George and Ira Gershwin Collection [finding aid ... - American Memory

1934, Jan. 14 "I Got Rhythm" Variations receives its first performance at Boston's Symphony Hall by the Leo
Reisman Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Charles Previn with George as piano soloist.
This concert inaugurates a month-long 28-city concert tour which will be an artistic success,
but a financial failure.
1934, Feb. 19 George begins a radio show, Music by Gershwin, with two fifteen-minute broadcasts each week
from February through May and one half-hour show each week from September through
December.
1934, Aug. 27 Life Begins at 8:40 (music by Harold Arlen) opens at the Winter Garden in New York. The show
runs for 237 performances.
1935 Work continues on Porgy and Bess. After approximately twenty months (eleven months
composing the opera and nine months orchestrating it), work is completed in early September.
Rehearsals begin on August 26. With Todd Duncan and Anne Wiggins Brown in the title roles,
the Boston tryout opens at the Colonial Theatre on September 30, and the New York opening,
at the Alvin Theatre, is on October 10. The production receives thunderous applause but mixed
reviews. Its New York run of 124 performances is followed by a short tour. It remains an
aesthetic triumph, but the initial production is a financial disappointment.
1936, July 9-10 George's final New York performances take place at Lewisohn Stadium with Alexander Smallens
conducting a program that includes Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F (both with George as
piano soloist) and selections from Porgy and Bess.
1936, Jan. 30 Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (music by Vernon Duke) opens at the Winter Garden in New York, for an
initial run of 115 performances, followed by 112 performances of the second, revised edition.
1936, Aug. 10 George, Ira, and Lee fly to Los Angeles, where George and Ira will write the scores for three
films. Although it may not have been their intention at the time, all three will live in California
for the remainder of their lives.
1936, Sept. 19 George, Ira, and Lee give what George describes as their first "big Hollywood party" with a guest
list including "about a hundred of the Hollywood notables." The occasion was "the unveiling
of Moss Hart's new teeth ... he having had all sorts of things done to his teeth with porcelain."
1937, Feb. 10-11 George makes his last concert performances as piano soloist in an all-Gershwin program with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Alexander Smallens conducting.
1937 May Shall We Dance, the brothers' first RKO film and the seventh Astaire-Rogers musical, is released.
1937, July 11 George Gershwin dies following surgery to remove a brain tumor in Los Angeles, aged 38.
1937 Nov. A Damsel in Distress, the brothers' second RKO film, starring Fred Astaire and George Burns and
Gracie Allen, is released.
1938 Feb. The Goldwyn Follies, the brothers' final film, is released. It includes four songs by George and Ira.
Love Is Here to Stay is the last song that they wrote together.
Early 1940
Moss Hart approaches Ira about writing lyrics for a show to be called I Am Listening and later
titled Lady in the Dark. This will be Ira's first major project following George's death nearly
three years earlier.
George and Ira Gershwin Collection 12