Gershwin in Pittsburgh

Gregory Suriano

• Editorial: Arcadia Publishing
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781439672471
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: North American History

The great American composer George Gershwin was a product of the energetic Jazz Age city of New York. Yet Pittsburgh may have been his adopted town, through road tours of his Broadway shows, his appearances as a concert pianist, and his myriad associates with ties to the Steel City. Meticulously researched, Gershwin in Pittsburgh chronicles these surprisingly consequential connections. Theatrical venues such as the Nixon and Alvin Theatres and colleagues like Ned Wayburn, Oscar Levant, George S. Kaufman, Dolores Costello, Fritz Reiner, and Pandro S. Berman are all spotlighted. Most revealing are the visits Gershwin personally made to the city--as accompanist to vaudeville star Nora Bayes, during his Rhapsody in Blue tours with the Paul Whiteman and Leo Reisman orchestras, and for his 1933 guest appearance with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

One

OVERTURE

As a young man, Gershwin augmented his income as a song plugger at Remick’s music house by making piano rolls and serving as a rehearsal pianist for various shows. During 1917 and 1918, Gershwin also accompanied theater singers in performances of their new songs. In November 1917, he was the pianist for Vivienne Segal at the Century Theatre Sunday Concerts series; she used two of his songs. He toured a few cities as accompanist to vaudeville performer Louise Dresser in February and March 1918 and then was the pianist for two “serious” recitals—featuring his most innovative songs and several piano preludes—by singers Eva Gauthier and Marguerite D’Alvarez.

New York musicals and plays of the time normally opened out of town as “tryouts,” thus allowing some fine-tuning before their arrival on the Great White Way. After a successful Broadway run, a revue/musical might embark on a road tour to cities across America. Gershwin’s earliest songs were heard in Pittsburgh during such tours, mainly at the Nixon and Alvin Theatres.

Occasionally, a Gershwin musical would not make it past the tryout city; A Dangerous Maid, with Vivienne Segal, played and closed in Pittsburgh in 1921. A few years earlier, notorious theater personality Nora Bayes had heard some of Gershwin’s songs and wanted to use them in the tryout tour for her new show, Look Who’s Here, soon to be Ladies First. Gershwin traveled with Bayes as her pianist during a six-week period in 1918, visiting Pittsburgh and other cities.

The director and dancing instructor Ned Wayburn was born in Pittsburgh, and through his stagings for a number of 1917–1920 shows, Gershwin was able to begin his career as a rehearsal/ accompanying pianist and introduce some of his earliest songs. When Hitchy-Koo of 1918, staged by Wayburn, reached Pittsburgh, it also brought the vivacious Irene Bordoni, significant for her recordings and sheet music for two other shows with Gershwin songs that came to Pittsburgh in the early 1920s: The French Doll and Little Miss Bluebeard.

As for Wayburn, his 1919 Demi Tasse Revue introduced Gershwin’s “Swanee,” which, in the hands of Al Jolson the following year, sold millions of copies of sheet music and records—and made Gershwin a star.

GEORGE GERSHWIN, THE BEGINNING. This image and caption were published in Thomas Edison’s Along Broadway magazine in October 1920 to accompany an article interviewing the promising new composer. Gershwin is quoted as stating, “Operetta that represents the life and spirit of this country are decidedly my aim. After that may come opera, but I want all my work to have the one element of appealing to the great majority of our people.”

VIVIENNE SEGAL (1897–1992), 1915. Vivienne Segal played an important role in Gershwin’s early career, mainly as a star of the one Gershwin musical to play and close in Pittsburgh. Two of his first publicly performed compositions came with Segal— with the composer at the piano—choosing to sing his “You-oo Just You” (published by Remick, with Segal on the cover) and “There’s More to the Kiss Than the X-X-X,” for a special Sunday concert during the run of Miss 1917. Segal remained an important Broadway figure through the 1950s, notably starring with Pittsburgh’s Gene Kelly in the 1940 musical Pal Joey; she also appeared in several movies and 1960s television series.

SHEET MUSIC FOR “THERE’S MORE TO THE KISS THAN THE SOUND.” This early Gershwin song made the rounds (under two names: “There’s More to the Kiss Than the Sound” and “There’s More to the Kiss Than the X-X-X”) in three separate productions, including Good Morning, Judge. While the published version shown here was for La La Lucille (1919), it was first heard under the “X” title for the Segal-Gershwin Century Theatre Sunday Concert that emerged from Miss 1917, for which Gershwin was the rehearsal pianist.

RAYMOND HITCHCOCK’S HITCHY-KOO OF 1918 PROGRAM. Arriving in Pittsburgh in September 1918 during its post-Broadway tour, this show with two Gershwin songs—“You-oo Just You” (again) and “When the Armies Disband”—marked the composer’s earliest contributions for a revue with both Ned Wayburn and Irene Bordoni. The program page shown is for a similar road-tour production at the Colonial Theatre in Chicago.

SHEET MUSIC FOR HITCHY-KOO OF 1918. This gorgeously designed sheet-music cover is for “How Can You Tell”—not a Gershwin song, but one with a lyric by Ned Wayburn, whose name is also prominently displayed for his staging of the show. Wayburn would play a seminal role in launching Gershwin’s career.

IRENE BORDONI (1885–1953). Like many early-1900s theatrical divas, Irene Bordoni was noted for her au courant fashions and overwhelming hats. Several of her stage vehicles with Gershwin songs (Hitchy-Koo of 1918, The French Doll, and Little Miss Bluebeard) came to Pittsburgh in the 1920s. The glamorous Corsican-born Art Deco goddess was a theater and recording star, an oft-photographed and caricatured personality, and a product-advertisement spokesperson. (Billy Rose Theatre Division, the New York Public Library.)

NED WAYBURN (1874–1942). Like Vivienne Segal, Ned Wayburn played an important role in Gershwin’s early theatrical efforts. Wayburn was born in Pittsburgh (“where his parents were socially prominent,” according to his 1925 book The Art of Stage Dancing) but gravitated for his career to Chicago and then to New York. A prodigious Broadway director since 1899, he staged the Ziegfeld Follies and Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic from 1916 through the early 1920s, as well as Miss 1917. Wayburn employed Gershwin as pianist for several of these shows, and also brought Bordoni and Gershwin together for Hitchy-Koo of 1918.

CAPITOL THEATRE PROGRAM, 1919. Wayburn produced and choreographed the 1919 show that introduced Gershwin’s famous “Swanee.” For the Demi Tasse Revue, Wayburn, the author of several editi...

Índice

• Cover Page
• HalfTitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. From Darkness into Light
• 2. A Gershwin Song or Two at the Nixon and Alvin
• 3. A Lady, a Maid, and Gershwin
• 4. Scandals at the Nixon
• 5. The Classic Gershwin Musicals on Tour
• 6. A Rhapsody and Blue Laws
• 7. Of Kaufman, an Anniversary Tour, and Radio Days
• 8. A Grand Jazz Opera
• 9. A Hollywood Year
• 10. Encore