George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait

22. Epilogue

twenty-two Epilogue The day following George’s death, a Monday, Ira was in court presenting papers prepared by his law firm to gain control over his brother’s estate. George had died intestate, and this was an attempt to preempt Rose, who was ready with papers of her own, filed on July 16 in New York. The issue would be decided by determining whether George, at the end, was a resident of California or New York. New York’s jurisdiction won out and the estate was awarded to Rose. Her lawyer was also successful in petitioning the judge to spare her the strain of personally appearing in court, given her grief. Ira was under orders from his wife to keep his own grief in check, which he managed to do for the next several hectic weeks. After the court appearance came the air trip to New York (George’s body was sent by train), and then, on Thursday, July 15, the funeral. So many showed up at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue—more than 3,500—that traffic came to a halt as a crowd gathered outside in the rain. None of George’s music was played during the service, it being, apparently, considered unequal to 164 george฀gershwin the occasion. Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, and Handel were heard instead. The consensus of the moment was that Gershwin’s music was, like the man himself, of his time. In its July 19, 1937, obituary, Time magazine said: “If songs like ‘Somebody Loves Me,’ ‘I Got Rhythm,’ ‘Embraceable You,’ ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ were ephemeral, Gershwin at least had the satisfaction of hearing a nation sing them.”1 He was buried alongside his father. Several years later, his mother would have a mausoleum built for the Gershwin family, and George and Morris were moved from the ground to marble crypts. On August 9, 1937, a month after his death, there was a memorial concert at Lewisohn Stadium. It was a little more than a year since his final appearance there, when he was disappointed when only a few thousand showed up. The attendance this time topped 20,000—a new stadium record. The New York Times reported: “Aside from the regular seating accommodations, every extra inch of space had been utilized for the expected overflow, but the crowd was more than authorities had counted on. Standees lined both extension walls of the shell and occupied every point of vantage. The aisles of the stands were filled. Hundreds stood by at the stadium fences on Convent Avenue, 136th and 138th Streets.”2 Among the participants was Harry Kaufman, who had played the Concerto in F to such acclaim in Venice, and who now played it again, with Alexander Smallens conducting. Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, Ruby Elzy, and the Eva Jessye Choir were there to sing selections from Porgy and Bess. Another memorial concert a month later at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles drew more than 22,000 people, causing Highland Avenue to become so clogged with traffic that the performers needed a police escort to reach the stage. This time, the performers included Al Jolson, who sang “Swanee”; Otto Klemperer conducting his own orchestral arrangement of the Second Prelude; Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, and Ruby Elzy with selections from Porgy and Bess; Fred Astaire singing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”; and Oscar Levant, who overcame five years of stage fright to play the Concerto in F. When Ira and Leonore returned to Beverly Hills, Lee was adamant that there be no emotional displays. Ira was able to comply, at least for a while. He went back to work for Goldwyn and finished the score for The Goldwyn 165 Epilogue Follies with Vernon Duke, who was brought in at Ira’s suggestion. George had not written the verses for several of his final songs and that now had to be done. Years later, Duke would recall in his autobiography, Passport to Paris, that he wrote the music for the verse to “Love Is Here to Stay.” Ira remembered it differently, saying that he wrote both the words (“The more I read the papers”) and the music—that he sang the melody to Duke, who notated it. When Michael Feinstein asked Ira about this discrepancy, the latter, by that time past eighty, replied, “It’s so undistinguished, isn’t it obvious that I wrote...