BIOGRAPHICAL COMPARISONS: THE GERSHWINS AND COLE PORTER

    BIOGRAPHICAL COMPARISONS: 
THE GERSHWINS AND COLE PORTER

IRA GERSHWIN (Israel Gershvin [Gershovitz]) was born in LOWER MANHATTAN to aspiring middle class Jewish parents in 1896; brother GEORGE (Jacob) was born in BROOKLYN two years later in 1898. 

COLE (Albert) PORTER was born in PERU a small town in Indiana in 1891, the only son in a wealthy Episcopalian family.  Cole's father was the town druggist, but Cole's business-shrewd maternal Grandfather, J. O. COLE, was one of the wealthiest men in the state of Indiana and his grandchild was more than appropriately doted upon.  So it is easy to discern the derivation of Cole's first name (his mother's maiden name).

IRA GERSHWIN was considered the more "intellectual" of the two Gershwin brothers when they were children.  His  parents bought a piano for IRA when he was 12 years old but 10-year-old brother GEORGE immediately put it to dazzling use to everyone's amazement.  He had taught himself how to play the piano by watching local street musicians.

COLE PORTER took piano and violin lessons beginning at age 6.  He composed the words and lyrics for his first song at age 10 and his doting Mother had 100 copies printed for family and friends.  He enrolled at the exclusive Worcester Academy when he was 14 where he came under the influence of a music teacher who gave him advice that would guide him in all his musical endeavors:  "Words and music must be so inseparably wedded to each other that they are like one."  Perhaps that is one reason that for the rest of his life, Cole Porter would compose both the words and the music for almost all of his many songs. 

IRA and GEORGE GERSHWIN attended New York Public Schools where IRA began a life-long friendship with fellow lyricist E. Y. (Yip) Harburg, who shared with IRA a love for word play and the satiric lyrics found in the comic opera works of W. S. Gilbert (Gilbert & Sullivan).  Afterward, IRA and Harburg attended City College together for a time on scholarship but IRA dropped out without graduating and took odd jobs hoping to find a way to earn his living through his word play and comic verse.  GEORGE did not attend college but at the tender age of 15 began working as the youngest "song plugger" on TIN PAN ALLEY, New York's famous popular music publishing market.  GEORGE's interest and genius was always in the symphonic or tonal aspect of the music.  He left it up to Ira and others to write the lyrics.  On the other hand, literary IRA's forte was always exclusively with the lyrics.  The first song they wrote together that was produced on Broadway was "The Real American Folk Song (is a Rag)" for the show Ladies First in 1918. 

COLE PORTER graduated from Worcester as class valedictorian and then attended Yale University where he wrote over 300 songs (including 6 full-length shows) for on-campus musical comedy productions, the Yale Glee Club, and other campus-associated musical endeavors -- including, perhaps surprisingly, a number of athletic fight songs (including "Bulldog") that continue to be in the Yale sports repertoire to this day.  He graduated from Yale in 1913 and then attended Harvard Law School for a time at his Grandfather's request although his heart was in his music and his witty sophisticated lyrics.

GEORGE GERSHWIN scored his first big song hit with "Swanee" in 1919 with lyrics by Irving Caesar and popularized by Al Jolson when Jolson included it in his national touring production of the musical Sinbad.  GEORGE scored again with "Somebody Loves Me" with lyrics by Buddy DeSylva and Bullard MacDonald, written for the revue George White's Scandals in 1924.  By this time IRA himself had written lyrics for several now-forgotten Broadway shows with composers as celebrated as Vincent Youmans.  But in 1924 GEORGE and IRA collaborated on their first full-length musical together, LADY BE GOOD, with its jazzy, score that included the title song and the jarringly rhythemic "Fascinating Rhythm."   (The original score also included the wonderfully bluesy "The Man I Love" but was cut by the producers because it was deemed "too slow").  Afterward, GEORGE never wrote another melody for which IRA didn't write the lyrics (except for some lyrical work in PORGY AND BESS by DuBose Heyward).   Other musical successes for the Brothers Gershwin in the 1920's were FUNNY FACE ("'S Wonderful" and "How Long Has This Been Going On") and "OH, KAY! ("Someone to Watch Over Me").  In 1930 GIRL CRAZY was another big hit starring the young Ginger Rogers introducing "Embraceable You" (which audiences apparently thought she was) and young Ethel Merman introducing "I've Got Rhythm" (which audiences apparently thought she had).  Other songs from this hit-filled show were "Bidin' My Time" and "But Not for Me."  Also in 1930 appeared the Gershwins' STRIKE UP THE BAND with its rousing title song and "I've Got a Crush on You."

COLE PORTER married the socialite Linda Lee Thomas in 1919 and they began a lavish lifestyle in Europe while he contributed to musicals in New York, London, and Paris throughout the late 1910s and the 1920s without notable success until his musical PARIS with its delightfully risque double-entendre "Let's Do It" appeared on Broadway in 1928.   This was followed by WAKE UP AND DREAM ("What is This Thing Called Love") and FIFTY MILLION FRENCHMEN ("You Do Something to Me" and "You Don't Know Paris") both in 1929.  The following year, the show THE NEW YORKERS hit Broadway along with the Great Depression now in full bloom with its controversial "Love for Sale" and in 1932 GAY DIVORCE with "Night and Day."

THE GERSHWINS left the world of innocuous musical comedy and won the Pulitzer Prize for their satiric political musical OF THEE I SING (title song, "Love is Sweeping the Country," "Who Cares") in 1931 and four years later wrote (with DuBose Heyward) the folk opera musical PORGY AND BESS ("Summertime," "I Got Plenty of Nuthin'," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You is My Woman Now") which is one of a handful of musicals from the Broadway stage that is performed by classical opera companies today.

COLE PORTER in the 1930s stayed with the sophisticated Musical Comedy formula (as he did throughout his career) with great and lasting success.  His masterpiece from this period is undoubtedly the often-revived ANYTHING GOES in 1934 with such standards as the title song, "All Through the Night," "You're the Top," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "I Get a Kick Out of You."   The next year came JUBILEE with "Begin the Beguine" and "Just One of Those Things."  And a year later, RED, HOT, AND BLUE with Ethel Merman, Bob Hope, and Jimmy Durante all biding for top billing with such songs as the title song, "It's De-Lovely," "Ridin' High." 

THE GERSHWINS went to Hollywood and wrote songs for movies in the depression-ridden 1930s that included an original score for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie musical SHALL WE DANCE (1937) that introduced such songs as "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me."

COLE PORTER went to Hollywood in the 1930s and wrote songs for the movies.  However, only "Night and Day" remains of his Broadway score for GAY DIVORCE when it was turned into the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie re-titled THE GAY DIVORCEE (1934).

GEORGE GERSHWIN died in Hollywood of a brain tumor in 1937 at the age of 38.  IRA continued to work with other composers after GEORGE's death despite his anguish over the sudden loss of his beloved and talented brother.

COLE PORTER lost the permanent use of his legs in a riding accident also in the year 1937.  He continued to work on musicals for most of the rest of his life despite great pain and only ambulatory movement with the help of others.

IRA GERSHWIN, among other things in the next two decades, wrote the lyrics to the innovative "psychological" Broadway musical  LADY IN THE DARK with composer KURT WEILL in 1941 and the movie musical COVER GIRL with composer JEROME KERN in 1944 ("Long Ago and Far Away").  He concluded his career by writing the lyrics for the Judy Garland movie classic A STAR IS BORN with composer HAROLD ARLEN in 1954 that included the great torch song "The Man That Got Away," probably feeling that his type of sophisticated and witty lyrics had also "got away" in the emerging era of rock 'n roll.  He wrote a book explaining many of his classic lyrics entitled LYRICS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS in 1959.  IRA GERSHWIN died at his home in California in 1983 at the age of 87.

COLE PORTER wrote in 1948 the music for what many believe was his greatest score and artistic and commercial success, KISS ME KATE, about a theatrical company putting on Shakespeare's play THE TAMING OF THE SHREW that allowed him all kinds of erudite classic verbal fun with both Shakespeare and the theater in general.  In the 1950s, he wrote the music and lyrics for the relatively successful Broadway musicals CAN CAN and SILK STOCKINGS and the movie HIGH SOCIETY with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Grace Kelly.  COLE PORTER died at his home in California in 1964 at the age of 73.

IRA GERSHWIN married his life-long wife Leonore in 1926.  She survived his death and made grant money available in later years for recorded versions of IRA's classic shows with GEORGE to be produced with current Broadway performers.  They are available on CD recordings.  GEORGE never married but had romantic laisons with a number of women including the actress and singer Kitty Carlisle who later married one of the Gershwin collaborators on their great shows, Moss Hart.


COLE PORTER's wife, socialite LINDA LEE THOMAS of Louisville, Ky, whom he married in 1919, was almost ten years older than Cole.  They lived a lavish life in both Europe and California.  Porter himself was gay and their marriage was apparently sexless, but Thomas had been involved in a brutal first marriage and remained a loyal companion and support to her husband until her death in 1952.  The song "True Love" from the 1956 film HIGH SOCIETY has been called a tribute to her and their life together (just as IRA GERSHWIN's lyric to "Our Love is Here to Stay" in the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies has been called a tribute to GEORGE from IRA).  COLE PORTER is buried beside his wife LINDA LEE THOMAS in a cemetery in the old Porter hometown of Peru, Indiana.