George began planning for the production of his as-yet-unwritten opera. He and Kay had visualized it on the stage of the Metropolitan. However, there was one glaring issue that had to be addressed at once.
Paul Mueller drove them down to Fifty-Third Street to meet with the Opera’s general manager. The rendezvous took place at the end of the working day. The cigar lounge setting that the general manager chose was dim as a cave. Although women were not allowed, an exception was made for George Gershwin’s secretary.
A tall, portly gentleman with an upturned waxed moustache, a matching wool vest under his long black jacket, and a heavy silver watch chain across his belly, the Italian-accented general manager explained the Metropolitan Opera’s ban on Negroes. “This has nothing to do with my personal views, or with those of any member of the board.” He offered George a cigar and started to offer one to Kay, then thought better of it. She lit a cigarette. “It is about tradition,” the general manager added. “Audience expectations. Comfort levels.”
“Comfort levels?” asked George incredulously. “How about challenging those comfort levels? Changing those expectations? How about making people squirm? Doesn’t Wozzeck do that? Not to mention Moses und Aron…”
“Have you seen those operas performed at the Met?” asked Giulio with rhetorical equanimity, leaning back in his seat.
George glanced at Kay. “Great to see you, Giulio. We don’t need to take more of your time. Thanks for the cigar.”
Giulio tapped his ash into a crystal bowl. “There is a possible compromise. I would urge you to consider lampblack. The audience likes that.”
“The entire cast, in blackface?” asked George.
“Why not?” Giulio spread his hands. “Now that would be a novelty we could all live with.”
“One I can do without.” George rose. “Come on, Kay.”
As they rode uptown to George’s apartment their conversation turned south to the show-business district. “We have no choice then but to produce Porgy in a Broadway theater,” said George.
“How will Broadway audiences react to that style of singing?” asked Kay. “Nonstop music, curtain-up to curtain-down? A tragic ending?” Broadway shows were supposed to end in a joyous, tout-ensemble finale. It was the tried-and-true formula. It worked.
“How will they react? Moved, hopefully,” said George.
“And then, there’s the cost,” said Kay. They both knew that Porgy, written and staged as George conceived it, with a large cast and a full orchestra, would be far more expensive to produce than any previous Broadway production.
“In our line of work, we take chances,” said George.
Over the years some of his shows had lost money. Others had earned beyond expectation. Some songs flailed initially and later soared. Others leapt skyward, looped around, and plummeted down. Such was the nature of the arts.
During the ensuing days and weeks George and Kay discussed Porgy with representatives of the Theatre Guild, individual theater owners, and theater managers. George was the most celebrated Broadway composer, both domestically and internationally, and they all longed to work with him. But in the end, if he insisted on staging Porgy as an opera, he would have to guarantee thirty percent of the budget.
“All my liquid assets,” sighed George. “And then some.”
“We have to scale it down,” said Kay, “or produce it elsewhere.”
George shook his head.
Returning to George’s apartment after a third meeting with the Theatre Guild, they found the playwright Guy Bolton waiting outside. He had written the books for several successful musicals, including a few of George’s. Although Guy’s parents were American, he had been raised in England and he exhibited his European patina like his gold-and-ruby tiepin, to establish his posh bona fides. At the same time, he offered a wink to those who detected his posturing, as if to imply you and I know it’s silly, don’t we, old chap. The whole culture game, just a socially acceptable way to snuffle each other’s behinds like bloodhounds confirming hierarchy.
Dapper in his linen jacket with shoulder pads, his sky-blue shirt with a maroon and yellow club tie, and high-waisted, pleated, tapered pants, Guy kissed Kay’s hand. “Heading off to sunny California. Palm trees, sand, starlets. Stopped to wave adios before hopping onto the transcontinental railway. And…”
They climbed to George’s apartment and settled in the living room.
“And, well, I thought I might give your wrestling arm a gentle twist,” Guy told George.
George glanced at Kay.
“We’re setting up a picture,” Guy resumed. “Top names, Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell. You did catch Seventh Heaven.” It was a question, posed as a statement.
“Missed it,” said George.
“Colossal box office. Sensational, actually. And with your music, and Fox’s new Movietone technology, Delicious is bound to surpass it.”
“Ah.” George folded his hands on his lap.
Bolton leaned forward. “Crossed-star antics aboard a luxury cruise. That’s the hook—the boat,” he said in a low voice, as if divulging a world-changing secret. “What do they all dream of? The farm wife, the telephone girl, the factory man. Transatlantic voyages.” And leaned back again. “And all this, over an orchestral setting, start to finish. Never been done before. You can deliver serious, romantic, upbeat, whimsical, all up to you, George.”
“Guy,” said George, “I know zero about movies. The culture, the art form, the process. It’s thick as mud to me.”
“There’s gold in that thar mud, Georgie!” said Bolton in a mock-Western twang. “We’ll tweak the story around your composition. The players are stupendous. So what do you say, old pal? Fourteen weeks of Eden and you come back pockets bursting. Opulent lodgings in one of the canyons,” continued Bolton. “Tennis, great jazz at the Cocoanut Grove, and…” He glanced at Kay, then back at George. “Well, perks galore.”
“Tell me, Guy,” said George. “Does this production depend on my participation?”
“Would I pressure you like that?” Bolton smiled. His gold premolar flashed.
Guy stayed for a snack of cold smoked fish, onions, and cream cheese. George played him a song he had written for Porgy, a number he called “My Man’s Gone Now.”
“This is staggering, George. Phenomenal.” Bolton slapped him on the collarbone. “Not one to disappoint, are you.” He shook his head, half smiling. “An American opera!”
After he left, George and Kay fooled around at the piano. Finally he sighed, “This one, I may have to take. For Porgy’s sake.”
Kay mixed a Gin Rickey for herself and poured a glass of Chivas for him. “Do you really need to be gone fourteen weeks?”
He answered with a bluesy piano improvisation.
While Kay read through the music they had written the day before, George skimmed the mail. “That chord’s a little soggy,” he mentioned without looking up from the letter in his hand, or “let’s invert that.” She jotted the notation and moved on.
George opened another envelope. It was a request that he perform An American in Paris for a radio broadcast, after reading a short, scripted introduction. The remuneration offered was adequate but what George appreciated was the exposure.
He unsealed a letter from Paul Whiteman, asking George to perform in a movie he was producing about jazz. He set it aside, in the pile of mail that had to be answered.
A third letter was from Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and of the famous Concerts Koussevitzky series in Paris. Heralded as a bold champion of modern music, Koussevitzky had commissioned and performed works by Ravel, Prokofiev, Hindemith, and Stravinsky.
May I ask you to compose a piece for the Boston Orchestra? Next season we will mark our 50th Anniversary with a concert in Boston followed by a second in New York City and we would very much appreciate if you would write a piece for these occasions.
George balled up the letter and threw it into a trash basket. “Hell, I’d love to, but where will I find the time?”
His valet, Paul Mueller, retrieved it and carefully unfolded it. “Agree to the movie—Delicious—but insist on owning the rights. That way, you can reuse the score for Koussevitzky.”
“You devil,” said George, smiling.
“As long as Koussevitzky premieres it before the movie release, he’ll be pleased as pie,” added Paul.
“You know, that just may work!”
Kay did not like the idea. It made George’s trip to Hollywood feasible. But she held her tongue.
Another letter: from Merle Armitage, the well-known impresario, suggesting an all-Gershwin concert at the Lewisohn stadium—“an honor previously accorded only to Beethoven and Wagner,” he read aloud.
“Make it a three-for-one,” suggested Paul, on a roll. “Perform the same Delicious score. But only after you premiere it with Koussevitzky.”
“Bingo,” said George, shooting him with his index finger.
On yellow stationery, DuBose Heyward, the author of Porgy, invited George to travel down to South Carolina to soak in the local color, the dialect, the speech rhythms, and the gospel music of the Gullah people, who filled the tenements of Porgy’s Catfish Row.
A fellow named Lincoln Kirstein wrote that he planned to produce the American début of the great Ballets Russes choreographer, George Balanchine. Together, Gershwin’s music and Balanchine’s choreography would “dazzle.”
George rubbed his chin. Finally he shook his head. “I can’t do it.”
The world’s most esteemed composers had penned scores for Balanchine. Celebrated artists including Matisse and Picasso had designed his sets. “You’re cracked,” said Kay. “It’s everything you want, wrapped up with a bow.”
George looked at Paul Mueller, who nodded. “You are cracked.”
“Porgy needs me,” said George. “And Of Thee I Sing, my next musical. Not to mention Delicious and a million hassles. Just can’t do it.” He pointed to Kay. “But you can do this.”
He picked up the telephone and connected through to the number on the letter. Kay heard him say, “Lincoln Kirstein? George Gershwin. Sorry, old pal, I’m booked from Monday to Mars. But I got an idea. Did you catch Fine and Dandy? Yes, it was. That score is by a lady named Kay Swift. No, not ‘good,’ Lincoln—brilliant. Why yes, that’s right, James Warburg’s wife. Of course we can.”
He hung up and turned to Kay. “Next Wednesday, three p.m., six three seven Madison Avenue. And don’t forget your cloche hat.”
“My cloche hat?”
He cupped his hand around her chin. “They’ll still see your sheyna punim but it will hide your feminine tresses.” He kissed her.
“My sheyna—?”
“Your pretty face,” said George. “Yiddish.”
George’s proposal almost defied belief. George Balanchine. The Ballets Russes. The most innovative and respected dance troupe in the world. Was it possible? she asked herself. Was she prepared? Would Balanchine take her seriously? Had she earned this privilege?