Early Works Gershwin collaborated with Vincent Youmans as early as 1920. The two wrote "Who's Who with You?" and "Mr. And Mrs." for "Piccadilly to Broadway," and "Two Little Girls in Blue." In 1921, as Arthur Francis, Gershwin wrote "The Piccadilly Walk" from "Pins and Needles" with Arthur Riscoe and Edward A. Horan. In 1922, he penned "When All Your Castles Come Tumbling Down," for "Molly Darling," with Milton E. Schwarzwald. Gershwin also contributed to the Schuyler Greene and Louis Silvers score of "Fascination," from the picture of the same name. Gershwin's earliest published collaboration with his younger brother was "The Real American Folk Song," a tune they incorporated into "Ladies First," which opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 24, 1918. Ira Gershwin continued to create song lyrics as Arthur Francis as late as 1922 when he and his brother collaborated on that year's version of George White's annual Broadway revue, "Scandals." That show featured their popular standard, "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise." That same year Ira Gershwin penned the lyrics for "Someone" and "Tra-La-La," and collaborated with Arthur Jackson on "French Pastry Walk" for the show "For Goodness Sake," a musical starring Fred and Adele Astaire. "For Goodness Sake" was a pivotal achievement for both Gershwins and led to a long-standing working relationship between the Gershwin brothers and the Astaire siblings. The show later debuted in London under the name "Stop Flirting." In 1924, Gershwin and his brother scored an operetta called "Primrose" in collaboration with Desmond Carter. The show debuted to favorable reviews on September 11, 1924, at the Winter Garden in London. Two months later the Gershwin brothers sealed their reputation in the musical world with their first complete and independent collaboration, an Alex Aarons/Vinton Freedley production called "Lady Be Good." Starring the Astaires and backed by Otto Kahn, "Lady" premiered in Philadelphia on November 17, 1924. The play, which opened at the Liberty Theater in New York on December 1, continued for 184 performances and then played a profitable run in England. The Gershwins collaborated with Buddy De Sylva on the score of "Tell Me More," which opened at the Gaity Theater on April 13, 1925. That production experienced success in London as well. Ira Gershwin had by then dropped his pseudonym and emerged as an accomplished lyricist in his own right. In 1926, the Gershwins contracted to write a musical for Gertrude Lawrence. The play, "Oh, Kay!" received outstanding reviews when it opened at Broadway's Imperial Theater on November 8; the show ran for 256 performances. Biographer Charles Schwartz, commenting on the Gershwin mystique, noted that he had "the uncanny knack for coming up with the fresh and the novel ballads appropriate for their time and genre [with] wonderfully creative lyrics, songs of chivalric love and gallantry." Fame and Fortune Gershwin married Leonore Strunsky on September 14, 1926. As he and his brother embarked on a lucrative professional career, they moved their entire family to an impressive five-story house at 316 West 103rd Street in Manhattan. Ira Gershwin lived with his wife on the fourth floor. The house was generally astir with a flurry of visitors: artistic colleagues, neighbors, and friends. To escape the pandemonium of New York City, Gershwin retreated to the Chumleigh Farm, north of the city in Ossining in 1927. He and his brother spent the spring and summer months of that year on the rented estate as a respite from the hectic pace of vaudeville. At Chumleigh the brothers wrote a musical called "Strike Up the Band," which debuted later that summer. The show featured a future Gershwin classic, "The Man I Love," but failed to attract pre-Broadway audiences in New Jersey and Philadelphia. After some revision by the Gershwins, the program ran a successful tour on Broadway in 1930. The Gershwins rewrote another show originally entitled "Smarty," for producers Aarons and Freedley in November 1927. The reworked production, called "Funny Face," starred the Astaires. Ira Gershwin implemented innovative lyrical devices with aplomb. In the hit song "'S Wonderful" he cued the male lead to drop each line in mid-verse, leaving the female lead to complete the line in perfect time, without losing a beat. In that same song, Gershwin employed what Schwartz called a "slurred-over, sibilant sound of its lyrics -- with its 's wonderful,' 's marvelous,' 's paradise, a combination not easy to ignore or to forget." The overhauled musical met with enormous success when it returned to Broadway the following year. It grossed $44,000 within a few weeks and enjoyed a Broadway run of 244 performances. In 1928, Gershwin and his brother moved from the family home into adjoining penthouses on nearby Riverside Drive and 75th Street. That year, Gershwin updated the lyrics to some discarded compositions of his brother. He added some Sigmund Romberg tunes, and the result was a Flo Ziegfeld production, "Rosalie," that opened on January 10, 1928 and ran for 335 performances on Broadway. A subsequent Ziegfeld review was cancelled that year, but the songs and score survived nonetheless and were incorporated into other Gershwin works, including the immensely popular "Embraceable You," which went into "Girl Crazy" in 1930 and "Blah, Blah, Blah," heard in the 1931 movie, DELICIOUS. By 1929, the long-standing working relationship between the Gershwins and Ziegfeld ended in the wake of an overdone production called "Show Girl." Six years later Ira Gershwin contracted one last time with Ziegfeld, to collaborate with Vernon Duke on the "Ziegfeld Follies of 1936." back to page 1 continue to page 3