Hershey Felder as
GEORGE GERSHWIN ALONE

Gershwin At The Movies

• Gershwin made an uncredited appearance in the movie revue The King of Jazz in 1930.

• Delicious, released in 1931, was the first film in which George and Ira Gershwin ever wrote a musical score exclusively for the screen. Janet Gaynor starred as Heather Gordon, a poor Scotch immigrant who dreams of relocating to the United States.  The musical numbers included "Welcome to America," in which the leading lady dreams that she's being greeted by a singing Statue of Liberty, and a virtually complete performance of Gershwin's Second Rhapsody (a.k.a. The New York Rhapsody). 

• The last film that George Gershwin’s composed music for was The Goldwyn Follies, but he died in 1937 before filming was to begin (it was the first Technicolor film produced by Goldwyn studios).  Composer Vernon Duke stepped in to finish the score; Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics. 

• Rhapsody in Blue, filmed in 1945, is a Hollywood version of Gershwin’s life starring Robert Alda and Joan Leslie.  It traces his rise to fame from humble beginnings to fame and fortune and, finally, his death. Among other things, it portrayed fictitious romantic relationships with two women, singer Julie Adams and socialite Christine Gilbert.  Featured in the cast as themselves are Gershwin's lifelong friend Oscar Levant, producer George White, bandleader Paul Whiteman and Broadway performers Al Jolson, Tom Patricola and Hazel Scott.

• William Boyett portrayed George Gershwin in an uncredited cameo in the 1953 film, So This is Love.

• Of his major Broadway musicals, the following made the transition onto celluloid:
  
  
  • Lady Be Good (1924):  Filmed in a 1928 silent version and a 1941 film that bears little resemblance to the Broadway show (other songwriters’ work was incorporated into the film, including Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II).  In one scene, the characters played by Ann Sothern and Robert Young compose “Oh, Lady be Good!” out of thin air in two minutes flat!
    
    
  • Oh Kay! (1926): 1928 silent version – obviously, George Gershwin’s music didn’t make it into the final film.
    
    
  • Funny Face (1927): the 1957 classic film with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.
    
    
  • Girl Crazy (1930): Two films of this show have been made - one in 1932 and, what is considered to be the definitive version, the 1943 movie with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. One piece of trivia about the movie: Judy Garland's character's name, Ginger Gray, is a tribute to Ginger Rogers, who played the leading role on Broadway when the character was named Molly Gray.
    
    
  • Of Thee I Sing (1931):  This musical which won the Pulitzer Prize for the best American play of 1932 (the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer) has only been recorded on television in a 1972 production starring Ed Asner and Chloris Leachman.
    
    
  • Porgy and Bess (1935):  Gershwin’s masterpiece lives on in a 1959 film directed by Otto Preminger and featuring a star-studded cast, including Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr., Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters and Diahann Carroll.
    
    
• Woody Allen’s love letter to New York City, Manhattan, opened to the strains of Rhapsody in Blue and the following narration:

“Chapter One:  He adored New York City.  He idolized it all out of proportion…uh, no…make that, he romanticized it all out of proportion.  To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.”

• An animated short, Rhapsody in Blue, was headed by Disney director Eric Goldberg in 2000.  The animation was based on the free-flowing caricatures of Al Hirschfeld.  The plot, set to Gershwin’s masterpiece, involved four main characters, each with a particular desire:  Duke (named after Ellington) the construction worker who wants to be a jazz musician, Little Rachel, longing to be with her parents instead of nanny, Flying John trying to escape from his bossy wife Margaret (and to a lesser extend her dog Foofoo) and Jobless Joe, who just yearns to earn some bread.  George Gershwin, himself, has an animated cameo appearance in the film, which ended up being incorporated into Disney’s Fantasia 2000.

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