1937
In the United States of FDR and talkies, largeness was all the rage. New York had surpassed London as the most populous city. It erected the tallest buildings in the newest art deco style. Its sparkling Radio City Music Hall offered the broadest range of entertainment to the widest audience. Featuring the world’s biggest Wurlitzer theater organ, a full orchestra, and a choral group, Sam Rothapfel’s Radio City aspired to be everything for everyone: the capital of wireless broadcasting; the biggest stage for musical revues, with the longest line of sublime leg-kickers; and the most expansive movie screen, where six thousand spectators could share laughs and tears offered up by the latest entertainment technology.
In the moviemaking industry, Thomas Edison’s legendary rapaciousness had backfired, causing New York to lose its dominance. But what the metropolis lost in production, it made up for in consumption. Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, which seated almost two thousand spectators, seemed quaint compared to New York’s Roxy Theatre and the Radio City, which accommodated not only larger crowds but also restaurants, art galleries, billiards rooms, and childcare facilities. The live orchestras played new song-and-dance numbers every week, with full-blown spectacles that preceded every movie. If America was the world’s capital of industry, the American culture machine served up art on an industrial scale.
The task of writing the lyrics for Radio City, the hottest ticket for a New York versifier, fell to the Gershwin protégé Al Stillman. The equally enviable post of resident Radio City Music Hall composer, to Kay Swift. In this capacity, she wrote music full-time and heard it performed with little delay by esteemed musicians, many of them fellow graduates of her school, now known as Juilliard. In a phrase Ira Gershwin had coined, Who could ask for anything more?
The hefty workload distracted her from her loneliness now that George was back in L.A. She and Al shared an office suite halfway up the RCA Building and got along famously. Strolling to work in high heels, a leopard coat, and a matching hat, her clutch bag tucked under her arm, she was now “a recognizable fixture on Broadway,” as Popular Songs magazine put it in a feature article devoted to her, with a picture on the cover under the banner: “She Is the Envy of Songwriters Everywhere.”
Sometimes she worked all night. Other evenings, she brought her sketches home. Her apartment was so quiet these days. She fixed herself a martini and collapsed on the sofa wondering what George was doing at that moment.
Kay phoned Washington every week to ask about the girls, to speak with them and share sorrows and laughter. Andrea and Kathleen visited every month. They spent happy moments together in ice cream shops and concert halls—ironically, moments more joyous than before the divorce. But April refused any encounter. Sometimes Kay and Jimmy conversed, but like April, he did not wish to see her. “Perhaps in six months or a year we’ll all get past the disappointment,” he said.
From the tabloids, Kay learned about Jimmy’s engagement to a certain Phyllis and of George’s flirtations or possible affairs in Los Angeles. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. She ruminated about the future Mrs. Warburg’s—Phyllis’s—interactions with her daughters. She closed her eyes and listened to her breathing and then dived back into her work.
Late one night the phone rang. She was half asleep. A dreamless snooze. Who in her mad world could be calling her at this hour?
“Kay?”
She had not heard from him in weeks. “George! It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“I’m feeling droopy, Kay. So droopy and burned. This place is not home. I’m tired. How’s life in the City? And you, how are things going at RCA?”
“You know me, George. Working. Coping. The city looks beautiful these days.”
“These movie fellas, they can have their swimming pools, their motorcars, their starlets. It ain’t New York. You can’t even get a decent pastrami sandwich here.”
She smiled. “On rye with mustard? From a guy named Meier?”
“I miss you, Kay.” He said it with such gravitas she felt fearful.
Her voice softened. “Oh, George, I miss you too.”
“Plenty of lookers here but you’re one in a million.”
“Ah, yes. Lookers!” said Kay. “Like that siren, Paulette Goddard and… who was it? Simone Simon. What a name!”
“Listen, Kay, I’ve been thinking.”
“How are Fred and Ginger?”
“They’re the new Fred and Adele. As I was saying—”
“—that I was one in a million? Only one in a million, George?”
“I’m through with it all. The dames, the games…”
“Is that a promise? What’s your plan?”
“I’m beat. That’s the long and short of it.”
“I’m here, George. How are the headaches?”
“The other day it smacked me hard. Middle of the New York Concerto. San Francisco. The whole city was there. The mayor. Abe and Mabel Gump. Walter and Elise Haas. I’m about to play my cadenza and, boom! Everything’s gone. I forget where I am, what I’m doing.”
She missed a heartbeat. The phone line filled with sadness. She was lost in a dark field staring at a moonless sky.
“I’m finished, Kay.”
She closed her eyes, biting her lips.
“You’ll never be finished, George. Don’t talk like that.”
“Too much pressure. Too many years. What have I been trying to prove?”
“Whatever it is,” said Kay, “you’ve proven it. But that doesn’t mean you’re finished. Just another phase.”
“I just want to sew up this contract and fly home. To settle down. To write music at my own tempo. Rubato. Maybe in Valhalla, like Sergei. Would you like that?”
“Me? Wherever you like, George,” said Kay.
“’Cause if I get my way, you’re going to be Misses George Gershwin.” He almost whispered it.
She had given up hoping to hear these words.
“Kay? You there, Kay?”
A lump was obstructing her throat. She wiped her eyes, thankful he could not see her.
“Kay?”
“Valhalla, Peru, wherever you like. Oh, George, George, you rascal.”
“Let’s not waste any more time, my love.”
“I’m ready,” said Kay.
“It’s late now in New York, isn’t it. I didn’t wake you, did I? What a knucklehead I am.”
“The best wakeup call I ever received.”
“Go back to sleep, then.”
“Good night to you, too, George.”
“Good night, my love.”
She let her tears flow. She had reached a turning point. She had failed in many ways but succeeded beyond her dreams in others. Soon George and she would be reunited. This time for real. The girls would visit at their country house. They would ride horses. Certainly Andrea and Kathleen, and with time April, too. They would squabble. They would reconcile. They would delight in each other’s company in a new place, at a new rhythm. She would atone for her sins. And all would be forgiven.