George Gershwin

Gershwin was of Russian-Jewish ancestry.[2] His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, was born in Odessa (Ukraine) and had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of free travel and residence as a Jew, finally retiring near Saint Petersburg. His teenage son Moishe, George's father, worked as a leather cutter for women's shoes. His mother, Roza Bruskina, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia.[3][4] Moishe met Roza in Vilnius where her father worked as a furrier. She and her family moved to New York because of increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, changing her first name to Rose. Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to. Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris. Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a women's shoe factory. He married Rose on July 21, 1895, and Gershowitz soon Anglicized his name to Gershwine.[5][6][7] Their first child, Ira Gershwin, was born on December 6, 1896, after which the family moved into a second-floor apartment at 242 Snediker Avenue in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn.

George was born on September 26, 1898, in the Snediker Avenue apartment. His birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced 'Gersh-vin' in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community.[8][9] He was named after his grandfather, and, contrary to the American practice, had no middle name. He soon became known as George,[10] and changed the spelling of his surname to 'Gershwin' around the time he became a professional musician; other family members followed suit.[11] After Ira and George, another boy, Arthur Gershwin (1900–1981), and a girl, Frances Gershwin (1906–1999), were born into the family.

The family lived in many different residences, as their father changed dwellings with each new enterprise in which he became involved. They grew up mostly in the Yiddish Theater District. George and Ira frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George occasionally appearing onstage as an extra.[12][13][14]

George lived a boyhood not unusual in New York tenements, which included running around with his friends, roller-skating and misbehaving in the streets. Until 1908, he cared nothing about music. Then, as a ten-year-old, he was intrigued upon hearing his friend Maxie Rosenzweig's violin recital.[15] The sound, and the way his friend played, captivated him. At about the same time, George's parents had bought a piano for his older brother Ira. To his parents' surprise, though, and to Ira's relief, it was George who spent more time playing it as he continued to enjoy it.[16]

Although his younger sister Frances was the first in the family to make a living through her musical talents, she married young and devoted herself to being a mother and housewife, thus precluding spending any serious time on musical endeavors. Having given up her performing career, she settled upon painting as a creative outlet, which had also been a hobby George briefly pursued. Arthur Gershwin followed in the paths of George and Ira, also becoming a composer of songs, musicals, and short various piano teachers for about two years (circa 1911) before finally being introduced to Charles Hambitzer by Jack Miller (circa 1913), the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Until his death in 1918, Hambitzer remained Gershwin's musical mentor, taught him conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts.[17]

In 1913, Gershwin left school at the age of 15 to work as a "song plugger" on New York City's Tin Pan Alley. He earned $15 a week from Jerome H. Remick and Company, a Detroit-based publishing firm with a branch office in New York.

His first published song was "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em" in 1916. It earned the 17-year-old 50 cents.[18]

In 1916, Gershwin started working for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, recording and arranging. He produced dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls under his own and assumed names (pseudonyms attributed to Gershwin include Fred Murtha and Bert Wynn). He also recorded rolls of his own compositions for the Duo-Art and Welte-Mignon reproducing pianos. As well as recording piano rolls, Gershwin made a brief foray into vaudeville, accompanying both Nora Bayes and Louise Dresser on the piano.[19] His 1917 novelty ragtime, "Rialto Ripples", was a commercial success.[18]

In 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song "Swanee", with words by Irving Caesar. Al Jolson, a Broadway star and former minstrel singer, heard Gershwin perform "Swanee" at a party and decided to sing it in one of his shows.[18]

In the late 1910s, Gershwin met songwriter and music director William Daly. The two collaborated on the Broadway musicals Piccadilly to Broadway (1920) and For Goodness' Sake (1922), and jointly composed the score for Our Nell (1923). This was the beginning of a long friendship. Daly was a frequent arranger, orchestrator and conductor of Gershwin's music, and Gershwin periodically turned to him for musical advice.[20]

George Gershwin, c. 1935

In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major work, Rhapsody in Blue, for orchestra and piano. It was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and premiered by Paul Whiteman's Concert Band, in New York. It subsequently went on to be his most popular work, and established Gershwin's signature style and genius in blending vastly different musical styles, including jazz and classical, in revolutionary ways.

Since the early 1920s Gershwin had frequently worked with the lyricist Buddy DeSylva. Together they created the experimental one-act jazz opera Blue Monday, set in Harlem. It is widely regarded as a forerunner to the groundbreaking Porgy and Bess introduced in 1935. In 1924, George and Ira Gershwin collaborated on a stage musical comedy Lady Be Good, which included such future standards as "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Oh, Lady Be Good!".[21] They followed this with Oh, Kay! (1926),[22] Funny Face (1927) and Strike Up the Band (1927 and 1930). Gershwin allowed the song, with a modified title, to be used as a football fight song, "Strike Up The Band for UCLA".[23]

In the mid-1920s, Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period, during which he applied to study composition with the noted Nadia Boulanger, who, along with several other prospective tutors such as Maurice Ravel, turned him down, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style.[24] Maurice Ravel's rejection letter to Gershwin told him, "Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?" While there, Gershwin wrote An American in Paris. This work received mixed reviews upon its first performance at Carnegie Hall on December 13, 1928, but it quickly became part of the standard repertoire in Europe and the United States.[25]

In 1929, the Gershwin brothers created Show Girl;[26] the following year brought Girl Crazy,[27] which introduced the standards "Embraceable You", sung by Ginger Rogers, and "I Got Rhythm". 1931's Of Thee I Sing became the first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the winners were George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin.[28]

Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 on Folly Island in South Carolina after he was invited to visit by the author of the novel Porgy, DuBose Heyward. He was inspired to write the music to his opera Porgy and Bess while on this working vacation.[29] Porgy and Bess was considered another American classic by the composer of Rhapsody in Blue — even if critics could not quite figure out how to evaluate it, or decide whether it was opera or simply an ambitious Broadway musical. "It crossed the barriers," per theater historian Robert Kimball. "It wasn't a musical work per se, and it wasn't a drama per se – it elicited response from both music and drama critics. But the work has sort of always been outside category."[30]

After the commercial failure of Porgy and Bess, Gershwin moved to Hollywood, California. In 1936, he was commissioned by RKO Pictures to write the music for the film Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Gershwin's extended score, which would marry ballet with jazz in a new way, runs over an hour. It took Gershwin several months to compose and orchestrate.

Gershwin had a ten-year affair with composer Kay Swift, whom he frequently consulted about his music. The two never married, although she eventually divorced her husband James Warburg in order to commit to the relationship. Swift's granddaughter, Katharine Weber, has suggested that the pair were not married because George's mother Rose was "unhappy that Kay Swift wasn't Jewish".[31] The Gershwins' 1926 musical Oh, Kay was named for her.[32] After Gershwin's death, Swift arranged some of his music, transcribed several of his recordings, and collaborated with his brother Ira on several projects.[33]

Early in 1937, Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and a recurring impression that he smelled burning rubber. On February 11, 1937, he performed his Piano Concerto in F in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of French maestro Pierre Monteux.[34] Gershwin, normally a superb pianist in his own compositions, suffered coordination problems and blackouts during the performance. He was at the time working on other Hollywood film projects while living with Ira and his wife Leonore in their rented house in Beverly Hills. Leonore Gershwin began to be disturbed by George's mood swings and his seeming inability to eat without spilling food at the dinner table. She suspected mental illness and insisted he be moved out of their house to lyricist Yip Harburg's empty quarters nearby, where he was placed in the care of his valet, Paul Mueller. The headaches and olfactory hallucinations continued.

On the night of July 9, 1937, Gershwin collapsed in Harburg's house, where he had been working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies. He was rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles,[35] and fell into a coma. Only then did his doctors come to believe that he was suffering from a brain tumor. Leonore called George's close friend Emil Mosbacher and explained the dire need to find a neurosurgeon. Mosbacher immediately called pioneering neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing in Boston, who, retired for several years by then, recommended Dr. Walter Dandy, who was on a boat fishing in Chesapeake Bay with the governor of Maryland. Mosbacher called the White House and had a Coast Guard cutter sent to find the governor's yacht and bring Dandy quickly to shore.[36] Mosbacher then chartered a plane and flew Dandy to Newark Airport, where he was to catch a plane to Los Angeles;[37] by that time, Gershwin's condition was critical and the need for surgery was immediate.[36] In the early hours of July 11, 1937, doctors at Cedars removed a large brain tumor, believed to have been a glioblastoma, but Gershwin died that morning at the age of 38.[38] The fact that he had suddenly collapsed and become comatose after he stood up on July 9 has been interpreted as brain herniation with Duret haemorrhages.[38]

Gershwin's mausoleum in Westchester Hills Cemetery

Gershwin's friends and admirers were shocked and devastated. John O'Hara remarked: "George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."[39] He was interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. A memorial concert was held at the Hollywood Bowl on September 8, 1937, at which Otto Klemperer conducted his own orchestration of the second of Gershwin's Three Preludes.[40]

Gershwin died intestate, and his estate passed to his mother.[56] The estate continues to collect royalties in the United States from licensing the copyrights on his post-Rhapsody in Blue work.[57] The estate supported the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (that extended the U.S. 75-year copyright protection an additional 20 years) because its 1923 cutoff date was shortly before Gershwin had begun to create his most popular works. The copyrights on all Gershwin's solo works expired at the end of 2007 in the European Union, based on its life-plus-70-years rule, and in the U.S. on January 1, 2020, on Gershwin's pre-1925 work.[58]

In 2005, The Guardian determined using "estimates of earnings accrued in a composer's lifetime" that George Gershwin was the wealthiest composer of all time.[59]

The George and Ira Gershwin Collection, much of which was donated by Ira and the Gershwin family estates, resides at the Library of Congress.[60]

In September 2013, a partnership between the estates of Ira and George Gershwin and the University of Michigan was created and will provide the university's School of Music, Theatre, and Dance access to Gershwin's entire body of work, which includes all of Gershwin's papers, compositional drafts, and scores.[61] This direct access to all of his works provides opportunities to musicians, composers, and scholars to analyze and reinterpret his work with the goal of accurately reflecting the composers' vision in order to preserve his legacy.[62] The first fascicles of The Gershwin Critical Edition, edited by Mark Clague, are expected in 2017; they will cover the 1924 jazz band version of Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess.[63]

• In 1937, Gershwin received his sole Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 1937 Oscars for "They Can't Take That Away from Me", written with his brother Ira for the 1937 film Shall We Dance. The nomination was posthumous; Gershwin died two months after the film's release.[64]
• In 1985, the Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to George and Ira Gershwin. Only three other songwriters, George M. Cohan, Harry Chapin, and Irving Berlin, have received this award.[65][66]
• In 1998 a special Pulitzer Prize was posthumously awarded to Gershwin "commemorating the centennial year of his birth, for his distinguished and enduring contributions to American music."[67]
• The George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Musical Achievement Award was established by UCLA to honor the brothers for their contribution to music and for their gift to UCLA of the fight song "Strike Up the Band for UCLA".
• In 2006, Gershwin was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.[68]

• The Gershwin Theatre on Broadway is named after George and Ira.[69]
• The Gershwin Hotel in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City was named after George and Ira.
• In Brooklyn, George Gershwin Junior High School 166 is named after him.[70]
• One of Holland America Line's ships, MS Koningsdam, has a Gershwin Deck (Deck 5)[71]
• The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song

• The 1945 biographical film Rhapsody in Blue starred Robert Alda as George Gershwin.

• Since 1999, Hershey Felder has produced a one-man show with him portraying George Gershwin Alone, which has played over 3,000 performances and won two 2007 Ovation Awards.[72] In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Felder launched a global live-streaming Hershey Felder Presents: Live from Florence featuring a performance of "Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone" in September 2020.[73]
• Paul Rudd portrays an imaginary friend based on George Gershwin, said to be his creator's favorite composer, in the 2015 series finale of the Irish sitcom Moone Boy, "Gershwin's Bucket List".