By John Ardoin
 George and Ira Gershwin were very close as brothers and as artistic collaborators. Yet, they were opposites in their personalities and lifestyles. George has been called "the hare" and Ira "the tortoise." George the musician was charismatic, energetic, and ambitious, while Ira the lyricist was low-keyed, serious, and happy to remain in the background as "the other Gershwin."
George became internationally famous while still in his twenties and died tragically young at only 38, but Ira lived on to the age of 86, working with other composers such as Harold Arlen and Kurt Weill. As song writers, George and Ira fashioned 17 musicals, four films, and the landmark opera "Porgy and Bess," often working on their projects side by side.
Both grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants. George was born Jacob Gershovitz, eight years after Ira, but it was Ira who was first given piano lessons. He recalled that when the family purchased a used upright piano for him, "George sat down and played a popular tune of the day. I had had no idea he could play and found out that despite his roller-skating activities, the kid parties he attended and the many street games he participated in (with an occasional resultant bloody nose), he had found time to experiment on a player piano at the home of a friend."
It was immediately obvious to the family that George would be the better musician, much to Ira's relief, and a love affair developed between George and the piano that continued until his death -- one that was consummated in such major scores as "Rhapsody in Blue" and the Concerto in F.
George left school at 15 to become the youngest pianist in Tin Pan Alley, the famous song-plugging street in New York. Ira went on to finish high school and enter college. Ira liked to write poetry, and George encouraged his brother to try his hand at song lyrics as well, and eventually Ira produced something his brother liked -- "The Real American Folk Song Is a Rag," one of the numbers included in "Crazy for You." (Not wishing to ride on his brother's coattails, Ira was first billed as "Arthur Francis," but after four years of working with George, the pseudonym was dropped.)
"The Real American Folk Song" was the first Gershwin collaboration to be heard in a musical -- "Ladies First" in 1918. The next year George's big break came with a song called "Swanee," written not with Ira, but with lyricist Irving Caesar. The legendary Al Jolson heard it, loved it, and championed and recorded it. George's career was off and running. He and Ira contributed songs to several of the famous "George White Scandals," a series of popular Broadway revues, and the two brothers finally came into their own with a show that was theirs from first note -- and word -- to last: "Lady, Be Good."
 Although it was not the biggest hit of the 1924-25 theater season in New York (that honor went to Sigmund Romberg's operetta "The Student Prince"), it was certainly the brightest. "Lady, Be Good" also launched the career of George's buddy, Fred Astaire, who was joined by his sister Adele, creating one of the famous dance teams of the day. In between "Lady, Be Good" and "Girl Crazy" (the model for GREAT PERFORMANCES' "Crazy for You"), there were eight more musicals, all filled with songs that would eventually outlive the shows that had given them birth. "Girl Crazy" was followed by "Of Thee I Sing," the first musical to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and there would be two final shows, plus "Porgy," before George and Ira left Manhattan to take up residence in Hollywood for the first of three films.
A glimpse of the two Gershwins at work has been provided by an old family friend who was also in California. He recalls receiving "a phone call from George. I hurried over to find him in rebellion against his brother, Ira the scholar. They were working on the 'Goldwyn Follies.' George had a tune which Ira rejected because it was 'too pop.' 'What's wrong with a pop song?' George argued. 'This is a movie, and it should be a pop song.'
"George played the tune for me. It did not have the blaze of the Gershwin hallmark, but it was a brave sweep of melody, effective and appropriate. Unfortunately, it cried out for [a] sentimental love lyric, a theme that always sent Ira scurrying. The love song was his 'bête noire.' We argued, until like [a] whining schoolboy ... Ira muttered, 'All right -- I'll write it, but the song will be Goldwyn, not Gershwin.'
"Before dawn, Ira had bitten into half the lyrics of the memorable 'Love Walked In.' The germ of the melody, which George referred to as a 'Brahms strain' (to Ira it was 'churchy'), came out of the 'Girl Crazy' tune book" (George always kept "tune books" in which he jotted down melodic ideas when they came to him). "Love Walked In," sadly, turned out to be the last song George completed. On July 11, 1937, he died of a brain tumor. As with Mozart and Schubert before him, the world has wondered ever since what melodies and music he might have written had he lived longer.
Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski has offered this wonderful explanation for the tremendous success of the two Gershwins: "The fusion of words and music in a Gershwin song is so seamless that it seems carefully woven rather than written. The songs are melodically and harmonically haunting, rhythmically sparkling and literate. There is no sentimentality, and they are graced with subtle humor. While the Gershwins took their craft seriously, they were never Ivory Towerish. They were practical craftsmen doing a job, which happened to be writing songs....
"Ira, with his customary twinkle in the eye, spoke for both on an occasion when it came his turn to be asked the inevitable 'What comes first, the words or the music?'
"'The contract,' he replied."
Top photo by Rex Hardy, Jr. Both photos courtesy of the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts.
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