Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,600

This is the grave of George and Ira Gershwin, despite only George’s name being on the front. We are going to focus a bit more on George here, both because he’s more important and because it’s his name on it.

Jacob Gershwine was born in 1898 in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. He was the second child, with Ira, born in 1896, the eldest. There would be some younger siblings too. The parents had changed the family’s last name to Gershwine from Gershowitz already; Gershwin would come later. They grew up in the Yiddish theaters. In fact, they lived right in the middle of the theater district. By the mid-1900s, the Gershwins’ father owned some public baths. Ira worked for him.

Despite his name, Jacob was known as George from the time he was a child. In 1906, he started pitching songs to Tin Pan Alley. He had always been into music. Their parents had bought Ira a piano. He was like, eh. But George, he was all over it. It was actually their younger sister Frankie who was the first to bring home a paycheck, as she got cast a lot in the Yiddish theater as a kid, but then she married (actually ended up marrying the co-inventor of Kodachrome color photography) and just raised her family.

Anyway, George dropped out of school in 1913 to work as a song plugger in local music stores and finally started selling songs in 1916. He was really good at this. He started pushing tons of songs, even using pseudonyms to make it easier to push more of them. He did a little vaudeville, had some minor hit songs.

Then in 1919, he published his song “Swanee.” He wrote the tune, Irving Caesar wrote the lyrics, and Al Jolson sang the definitive version. It was Gershwin who pitched it directly to Jolson at a party and the singer loved it. That made Gershwin a ton of money and he kept churning out super popular songs.

What makes Gershwin so remarkable is his ambition. He could have spent an entire career working up these sorts of popular songs, especially as movies began to develop sound technology. But no, he wanted to be a real composer and he just had this natural knack for it that combined the high and the low, to use antiquated and condescending terms for art, to create compositions that somehow seemed to sum up America. In 1924, he composed Rhapsody in Blue, which in my view is one of the most brilliant compositions to ever come out of the United States. Now, I know there are some classical music snobs out there who downplay Gershwin and consider it not serious music or whatever. I am willing to listen to these arguments up to a point, but I am not going to agree with them. To me, combining classical with jazz and Tin Pan Alley into an incredibly evocative work that remains absolutely iconic a century later is not only a hell of an accomplishment, but the work completely holds up. Think of its use in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which despite the moral depravity of its creator and that is at the heart of the film, still remains one of the greatest films ever made. A huge part of that is the use of Rhapsody in Blue to set the scene and using it specifically to highlight the beauty of New York, at a time when New York was not seen as beautiful and was in fact at its nadir, was simply brilliant.

Also, this was Gershwin’s first large-scale orchestral composition!!!!

Gershwin kept composing exceptional pieces at an astounding rate. Big-time orchestral works included Concerto for F in 1925, An American in Paris in 1928, Second Rhapsody in 1931, and Cuban Overture in 1932. But he also expanded to writing Broadway shows, making him even more popular. Some of the most famous of these include Funny Face from 1927, Show Girl from 1929, Girl Crazy in 1930, and Of Thee I Sing in 1931. He also started writing original scores for films as that began to become a thing. It was really shortly before his early death that he got involved in this, but he scored Shall We Dance from 1937, A Damsel in Distress from the same year, and The Goldwyn Follies from 1938.

Ira started working with his brother in the mid 20s. They became brilliant compositional partners, especially on show tunes. Among the songs they wrote together that would become American classics include “The Man I Love,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and “Fascinating Rhythm.”

One really wonders what might have become of Gershwin as he aged. Alas, we will never know. He developed brain cancer. That killed him in 1937. He was a mere 38 years old. What a huge tragedy. What would Gershwin have done with the mid-century moves in music? At the very least, he should have had another 30 or 40 years of film scoring. The world really mourned his lost.

Ira mourned too. He didn’t write a single song again until 1940. He certainly was the lesser of the brothers, but that’s unfair because anyone would have been. He managed to have a very solid career on his own, working with people such as Kurt Weill and Jerome Kern. He wrote a bunch of film scores too and worked a bit on Broadway. But in 1946, the complete failure of his Broadway show Park Avenue hurt his reputation and he never composed for Broadway again. He worked only occasionally after that. But the royalties also meant he didn’t have to.

Ira lived a long time. Funny late life story. He was buddies with Rosemary Clooney. She was friends with Debby Boone. In 1981, Boone was in Japan and bought Clooney a gift–an early walkman. Now, Ira and his wife had constant arguments over how loud he listened to his music (boy does this sound like a familiar marriage issue). Clooney knew this and gave them to Gershwin. He was so happy! He could listen to his music as loud as he wanted and his wife wouldn’t complain! He was so happy that he bought a bunch of Sony stock!!!

Ira Gershwin died of heart disease in 1983. He was 86 years old. He chose to be buried with his brother.

There is so much more to say about these guys and their impact, but let’s leave it for the comments.

George and Ira Gershwin are buried in Westchester Hills Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Hey, grave #1600. Kind of a milestone!!

George and Ira Gershwin were nominated for a Best Original Song Academy Award in 1938 for “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” If you would like this series to visit other people nominated for Oscars in 1938, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Harry Owens won Best Original Song for “Sweet Leilani” and he is buried in Eugene, Oregon (huh, who knew). Leo McCarey, who won Best Director for The Awful Truth, is in Culver City, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.