W

ithout them, there would've been no West Side
Story and no soundtrack to Woody Allen's
Manhattan. Jazz and blues might've remained
forever outside the pop mainstream. Broad-
way, perhaps, would have died out in the late 1920s, as
audiences grew weary of frivolous musical comedies, and
turned to movies and baseball instead.
The careers of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Ella
Fitzgerald would've been infinitely duller, if not appre-
ciably shorter. And any number of lesser dancers, croon-
ers and horn players might've had no careers at all.
In fact, every form of popular music, from swing to be-
\-, bop to rock 'n'roll, would've been less snappy, and cer-
tainly less intelligent, if not for George and Ira Gershwin.
As the world prepares to celebrate the centenary of the
brothers' births — Ira's in December 1996 and George's
in September 1998 — the main concern seems to be not
leaving any of their musical heirs off the guest list.
"The story of the Gershwins is the story of popular mu-
sic and popular culture in the 20th century," asserts Dolph
Timmerman of RZO Classics in New York City, which
is helping to coordinate the festivities. "Looking back-
ward over a century of American music, you will find the
Gershwins everywhere."
Certainly, that will be true for the next couple of years.
Officially, the celebration begins this fall, when Carnegie
Hall will host a gala, all-star tribute to Ira, to be rebroad-
cast later on PBS (there'll be one for George later on).
Additional concerts scattered throughout New York will
be devoted to the brothers' songs, their political satires "Of
> Thee I Sing," "Strike Up the Band" and "Let 'Em Eat Cake,"
and to what is perhaps their most enduring work, the opera
Porgy and Bess. Some events already are sold out.
Meanwhile, plans are under way for a brand-new stage
musical based on An American In Paris. Martin Scors-
ese will go into pre-production this fall on a movie about
Ira and George, tentatively titled Mine, with a screen-
play by playwright John Guare.
Major record labels will weigh in with CD re-issues of
;-- the Gershwins' music and new recordings of their leviathan
catalogue. One of the first, Michael Feinstein's just-re-
leased Nice Work If You Can Get It, features several pre-

viously unpublished tunes. Across the pond, Britain plans
to host a tribute to Ira at London's Royal Albert Hall.
In between there'll be cabaret shows, theater reviews,
an ice show and literally hundreds of other events.
"With us or without us, there's going to be a tremendous
amount of activity," says RZO's Timmerman. "Nobody
needs encouragement to do Gershwin music and Gersh-
win plays."
It's hard to be hyperbolic when talking about the Gersh-
wins. Like figures on the far side of a magnifying glass,
their influence grows bigger the more closely we examine
them..
The Gershwins didn't merely describe an age; they de-
fined it. As America made the transition from a primari-
ly rural to a primarily urban society, their music embodied
the national mood swings and growing pains: the Jazz Age
and Prohibition; the Roaring Twenties and the Great De-
pression; hedonism and puritanism; champagne and hard-
ship.
First-generation Russian-American Jews, the Gersh-
wins fused an Old World love of form and verbal dexteri-
ty with New World energy and boldness. Their music was
the soundtrack to a million real-life, assimilationist dra-
mas played out on the streets of New York, Chicago and
Detroit.

W

hen Ira Gershwin first decided to write lyrics
professionally, he used a pseudonym created
from the first names of another brother and a
sister — calling himself Arthur Francis. Be-
girming in 1924, George worked almost exclusively with
his brother, Ira, collaborating on the following musicals
and songs:

1924 Lady, Be Good! ("Fascinating Rhythm," "Oh
Lady, Be Good!")

1925 Tip Toes (7hat Certain Feeling," "Looking for
a Boy")

-

1926 Oh, Kay! ("Clap Yo' Hands," "Someone to
Over Me")

1927 Funny Face (.' 'S
the Bromide")

1928 llosalie ("Flow Long Has This I3eenGoing
(Wye Got a Crush on You")

1929 Show Girl (with Gus Kahn, "Liza")

1930 Strike Up the Band ("Strike Up the Band"); Girl Crazy
("Embraceable You," "I Got Rhythm")

1931 Of Thee I Sing ("Of Thee I Sing, Baby," "Love is Sweeping the
Country")

1933 Pardon My English ("Isn't It a Pity"); Let 'Em Eat Cake
("Mine")

1935 Porgy and Bess (with DuBose Heyward, "It Ain't Necessarily
So," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin' ")

— From Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre by Stanley Green,

However, the brothers themselves didn't
experience firsthand the trauma of cultural
conflict.
As Deena Rosenberg writes in Fascinat-
ing Rhythm: The Collaboration of George
and Ira Gershwin (Plume, 1993): "The
Gershwins' Judaism was neither religious
nor politicized. It was cultural and casual—
and as such, it was a Judaism from which
George and Ira never felt estranged."
Their music laid the groundwork for a new
kind of musical theater in which song flowed
naturally out of story and characterization.
Though they could write escapist fluff as well
as anybody, they also demonstrated that mu-
sicals could be used to tap complex emotions,
skewer politicians or depict the struggles of

downcast minorities. Of Thee I Sing (1931) was the first
musical comedy to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Synthesizing America's varied carols — Jewish folk
tunes, African American spirituals, jazz and blues — the
Gershwins created music that caught the optimism and
frenzied vitality of the dawning "American century," and
that deliberately blurred the line between "low" and "high"
culture.
"Why are the Gershwins generating more interest in
their centennial than Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Ham-
merstein, all great composers?" Timmerman asks rhetor-
ically.
"I think it's because of the breadth of their music. They
worked in musical theater, Tin Pan Alley, opera. They
touched every kind of music."
Or, as the playful Gershwin tune "Mischa, Jascha,
Toscha, Sascha" puts it:

We're not high brows, we're not low brows,
Anyone can see:
You don't have to use a chart,
To see we're He-brows from the start.

Eventually, their innovations reached Rodgers and
Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim,
to cite only the most obvious beneficiaries. Their inter-
preters include everyone from Al Jolson and Frank Sina-
tra to Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and classical violinist Jascha
Heifetz.
The Gershwins' music cross-pollinated the visual arts,
film, advertising and even the language itself It ain't nec-
essarily so? You say potato? You can't take that away from
me? George and Ira may not have said it first, but they
said it most melodically, and memorably.
One of the centennial's results, no doubt, will be to bring
Ira, the lyricist, out of the shadow of his more famous corn-
poser sibling. George, the relentless, perfectionist bache-
lor, who died of a brain tumor at age 38, always fit the
romantic ideal of an artist more than Ira, the laid-back
family man. Particularly in the centennial's first year, Ira's
lyrics — slangy and street-wise, erudite and tender — will
be given their due.
"Ira wrote probably 60 percent of his work with George,
but he also wrote songs with Kurt Weill and Jerome Kern
and Harold Arlen," says Mark Rosenberg, executive di-
rector of the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts in Bever-
ly Hills, Calif.
Indeed, if Ira doesn't always get sufficient credit, it may
be because he himself praised George so lavishly.
"Ira always said it's the difference between talent and
genius," Goldberg says. "He thought his brother was a ge-
nius."
The Gershwins' music has so thoroughly pervaded pop
culture that some young Americans may recognize their
tunes without knowing the authors. Timmerman, of RZO,
relates the joke that many people under 30 think George
Gershwin wrote the theme to United Airlines (United
made "Rhapsody In Blue" its signature tune starting in
the late 1980s).
Michael P. Price, artistic director of the Goodspeed Opera
House in East Haddam, Conn., sees part of his mission as
bringing the Gershwins' music and lyrics to this new gen-
eration.
During Price's tenure, the Goodspeed has been credit-
ed with reviving interest in such neglected musical com-
edy masterworks as Oh, Kay! (1926) and Lady, Be Good!
(1924), the show that established the brothers' reputation
in musical theater.
"It's all about taking this music that was written so
many years ago and making it sing to today's people, so
that it lasts eternally," Price says.
An exhilarating prospect, to be sure — but everyone will
have to sing loudly. As RZO's Dolph Timmerman says,
"Between the presidential election and the Olympics, it's
going to be very noisy out there." ❑

Reed Johnson is a freelance features writer living in
Seal Beach, Calif.

