George Gershwin

George Gershwin (born Jacob Gershwine in Brooklyn - 1898) is, if not the best, among the Top 3 composers of the 20th Century. He excelled both in Popular as well as in Classical, in the process redefining both genres. But is Gershwin gay? That's not so easy to ascertain.

In my opinion, the most satisfactory answer is this by Michael Feinstein, gay himself and a longtime acquaintance of the Gershwins, who wrote the book "The Gershwins and Me". Here's what he says about it:

"So many speculated that George Gershwin was gay because he never got married. And somebody once said to Oscar Levant, you know, George is bedding all those women because he’s trying to prove he’s a man. And Oscar Levant said: What a wonderful way to prove it. There have always been rumours circulating about George’s sexuality, and I addressed it because so many people have asked me about it, and it’s important to the gay community to identify famous personalities as being gay. In the case of George, it’s all rather mysterious because I never encountered any man who claimed to have a relationship with George, but a lot of innuendo.

Yet Simone Simon said that she thought that Gershwin must be gay because when they were on a trip together, he never laid a hand on her, she said.

Cecelia Ager, who was a very close friend of George’s and whose husband Milton Ager was George’s roommate, once at the dinner said, well, of course, you know, George was gay, and Milton said: Cecilia, how can you say that, how can you say that? And she just looked at him and said: Milton, you don’t know anything. But when I asked her about it, she wouldn’t talk about it. So it still remains a mystery.

My own theory is that I think that the thing that mattered most to George was his music. I think he could have been confused sexually. I don’t know. I think that he had trouble forming a lasting relationship.

Kitty Carlisle talked about how George asked her to marry him, but she said that she knew that he wasn’t deeply in love with her. But she fit the demographic of what his mother felt would be the right woman for him."

The fact that George died at the very young age of 38 because of a malignant brain tumor, cut short a life that perhaps would have turned one way or another in the long run. We'll probably never know. Also such an impressive body of work in just 20 short years!

The Man I Love was a song that was deleted from 3 different musicals ("Lady Be Good" (1924), "Strike Up the Band" (1927), and "Rosalie" (1928)), before a recording by Marion Harris made the Top 5 in 1928 and the song has been a jazz standard since. It's also a song that gay people identified with, also evident in three of the four versions offered below.

First, here's Peggy Lee (1957):

Israeli gay singer Ivri Lider sang it for the excellent gay themed film "The Bubble":

Here's Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC:

Finally, in a very moving scene from "The Normal Heart":

Rhapsody in Blue is the composer's crowning achievement and also my favorite piece of music of the 20th Century, bar none. It was comissioned by the most popular band-leader of the 20s, Paul Whiteman, who wanted Gershwin to compose a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert. Gershwin originally declined, but was strong armed by Whiteman and he finally caved in. He had to write the piece in 5 weeks.

In his words: "It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise.... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance."

Rhapsody in Blue premiered in a concert held by Paul Whiteman and his band with Gershwin on piano on February 12, 1924, in front of a select audience comprising of composers John Philip Sousa and Sergei Rachmaninoff among others. The recording eventually song 1 million copies, a colossal number for the time. It was prominently used in Disney's Fantasia, Minnelli's "An American In Paris", as well as in Woody Allen's "Manhattan". It's been performed and recorded by hundreds of orchestras around the world, was a hit by Deodato in 1973 and received the Disco treatment by Richard Clayderman in 1978. In the 1984 LA Olympics, it was played simultaneously by eighty-four pianists at the opening ceremony.

Here's a scene from the 1930 film "King of Jazz" (RiB follows Voodoo Dance):

Here's a version by Andre Previn:

And here's Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic (1976):