Gershwin Everywhere

When Rhapsody in Blue was first played --with young Composer George Gershwin at the piano and Paul Whiteman's big, brassy band shattering the serenity of Manhattan's Aeolian Hall--neither audience nor critics liked their first taste of concert jazz. The Herald Tribune objected to its "complete lifelessness." Most audiences, if not critics, have changed their tune in the 21 years since then.

Last week the U.S. plunged headlong into a season of Gershwin such as no composer has ever had before. It premised to outdin by far the boom of Mozart (aided & abetted by the phonograph companies) four years ago on the 150th anniversary of his death, and the 1941 Tin Pan Alley reglorification of Tchaikovsky which finally led to a tune called Everybody Makes Money but Tchaikovsky.

Paul Whiteman set the pace with his 1,500th-odd playing of the Rhapsody. All four major networks agreed to stick in Gershwin tunes on almost every musical show that comes along. Among others, Todd Duncan (the original "Porgy") and every songstress from Lily Pons to Dinah Shore will give out with Gershwin in July. The climax will be a big outdoor concert, starring Oscar Levant, at Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium on July 12. That will be exactly eight years and a day after Gershwin's death--a rather odd-figure anniversary until one considers that it coincides vith the first-run Broadway showing of Rhapsody in Blue, a screen biography v hich Warner Brothers filmed two years ago but released only last week (TIME, July 2).

Chains of Songs. As a result of this downpour, many a casual music-listener v.ill probably come to share Gershwin's own opinion that he was America's greatest musical genius. Even the critics agree that Gershwin was unexcelled as a songwriter. His ambitious orchestral scores--Concerto in F, An American in Paris--are chains of songs; his inspiration usually started and stopped with fragmentary eight-and twelve-bar themes. Porgy and Bess, perhaps America's best attempt at opera, is a series of compelling songs.

By serving ginmill blues to highbrow audiences, Gershwin made a lady out of jazz. For this he was richly rewarded in his lifetime; royalty checks for his works (an estimated $100.000 a year at least) still exceed those of most of his living contemporaries.

The composer's Russian-born mother, chestnut-haired Rose Gershwin, basks in her son's posthumous adulation and largesse. Like her sons (George's brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics to some of George's best tunes, is now songwriting in Hollywood), she long ago left Manhattan's grubby East Side behind, now lives in an apartment overlooking Central Park. Last week, in an orange-brown gown and with fingernails lacquered scarlet, she went to see Warner's Rhapsody. "It was sad," she said; "not for me is this a time to show off." She was pretty scornful of the show's rag-to-riches theme: "It's not the truth. . . . There was always enough money for Georgie's lessons. Poppa had twelve restaurants. But [the film] is clean . . . you can take the children."

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