George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait

18. Hollywood Beckons

eighteen Hollywood Beckons On February 17,1936, a few days before Ira left with Leonore and Follies set and costume designer Vincente Minnelli for a Caribbean holiday, George heard from a Hollywood agent. This was Sam Howard of the Phil Berg-Bert Allenberg Agency, asking if he and Ira would be interested in coming to California to write songs for a yet to be determined Hollywood studio. Gershwin told Howard they would be interested if they could get $100,000 plus a percentage of the film’s profits. On their one previous visit to Hollywood , in 1930, they had spent a few weeks writing the Delicious score for Fox Film Corporation and gotten $100,000. Now George wanted an equal amount plus a percentage of the profits. Or, at least, that was his opening gambit. When Howard was unable to come up with anything, George and Ira, the latter back from vacation, allowed another agent, Arthur Lyons, a month to come up with a suitable deal. Lyons quickly came back with proposals from RKO Pictures involving Fred Astaire. RKO had been saved from bankruptcy by the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. Most recently, the two had done Top Hat with great songs 125 Hollywood Beckons by Irving Berlin including “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails,” “Isn’t This a Lovely Day,” and “Cheek to Cheek.” In February 1936, as the Gershwins were beginning their Hollywood negotiations, Fred and Ginger’s new film, Follow the Fleet, was released, with another superb score by Berlin, this one featuring “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Astaire and Rogers were currently working on Swing Time, whose songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields would include “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Pick Yourself Up,” and “A Fine Romance.” Kern’s fee, after protracted negotiations, was $50,000 plus a percentage of the gross up to an additional $37,500 (he got the additional). Berlin’s deal on Top Hat was $100,000 plus a percentage of the gross that brought him another $285,000.1 On May 14, Lyons telegrammed the Gershwins to say that RKO was offering the brothers $60,000 with no percentage. They passed on this, and Lyons’s month expired without a deal. At that point, George and Ira turned to another agent, Alex S. Kempner, who let them in on the truth: Hollywood was dubious about George’s ability to write hits because he was reputedly interested only in highbrow material. At that point, Lyons got back into the act, using psychology to get the Gershwins to come to terms. In a June 10 telegram telling them that RKO boss Pandro Berman was offering $60,000 for twenty weeks’ work, he added: “Both Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers delighted with possibility of your doing this. . . . After you talk with Berman you will be convinced that this is the right setup for you and that this is the type of picture you have been looking for.” Astaire and Rogers each had been associated with Gershwin for a long time. Fred and his sister Adele were a teenage vaudeville act when they first met George, then a teenage song plugger at Remick’s. The three of them had daydreamed about someday working together on Broadway—a dream that came true in 1924 when Lady, Be Good! made them—and Ira— celebrities along the Great White Way. In 1926, the Astaires gave George a signed photo with an inscription by Adele that said, “To George—whom I admire more than anyone in the world” and an accompanying addendum by Fred that read, “Adele said it for me.”2 That year Fred and Adele recorded several Gershwin songs with the composer at the piano. In “The Half of It, Dearie Blues,” Fred exclaims during his tap dance, “How’s that, George?” and George laughingly calls back, “That’s great, Freddie, do it again!”3 126 george฀gershwin In 1930, nineteen-year old Ginger Rogers became a Broadway star when she was cast in Girl Crazy. During rehearsals for that show, George asked Astaire for help with the dance routines, and that is where Fred first met Ginger. George and Fred both courted Ginger at the time, although nothing serious developed between her and either man. In 1932 Adele retired to marry Britain’s Lord Cavendish (and move to an Irish castle), leaving Fred without a partner. He moved to Hollywood...