands. The producer wanted the score
completed swiftly, something Gershwin later described
as "a rush job". Then Ziegfeld hired the lyricist Gus
Kahn to "help out" because he lacked faith in Ira.
Ziegfeld had little interest in plot or character development
and wanted as many songs as possible, which
resulted in an undeniable sparseness in dialogue.
Even though Gershwin offered twenty-five new songs
(thirteen of which did make it into the show), Ziegfeld
found them "distinctly under par" and "the work of
a tired man or else of a lazy man". He then directed
George and Ira to be physically present to revise any
found problems. They had had enough of this particular
producer and refused. Ziegfeld then had his lawyer
write to George telling him that some of his royalty
payments would be withheld and then went about
hiring Vincent Youmans to doctor the score. The result
was neither a flop nor a hit and the show ran for 111
performances after its July 2 opening. There is one
song that was well received at the time and still is
today: "Liza".
Girl Crazy
In 1930, the Gershwins returned to more familiar and
congenial producers, Aarons and Freedley, and a writer
they knew and respected, Guy Bolton. This Gershwin
musical takes place on a dude ranch and contains a
few cowboy songs. But you can’t keep George Gershwin
down on the dude ranch after he seen Paree and
he produced four remarkable standards for "Girl
Crazy". These are: "Bidin’ My Time", "But Not for
Me", "Embraceable You" and what has become one of
his most recorded songs, "I Got Rhythm". Ethel
Merman was only twenty-one and making her Broadway
debut. Not for the last time, she stole the show
and "I Got Rhythm" became her signature tune. She is
one of the last of the great note-holders. Also in the
cast was nineteen-year-old Ginger Rogers, just starting
out on her long and sparkling career.
Ethel Merman
"Girl Crazy" opened in New York at the Elgin Theatre on
October 14, 1930. Merman became an immediate
supernova and pandemonium would erupt in the
audience when she belted out her patent extended
notes and calls for encores were a nightly feature. It
ran for 272 performances on Broadway, but the
Depression thwarted both a national and a European
tour.
Delicious
When sound arrived in Hollywood films, foremost
composers and writers followed it there. Cole Porter
went westward in 1929 and Irving Berlin the next year.
George and Ira’s first contract in Hollywood called for
them to write the music for a movie called
"Delicious". They were paid $100,000 plus first-class
round-trip travel for fourteen weeks of work, which
were extremely attractive inducements. The excellent
payday did not compensate for their woeful lesson that
moguls and money men ran Hollywood and that
anything they produced could be and was cut, revised,
or maimed by businessmen relatively uninformed in
music. George enjoyed exercising outdoors in winter
but longed to return to his New York which they did as
soon as they were free to do so, forwarding revisions
cross-country. "I was very disappointed in the picture
we wrote…. It could’ve been so swellable (sic) if some
imagination was used in producing and utilising it". A
critic agreed: "Gershwin is said to have written the
music involved; but you’d never know it". It took five
years to get the Gershwins back to California.
"Delicious" opened in December 1931 and was dead
on arrival. Musicals had suddenly become box office
poison because of their artistic limitations and raised
expectations. It wasn’t until Busby Berkeley arrived two
years later to choreograph "42nd St." and to demonstrate
how to successfully translate music and
movement onto the screen, that musicals again
became a central genre on the movie screen.
Of Thee I Sing
Upon their return to New York, they hooked up again
with George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind on still
another political satire they called "Of Thee I
Sing". This time the writers made sure that a romantic
relationship would play a significant role and that it not
be dominated by a cynical political story. The brothers
correspondingly blended the romantic and the satirical
in ways that surpass anything they had previously
attempted. "Of Thee I Sing" alternated scenes of all
dialogue with scenes of all music in a new and winning
manner. And for this score George and Ira chose to
work in tandem, in the same room at the same
time. The musical opened at the Music Box Theatre on
December 26, 1931, before a star-studded first night
audience in formal dress. Critics used singular words
like watershed, classic, milestone, and landmark in
recognizing the successful reconfiguring of the musical
-comedy genre. Because the songs were so tightly
coupled to the book and furthered the plot, they were a
bit less melodic than usual and none entered the
standard repertoire. This disconcerted nobody and the
musical was a major artistic and financial success for
all concerned, running for 441 performances.
Kaufman, Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin won the Pulitzer
Prize for the best American play that year. Ira was
furious that the composer, his brother, was ineligible
for the Prize. It wasn’t until 1944 that the Pulitzer
committee began to award the prize also to composers
of musical comedies. Richard Rodgers was the first
recipient for "Oklahoma" as well as the second
recipient, this time for "South Pacific".
Song-Book
In 1932, the publisher of Random House, Bennett Cerf,
put out the "George Gershwin Song-Book" which
contained eighteen of his songs, organised
chronologically from "Swanee" to "Who Cares?". It
justified its price with some fine Art Deco drawings by
the illustrator Constantin Alajalov. It sold well in many
editions and has become the unadorned structure of
innumerable Lps by countless artists. An example:
"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin
Song Book".
A winter 1932 vacation to Havana to relax, play tennis,
and nightclub led to Gershwin’s next serious composition.
He had been passionately enthralled with the
local music. "Cuba was most interesting to me,
especially the small dance orchestras, who played the
most intricate rhythms most naturally". Upon his return
to New York, he continued his Cuban studies by
catching the latest phenomenon, Xavier Cugat and his
Rhumba Orchestra, at the Waldorf-Astoria. Cugat wrote
in his memoir, "Gershwin would listen to my band as if
he were making mental notes. Several times he invited
the boys in the band to visit his Riverside Drive
apartment where we would have a jam session with
George sitting in at the piano".
A rhumba orchestra attains its singular resonance via its
percussion ensemble. Like the Parisian taxi horns,
George returned from Havana with a collection of
Cuban percussion instruments and set about composing
an orchestral piece. The work was completed over
the summer of 1932 and the New York Philharmonic
performed its premier at Lewisohn Stadium on August
16. This was the "Cuban Overture", which consists of a
single movement of three sections. George’s orchestration
included bongos, gourd, maracas and Cuban
sticks to provide the rhumba flavour. The grouping was
emphasized even further by their placement "right in
front of the conductor's stand". A packed house of
17,000 responded enthusiastically.
Pardon My English
That success was followed by still another Broadway
disaster. Aarons and Freedley engaged the Gershwin
brothers and Morrie Ryskind to write a new musical
comedy specifically for the debonair English musical
star, Jack Buchanan. Production of the musical began
with troubles and progressed to tribulations and
finished in disaster. The Gershwin brothers were
pessimistic as regards a book about a dual personality
but accepted the commission to help out Aarons, who
was nearly broke. The October opening had to be
delayed because of multiple snags and the preview
audiences were unimpressed by the sheer musical
complexity of George’s score. Buchanan was shrewd
enough to buy himself out of his contract and was
replaced by the unsubtle radio comedian, Jack Pearl.
When "Pardon My English" finally made it to Broadway
on January 28, 1933, it received the worst notices of
any musical of Gershwin’s career – tedious, lifeless,
silly, complicated, boring and shambles characterised
the critics’ sentiments. Not a surprising result when a
musical specifically written for a particular artist loses
that artist. Can you imagine if Ethel Merman had been
cut from "Gypsy"? The show managed but forty-six
performances. Much money was lost at an inconvenient
time for all concerned. Only Jack Buchanan got out
relatively unscathed.
Let 'em Eat Cake
Later in 1932, George S Kaufman suggested they all
get together again and write a sequel to the lucrative
"Of Thee I Sing". The score for "Let ‘em Eat Cake" was
completed and rehearsals began in August 1933, with
the show opening at the Imperial Theatre on October
21. It turned out to be a caustic satire in the astringent
Kaufman mode, much darker than its predecessor.
They had produced a fantasy about a totalitarian
America and the book took no prisoners. The love
interest was eliminated and George wrote the most
acerbic musical comedy score of his career, often
spiked with pungent dissonance. Critics judged it less
successful and found it difficult to grasp Gershwin’s
music: "for all I know the music may be great stuff, but
you can’t whistle to it or take it out for dancing in the
streets". Audiences seemed to agree and Time Magazine
described "an embarrassing dearth of
applause". It managed only ninety performances and
guaranteed that George and Ira and George S. and
Morrie would not try another kick at the can. Lessons
had been learned, at great cost.
Massey Hall
While this most recent show was tanking on Broadway,
Gershwin and the Leo Reisman orchestra jointly
planned an extensive road tour to celebrate the tenth
anniversary of the "Rhapsody in Blue". In addition,
George had written a new serious work for piano
and orchestra, composed specifically for the tour, the
"Variations on I Got Rhythm". This was written in the
traditional classical theme-and-variation form and
numbered six variations framed by an introduction and
a coda. Leo Reisman broke his hip prior to the tour but
his orchestra soldiered on with substitute conductor
Charles Previn. Beginning in January 1934, the tour
stopped in twenty-eight cities in twenty-nine days. They
covered so many cities that they even included Toronto
on January 19 for a performance at Massey Hall.
Attendance was consistently good but too many
bookings in smaller towns resulted in a financial
deficit. Critics were generally positive – the Toronto Mail
wrote "Gershwin’s music had two vital elements of
art: truth and intelligence. Besides that, it was great
fun". George was disheartened that the audiences
were made somewhat uncomfortable by the complexity
and the occasional dissonance of the "Variations" and
it was hardly mentioned by reviewers.
Porgy and Bess
We have now come to the last, but definitely not least,
of George Gershwin’s extraordinary works in the
classical form. In 1925, DuBose Heyward, a writer born
in Charleston, South Carolina, published a novel based
on his close contact with the local Gullah population of
the sea islands off of South Carolina and Georgia. It
became a nationwide success praised for its unusually
sympathetic and vivid portrayal of the black community.
The next year Heyward's wife Dorothy adapted
"Porgy" for the stage. It quickly became one of the
Theatre Guild’s most successful productions, with long
runs on Broadway and in London.
George had long thought of writing an opera, maybe a
folk opera, possibly a Negro folk opera. He read the
novel early on and immediately contacted Heyward and
his wife about adapting it. The Heywards were encouraging
but it took George another few years to feel sure
enough of his ability to write in this challenging genre.
It wasn’t until March 1932 that George and Heyward
finally resolved to get it done. Heyward insisted that
Gershwin travel down to South Carolina and do a bit of
fieldwork among the Gullah. In a couple of short visits,
George had reportedly transformed himself into "an
eager student of Negro music" and wrote Heyward in
February 1934 that he "has begun composing music
for the first act". The first song completed was the
iconic "Summertime".
That spring, he and Heyward worked together but at
long distance. Heyward once again reminded George
that he "really hasn’t scratched the surface of the
native material yet". George agreed and that summer
spent five weeks on Folly Island, just off the coast and
10 miles from Charleston. There they collaborated
by day while George spent his evenings attending
recitals and church services, immersing himself in
black southern life.
Catfish Row
By January of 1935, George had completed a draft of
the score which he described as perhaps the most
difficult but most rewarding endeavour of his career.
The score and orchestration were essentially completed
by the summer of 1935. George took on primary
responsibility for casting the work, scouring dozens of
theatres and nightclubs and recital halls for black
singers who had had some operatic training. His two
stars, Todd Duncan as Porgy and Annie Brown as Bess,
were both very well-educated and experienced singers.
The libretto for "Porgy and Bess" was an exceptional
semi-collaboration between DuBose Heyward and Ira
Gershwin in which they worked on individual songs
separately and agreed to co-writing credits for anything
in which both had played any sort of role.
"Porgy and Bess" opened at the Alvin Theatre on
October 10, 1935, before a celebrity-laden audience.
One aria after another received thunderous applause.
There were seven curtain calls for the cast, a few more
for the Gershwin brothers and Heyward. After
the performance, a reception was held at the penthouse
apartment of publisher Condé Nast for 400
invited guests. The show ran for 124 performances, an
exceptional accomplishment for an opera.
"Porgy and Bess" took a few years to be fully accepted
by audiences and Gershwin had concerns about its
legacy. A longer life would have reassured him of its
distinguished and permanent place in the repertoire. It
is well-established that "Porgy and Bess" is not only
one of Gershwin’s finest works, it may well be his
masterpiece.
Shall We Dance
Following his strenuous efforts on "Porgy and Bess",
George and Ira again looked westward. When they
were last in Hollywood, the musical film was in a
slump but, since the arrival of Busby Berkeley, Astaire
and Rogers and Jeanette MacDonald, it had become a
profitable mainstay. In June 1936 they came to an
agreement with RKO to write an Astaire-Rogers musical
for $55,000 with an option for a second film. They
would be required to remain in California for at least
sixteen weeks for each film. They entrained to Hollywood
in August 1936 and completed the score for "Shall We Dance"
in early December. At George’s suggestion, the writers devised a scenario
that allowed for some featured instrumental sections
in addition to the all-singing, all-dancing sequences. It
was their best score in several years with music and
lyrics of enormous charm and originality. Four wonderful
songs from the movie are still with us: "Slap That
Bass", "Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off", "They Can’t
Take That Away from Me" and the title song. George
complained that everyone from the director to the key
grips wanted to put in their oars requesting one rewrite
after another. It received excellent reviews but did not
do quite as well financially as the previous Astaire-
Rogers musicals. It remains a classic film.
Damsel in Distress
RKO picked up the option for a second film, "A Damsel
in Distress". The miscasting of nineteen-year-old Joan
Fontaine as Astaire’s love interest – Ginger sat this one
out – was problematic as she could neither sing nor
dance. Astaire pleaded that she be replaced and
Fontaine was miserable, "For me, the title of the film
was appropriate". Radio’s Burns and Allen were given
more significant prominence in the film. Two songs
achieved immediate and long-term success: "A Foggy
Day in London Town" and "Nice Work If You Can Get
It". Alas, movie audiences were wise to the studio’s
efforts to endorse Ms. Fontaine in this sort of role and
it became the first movie starring Fred Astaire to lose
money.
Their contract with RKO completed, Sam
Goldwyn (a.k.a. Mr. Malaprop) approached the brothers
to write a score for what he hoped would become an
annual series of filmed revues with casts assembled
from radio, vaudeville, ballet and opera, all in glorious
Technicolor. Goldwyn modestly planned to call these
films "The Goldwyn Follies". George readied five
songs, the last five he would ever write, which included
two of the finest he ever wrote: "Love Walked In" and
"Our Love Is Here to Stay". The producer looked over
these treasures and complained to the composer,
"Why don’t you write hit songs like Irving Berlin?".
Oscar Levant, who was present, recalled that
"It was one of the few occasions in my experience
when George was genuinely offended".
George died before the score could be completed.
Goldwyn, never a moral paragon, then chose to fire Ira
because he claimed that their joint contract had ended
with George’s death. Ignoring most of
the Gershwins' efforts, Goldwyn released this mishmash
of a musical film. It was the one and only
"Goldwyn Follies" ever produced. Samuel Goldman was
now and forever cured of his ambition to become a
second Ziegfeld or even a second George White.
"Our Love Is Here to Stay" was the last song of George
Gershwin. His dreams of writing a symphony and a
string quartet, of collaborating again with Kaufman and
Ryskind, of writing another opera with Heyward: all
these, to our great loss, remained undone. No sketches
for any of these pipedream projects have survived.
In February 1937 George Gershwin was thirty-eight
years and five months old, a trim, energetic man in
excellent physical condition from exercising in his New
York City apartment, in the gymnasium which he
added, or on a California tennis court. There was no
reason to think that he would not be around for many
years to continue sharing his gift with the world.
That month Gershwin was playing his "Concerto in F"
with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra when
suddenly his mind went blank and he very uncharacteristically
forgot several bars of the score. He recovered
sufficiently to resume playing and finished the Concerto.
But soon afterwards he began experiencing
pungent odours similar to the smell of burning rubber.
He consulted his psychiatrist who recommended a
medical checkup, during which nothing was found. But
as he continued to experience these unpleasant
olfactory hallucinations in addition to headaches,
dizzy spells and blackouts, he was again referred to
a physician who examined him on June 9 and ordered
an EEG, urinalysis, blood work and other tests. Once
again, no abnormalities were discovered but, due to
the recurring symptoms, he was punted to a neurologist
who saw him two weeks later. George was then
transferred on to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for
more elaborate tests, but George refused a lumbar
puncture and the sum total of all investigations
was again inconclusive. George was released
from the hospital on June 26 with a diagnosis of, "most
likely hysteria".
Things rapidly deteriorated and his worsening condition
became dangerous. His motor coordination deteriorated
and he could be seen stumbling up stairs, dropping
objects and spilling liquids. He became listless
and, in the unkindest cut yet, he forgot how to play the
piano. On July 4, he and a male nurse moved into the
quiet and empty home of his long-term friend Yip
Harburg. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t turn the corner as
he experienced two seizures known as automatisms
and once smeared a box of chocolates all over his own
body.
Glioblastoma
Providentially, he fell into a coma and was rushed back
to the Cedars of Lebanon, never again to regain
consciousness. At this time he was administered a
lumbar puncture (spinal tap) which showed unambiguous
evidence of a brain tumor. A neurosurgeon was
flown in to operate during the early morning hours of
July 11, 1938. The procedure lasted five hours and a
tumor was located in the right temporal lobe. The
surgeon was able to remove a large glioblastoma
mass, but it was far too late. George died at 10:35 AM
that day.
This man of impeccable timing and great fortune finally
had a stretch of bad luck and it had killed him. His
body was returned to his city, New York, and funeral
services were held on July 15. Nearly 3500 people
jammed into the Temple Emanu-El to pay their
respects while a simultaneous service was held in
Los Angeles, with a eulogy delivered by Oscar Hammerstein II.
George was buried in the family plot at Mount
Hope Cemetery, north of New York City. His mother
converted the plot into a family mausoleum shortly
thereafter. Memorial concerts were held later that
summer at New York’s Lewisohn Stadium and
Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl.
Mausoleum
At his death, George Gershwin was widely cherished as
a writer of elevated popular music. This despite the
fact that the lightweight musical comedies whence his
songs came were essentially historical curiosities. His
name is not associated with the history of American
jazz. You can watch Ken Burns’ PBS series over and
over for its entire length and you will not hear George’s
name at any time. This despite the enormous value
jazzmen have placed in the bones of many of these
songs from which many full-on jazz interpretations
have blossomed.
Can Gershwin be considered a classical composer?
Gershwin was always mindful of the deficiencies in his
formal music education and the lack of acceptance he
was accorded by serious musicians and composers. He
was constantly working to improve his knowledge of
music and its formal compositional techniques. He had
hoped his "Concerto in F", his opera and the smaller
works for orchestra and piano solo would have been
assessed as seriously as any composed by Mozart or
Prokofiev. While he had immense confidence in his
own capability, it was yet undermined by anxieties
about how he was perceived by classically-trained
composers.
What we have today is a tragically incomplete sample
of his potential. Those who knew him best believed
that, had he lived longer, he would have written
many more works of a classical nature, broadening and
deepening his musical legacy. His classical output
consisted of one piano concerto, one opera, one
Rhapsody, one tone poem and a few smaller works. in
a world that loves to put people into neatly defined
boxes, George Gershwin defied categorization. He
was sui generis. Perhaps one can argue that Leonard
Bernstein joins him as a member of this classification,
but it would be very tenacious to attempt to unearth
any other American composer who was so accomplished in so many ways.
The writer John O’Hara summed it all best: "George
Gershwin died July 11, 1937, but I don’t have to
believe it if I don’t want to".
Works Consulted
- Feinstein, Michael. The Gershwins and Me. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2012.
- Hyland, William G. George Gershwin: A New Biography. Praeger, Westport, CT., 2003.
- New York Times Archives, October 2, 1979, p.1, The Doctor’s World: Gershwin’s Illness.
- Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. U. of California Press, Berkeley CA., 2006.
- www.gershwin.com
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