George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait

4. Ira Takes a Wife

four Ira Takes a Wife In the spring of 1926, Ira Gershwin, approaching his thirtieth birthday, had not yet had a serious romance. In fact, history knows of only one girlfriend, a high school sweetheart named Rose Eisen who, when he took her hand late one night as they rode a city bus, said, “Izzy, if you don’t mean it, don’t do it—and if you mean it, think of me.”1 He believed himself to be an unattractive man and could not imagine that any woman would really be interested in him. No one had been particularly interested in him in his youth—not even his family. His father had been too busy trying to earn a living, and his mother too engrossed in card games, theatergoing, and the racetrack. When Rose and Morris did turn their attention to Ira, it was to use him. He was the one who in hard times was sent to pawn his mother’s diamond ring. He was the one who went to Public School 25 to talk George’s teachers out of expelling him. Although what he really wanted to do was stay at home and read (he started with dime novels such as the Hal Standish Fred Fearnot series but quickly moved on to books by Arthur Conan Doyle 18 george฀gershwin and Jules Verne), he was made to work at one and another of his father’s innumerable businesses: a cigar store (with billiard parlor), a Turkish bath, restaurants, bakeries, a hotel. During this time, he began to write jokes, stories, and light verse for local newspapers. It seems inevitable that, given this bent, and with George making a living in Tin Pan Alley, he would gravitate there too. But he made it there on his own, writing with composers other than George and using a pseudonym (Arthur Francis, after his youngest brother and his sister) so as not to cash in on George’s growing reputation. They each had successes with other collaborators before becoming a team, and they would not have been a team had not each seen in the other a significant talent. Nor is it likely they would have become close had songwriting not brought them together. All the Gershwin children had grown up ill attended and on their own. In looks Ira was of fair complexion (brown eyes and blond hair according to his World War I draft card), bespectacled, stocky, almost as short as his father and with a similarly bland but kindly face. Although he had a powerful physique—his brother Arthur recalled him swimming the two miles from Coney Island to Brighton Beach—he was not fond of using it. He shunned not just the strenuous life but also, it seemed, the corporeal one. And he was shy—so shy he refused to drive a car out of a concern that other drivers might honk at him. But now a woman was expressing interest. This was Leonore Strunsky, whom he had known for nearly nine years. He had first met her when George was working as a piano pounder for Jerome Remick and Company . Another pianist at the firm was Herman Paley, an older man who became George’s friend, took him under wing, and brought him home to meet the Paley family. There George met Herman’s brother Lou (who became, briefly, George’s lyricist); his young cousin George Pallay; another young cousin Mabel Pleshette; Lou’s girlfriend, Emily Strunsky; and Emily ’s younger sister Leonore. These people became the nucleus of George’s and Ira’s social lives. George always had a special place in his heart for Emily who was, he said, “as beautiful inside as out—her beauty comes from within.”2 But she was in love with Lou, a high school English teacher, and unavailable to either Gershwin brother except as a friend. He felt similarly 19 Ira Takes a Wife about Mabel. But she too was engaged—to Robert Schirmer, whose father had founded the music publishing firm of G. Schirmer, Inc. Leonore, however, was obtainable. Unlike Emily, who had soft features, laughed easily, and was an appreciative audience for people bubbling with ideas, Leonore—family and friends called her Lee—though pretty, had sharper features, an aggressive manner, and a predilection for saying exactly what was on her mind, the more outrageous the better. As a girl she had made a...