48 Fun Facts About George Gershwin

Which song was the hit of Gershwin's 1935 opera Porgy and Bess?

Summertime. It was the first number Gershwin finished for the opera, a lullaby Clara sings to her baby in the opening scene, and Billie Holiday took it into the pop charts in 1936.

Rhapsody in Blue blends classical music with effects drawn from which genre?

Jazz. The story goes that Gershwin learned from a newspaper that a bandleader had billed him to write a jazz concerto, and dashed the piece off in a few weeks.

Which singer's 1959 Gershwin songbook made Ira say he never knew how good the songs were?

Ella Fitzgerald. Ira helped choose the songs for the set and retouched some of his lyrics for her, and her 'But Not for Me' from it won a Grammy.

From which country did Gershwin's parents emigrate to New York?

Russia. The family name had been Gershovitz before it was Americanized in New York, and the future George Gershwin was registered at birth as Jacob.

In which New York borough was Gershwin born?

Brooklyn. He was born in East New York, and music came later: when the family bought a second-hand piano for his brother Ira, it was George who took it over.

Which hit musical opened in 2003 at the Broadway theatre named for George and Ira Gershwin?

Wicked. The house opened in 1972 as the Uris and took the Gershwin name in the middle of the 1983 Tony Awards, which it was hosting; it is the largest theatre on Broadway.

Which Broadway star made Gershwin's 'Swanee' a hit by adding it to his show Sinbad?

Al Jolson. His record sold in the millions, another million copies went in sheet music, and Gershwin became a celebrity overnight.

Which unusual instruments did Gershwin bring back from France for An American in Paris?

Taxi horns. He brought four home for the premiere, and the letters A to D he circled in the score were probably labels for the horns, not notes, so orchestras may have honked the wrong pitches for decades.

In which city is the opera Porgy and Bess set?

Charleston. Porgy rides a goat cart because his real-life model did: Samuel Smalls, a disabled man known around the city as Goat Cart Sam.

Which US airline adopted Rhapsody in Blue as its advertising theme?

United Airlines. The fee it paid for the tune, put at $500,000, was even cited in a 2003 Supreme Court dissent as a cost of long copyrights that ends up in ticket prices.

What caused Gershwin's death in July 1937?

A brain tumor. Doctors missed it for months and suspected it only after he fell into a coma; surgeons operated at once, but he died that morning, aged 38.

Which Woody Allen film has a soundtrack made entirely of Gershwin compositions?

Manhattan. Its opening, the New York skyline in black and white set to Rhapsody in Blue, introduced the piece to a new generation of listeners.

What job did 15-year-old Gershwin take on Tin Pan Alley after leaving school?

Song plugger. For three years he pounded out a publisher's new tunes on the piano so that customers would buy the sheet music, a grind one biographer called 'plugger's purgatory'.

Which instrument plays the famous opening glissando of Rhapsody in Blue?

Clarinet. Gershwin wrote a plain run of notes; the band's clarinetist Ross Gorman bent it into a siren-like slide while playing around in rehearsal, and Gershwin told him to keep it.

Which Gershwin song turns on rival pronunciations of tomato and potato?

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. It was first performed on screen in 1937 as a tap duet on roller skates around a Central Park rink.

Which dancer starred in the 1951 film musical An American in Paris, built on Gershwin's music?

Gene Kelly. He choreographed the film as well, ending it with a long wordless ballet danced to the tone poem, and it won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Who orchestrated the original 1924 scoring of Rhapsody in Blue?

Ferde Grofé. Racing a deadline, Gershwin sketched the piece at the piano and handed the scoring to the band's arranger; his own solo part wasn't written down, so he played it from memory at the premiere.

Which bandleader commissioned Rhapsody in Blue?

Paul Whiteman. He conducted the 1924 premiere with Gershwin at the piano, and the piece went over so well that he took it as his band's theme tune.

Which Gershwin show was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Of Thee I Sing. The 1932 prize named the book writers and lyricist Ira but not the composer; the Pulitzer board made amends in 1998, George's centennial, with a posthumous special citation.

Porgy and Bess was adapted from a 1925 novel by which author?

DuBose Heyward. Gershwin wrote to him in 1926 proposing an opera, but other work kept the composer away until 1934; by then Heyward and his wife Dorothy had already put the novel on stage as a play.

Before reaching Broadway, Porgy and Bess had its first performance, a 1935 tryout, in which city?

Boston. The tryout at the Colonial Theatre ran so long that Gershwin cut a good many numbers before the Broadway opening ten days later.

Which Porgy and Bess song has lyrics by Ira Gershwin alone?

It Ain't Necessarily So. The novelist wrote or shared most of the opera's lyrics, but this one is all Ira's: a drug dealer's mock sermon at a picnic, scoffing at Bible stories.

In which New York venue did An American in Paris premiere in December 1928?

Carnegie Hall. Walter Damrosch programmed it beside Wagner and César Franck, and for once the composer had nothing to play: it was his first orchestral piece with no piano part.

Which work did Walter Damrosch commission after Rhapsody in Blue?

Concerto in F. An arranger had scored the Rhapsody for him, but Gershwin was determined to do his own orchestration this time, and he played the solo part at the 1925 premiere.

Which famed Paris composition teacher declined to take Gershwin as a pupil, saying there was nothing to teach him?

Nadia Boulanger. She feared that strict classical study would spoil the style he already had; Gershwin took her refusal as a compliment and told the story for years.

Which future film star sang 'Embraceable You' in the 1930 musical that introduced it?

Ginger Rogers. It was her first Broadway lead, at 19, but the show's sensation was another newcomer, Ethel Merman, who stopped it cold with 'I Got Rhythm'.

Gershwin gave 'Strike Up the Band' to which university as a football fight song?

UCLA. The brothers had just moved to Beverly Hills for film work in 1936 when they made the school a gift of the tune, with Ira reworking his words as 'Strike Up the Band for UCLA'.

Gershwin's only Oscar nomination was for a song from which 1937 film?

Shall We Dance. The nominated song, 'They Can't Take That Away from Me', lost to 'Sweet Leilani', and the nomination came after his death that July, two months after the film opened.

Who was the first recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize in 2007?

Paul Simon. In the same announcement the Library added his album Graceland to its National Recording Registry, then honoured him with a televised concert gala in Washington.

Which Stephen Foster song gave Gershwin's 'Swanee' its river?

Old Folks at Home. Foster never saw the Suwannee and is said to have picked it because the two-syllable 'Swanee' fitted his tune; Gershwin's hit borrows the river and even quotes the old folks at home.

Which French composer spent his 53rd birthday in New York in 1928 listening to Gershwin play at a party?

Maurice Ravel. Gershwin played him the Rhapsody that night and asked for lessons; by the hostess's account, Ravel thought it over and declined, fearing it would only make him write 'bad Ravel'.

Which exiled Austrian composer played tennis with Gershwin in Hollywood?

Arnold Schoenberg. The austere inventor of twelve-tone music was a keen tennis player in his California exile, and is said to have refused Gershwin lessons with 'I would only make you a bad Schoenberg'.

Paintings by which artist inspired Ira to suggest the title Rhapsody in Blue?

James McNeill Whistler. Ira had just seen a show of his paintings, which carry musical titles such as nocturnes and arrangements in a colour, and talked George out of calling the piece American Rhapsody.

Massed pianists played Rhapsody in Blue at the opening ceremony of which Olympic Games?

Los Angeles 1984. The number was chosen to match the year: 84 pianists played the piece together in a Hollywood-scale salute to American music.

Which trumpeter recorded a landmark Porgy and Bess album with arranger Gil Evans in 1958?

Miles Davis. He said the idea came from Frances Taylor, the dancer he later married, who was appearing in a New York production of the opera that he kept going back to see.

Which star reluctantly played Porgy in the 1959 film of Gershwin's opera after Harry Belafonte turned it down?

Sidney Poitier. He found the story demeaning and gave in only under pressure from producer Samuel Goldwyn; since he couldn't sing the part, an opera baritone dubbed his songs.

The 1976 revival that first restored Porgy and Bess's full score came from the opera company of which Texas city?

Houston. Houston Grand Opera's uncut production moved to Broadway and won a Tony, and the Metropolitan Opera followed with its own first staging only in 1985.

Who directed the 1959 film adaptation of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess?

Otto Preminger. Producer Samuel Goldwyn first hired Rouben Mamoulian, who had staged the 1935 original, then dismissed him after eight months of preparation and handed the film to Preminger.

In the Gershwins' 1927 satire Strike Up the Band, America goes to war with Switzerland over which import?

Cheese. The satire bit too hard for 1927 audiences, so the 1930 Broadway rewrite changed the quarrel to chocolate and turned the war into a dream.

Which 1957 Audrey Hepburn film took its title and several songs from a 1927 Gershwin stage musical?

Funny Face. Fred Astaire, who had starred in the stage show thirty years earlier, returned to play opposite Hepburn, though the film kept only four of its songs and none of its plot.

Which 1992 Tony winner for Best Musical recycled Gershwin songs into a tale of saving a Nevada theatre?

Crazy for You. Its makers kept the best songs of the 1930 show Girl Crazy, wrote a new story around them and filled out the score from the rest of the Gershwin catalogue.

Which phantom smell did Gershwin repeatedly report in the months before he died?

Burning rubber. When the smell and his headaches put him in hospital that June, the doctors found nothing and sent him home with a diagnosis of hysteria, weeks before he collapsed.

Which bandleader played Sportin' Life in the 1950s revival of Porgy and Bess opposite Leontyne Price?

Cab Calloway. Gershwin is said to have written the strutting drug dealer with him in mind, but in 1935 the part went to a vaudeville tap dancer, John W. Bubbles.

Whose score adaptation won the 1959 film of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess its only Academy Award?

André Previn. It was the second of four Oscars for the young Hollywood prodigy, who then surprised his colleagues by leaving the studios to conduct symphony orchestras.

Which 1960s pop songwriter finished two of Gershwin's incomplete song fragments for a 2010 album of Gershwin covers?

Brian Wilson. The Beach Boy has often called Rhapsody in Blue one of his favourite pieces, and he opened and closed the album with passages from it.

Under aliases such as Bert Wynn, the teenage Gershwin recorded dozens of what?

Piano rolls. He turned out dozens under his own name and aliases, and later cut a complete Rhapsody in Blue, so a player piano can still give Gershwin's own performance.

Which swing-era bandleader played in the pit orchestra of the Gershwins' Girl Crazy in 1930?

Glenn Miller. Red Nichols led a pit band that also held Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Jack Teagarden, and they jammed for the audience during the intervals.

Which Disney film animates Rhapsody in Blue as a day in 1930s New York, drawn in Al Hirschfeld's style?

Fantasia 2000. Animator Eric Goldberg took the idea to the veteran caricaturist himself, and the result was the first Fantasia segment set to music by an American composer.