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Words Without Music The Ira Gershwin Newsletter No. 10, Fall 2016 THAT’S THE TICKET! THE GERSHWINS AND POLITICAL SATIRE Inside: Take on Washington The Ira Gershwin Newsletter, Fall 2016 1 George S. Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind Words Without Music Dear readers, Ira Gershwin’s name is, quite rightly, inextricably tied to the The Ira Gershwin Newsletter wealth of timeless songs he wrote with his brother George. But Ira’s No.10, Fall 2016 • ISSN 1938-4556 career encompassed many successes with composers who didn’t share his last name. Some of those songs, and the shows and films in which they were featured, are among his most famous and popular, while others remain ripe for rediscovery. Three years before George and Ira collaborated on Lady, Be Good! Ira—under the pseudonym Arthur Francis, which he derived from the Contents first names of his younger brother and sister—wrote his first success- Letter from Michael Strunsky 2 ful Broadway show, Two Little Girls in Blue, with composers Vincent Feature Story: Stars and Swipes 3 Youmans and Paul Lannin. (Its run in 1921 bested George’s 1920 National Recording Registry 9 edition of the George White Scandals by one performance.) Gershwin Prize to Willie Nelson 11 Even during the years George and Ira struck Broadway gold or Update: Gershwin Critical Edition 12 critical success with Strike Up the Band, Girl Crazy, Of Thee I Sing, Porgy Update: Gershwin Website 13 and Bess, and more, Ira continued to work with other writers. Two In the News / On the Horizon 14 lavish revues—Life Begins at 8:40 (1934), written with composer Harold An American in Paris tour dates Back cover Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg, and Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, written with composer Vernon Duke—had successful runs and featured memora- Words Without Music Staff ble songs like “Fun to Be Fooled” and the classic “I Can’t Get Started.” EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Struggling with grief and the myriad of business details that Abigail Kimball Michael Owen followed George’s death in 1937, Ira found it hard to begin to write again. But when he returned to work, with composer Kurt Weill and Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts librettist Moss Hart, the result was his most successful Broadway show TRUSTEE ARTISTIC ADVISOR ever, the phantasmagorical Lady in the Dark (1941), a show that was so Michael Strunsky Robert Kimball lucrative, it allowed Ira to pay off his entire mortgage! [email protected] Other stage and movie projects followed over the next 13 years. VP/ADMINISTRATION DIRECTOR OF LICENSING Cover Girl (Jerome Kern, 1944), Where Do We Go from Here? and The Jean Strunsky L. J. Strunsky Firebrand of Florence (both with Kurt Weill, 1945), Park Avenue (Arthur [email protected] [email protected] Schwartz, 1946), The Barkleys of Broadway (Harry Warren, 1949), and CONSULTING ARCHIVIST BOOKKEEPER Give a Girl a Break (Burton Lane, 1953) may not always have struck Michael Owen Olivia Smith a chord with audiences, but they are filled to the brim with the wit, [email protected] [email protected] wordplay, and erudition that are Ira’s hallmark. FACILITIES MANAGER ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT My uncle’s career effectively came to an end in 1954 with two Vinny Fajardo La Tasha Meilleur [email protected] [email protected] movie scores written with Harold Arlen: The Country Girl, featur- ing an Academy Award-winning performance by Grace Kelly, and Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are from A Star Is Born, which included Judy Garland’s iconic performance the collection of the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts. of Ira’s third Oscar-nominated song, “The Man That Got Away.” For further information on Gershwin performances, please visit the official website at www.gershwin.com Ira would spend the remainder of his life caring for the legacy of his Published by the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts brother George, only gradually coming to realize that his own work 101 Natoma Street was equally deserving of recognition by posterity. San Francisco, CA 94105-3703 Audio excerpts of many of Ira Gershwin’s songs with his brother, Letters to the editor are welcome at the above address or at [email protected] and may be published, subject as well as Arlen, Weill, and the other composers he worked with, can to editing for space and clarity. be heard by visiting the Gershwin website at www.gershwin.com. Just Design: Glyph Publishing Arts.com look for the icon and have a listen! Cover: William Gaxton and Lois Moran make their case for —Michael Strunsky love in Of Thee I Sing (1931) 2 Words Without Music FEATURE STORY “But what the hell! / You’ll do as well!” Paul McCullough and Bobby Clark with the ladies of the chorus in the 1930 version of Strike Up the Band STARS AND SWIPES The Poisoned, Patriotic, Political Pens and Piano of the Gershwins, Kaufman, and Ryskind by Laurence Maslon he current presidential election is so absurd, so hyperbolic, not only played host to a corpus of comic operettas worthy Tand so ridiculous that no one could possibly make this stuff of Gilbert and Sullivan, but had also seen the musical theater up. However, if one were looking for a cohort of talented form evolve and mature. Theatrically, the Gershwins & Co. and witty musical comedy writers who could make this stuff created an American Revolution. up, you couldn’t do any better than the Gershwin brothers, Politics on the American musical stage before the Gershwins George S. Kaufman, and Morrie Ryskind. That team pulled fell into two categories: sheer patriotism and the minor jocu- off not one but three interrelated groundbreaking satirical larities of the revue sketch. The former was perfectly served by musicals—Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing, and Let ‘Em Eat George M. Cohan and his jingoistic shows, songs, and sketches Cake—all produced within the astonishing span of seven years. in the early part of the century. On the other hand, moments Before they started, political satire on the American stage was on the stage that skewered public policy in high places were few a tame, toothless thing; after they were through, Broadway had and far between; social manners of a local nature were more the The Ira Gershwin Newsletter, Fall 2016 3 FEATURE STORY most successful comic playwright of his day, having teamed up with Marc Connelly on several hit spoofs about American busi- ness. He had just finished his collaboration with Irving Berlin on The Cocoanuts, which was the Marx Brothers’ first Broadway success written by skilled professionals. Working with the Marx quartet was an exhausting proposition for Kaufman, and the exercise made him less than enthusiastic about taking on a new musical. Still, Selwyn prevailed and the prospect of working with the Gershwins was a welcome one Kaufman, left to his own devices, came up with an extraor- dinarily original script for the day, Strike Up the Band. A broad satire of American greed, self-serving public relations, business chicanery and war, it took swipes at industry, the government, and the military, with the road to madness led by Horace J. Fletcher, a megalomaniacal businessman who owns America’s most successful cheese factory. (No kidding—his middle initial is “J,” the same as another businessman who just happens to be one of the current presidential candidates.) When Switzerland gets its dander up after Fletcher imposes a tariff on imported cheese (no fan of trade agreements, he), the roused European nation threatens war. Fletcher then offers to underwrite the war with Switzerland in exchange for 25 percent of the profits and Ira Gershwin and George Gershwin (top) with George S. Kaufman (lower his name gloriously branded on all war paraphernalia; he apos- left) and Morrie Ryskind: Collaborators on three of the greatest satires in trophizes his unconventional chutzpah in “A Typical Self-Made American musical theater history American,” while the army admits in the title number: topic of satire in early 1920s revues. The Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 We’re in a bigger, better war, tackled the incipient inconveniences of Prohibition in sketch For your patriotic pastime. and song; the 1927 edition featured Eddie Cantor burlesqu- We don’t know what we’re fighting for— ing Mayor Jimmy Walker in an Irving Berlin tune, “My New But we didn’t know the last time! York.” With the exception of a sketch poking fun of Calvin The Gershwins matched Kaufman’s verve with a score that, Coolidge in the Garrick Gaieties of 1925, Washington seemed although it reflects the patchwork character of the story, shows a very far away and, of course, Manhattan was the center of the team working its way through a new challenge, with Ira borrowing known universe. liberally from his idol, W. S. Gilbert. More provocatively, the show In 1926, the Manhattan climate was one of self-satisfied seems to have been written as a Marx Brothers production with- ease and conspicuous consumption. What summed it up better out the Marx Brothers. As a character, Fletcher seems tailored for than the election of James J. Walker as mayor of New York City, Groucho; there are also supporting parts for a mute comedian and a renowned playboy whose charm far exceeded his political tal- even a stuffy dowager who’s Fletcher’s romantic foil. (No surprise ent—and a songwriter no less! (He had a hit with “Will You Love since Kaufman wrote Strike Up the Band in between assignments for Me in December as You Do in May?” in 1905.) This was the the Marx Brothers, The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers.) cultural backdrop when producer Edgar Selwyn had the notion None of this anarchic innovation seems to have impressed to unite the Gershwins—since 1924 the reigning musical team out-of-town audiences; first in Long Branch, New Jersey, in Au- on Broadway—with the recent champion of Broadway comedy, gust of 1927, then in Philadelphia.