In the next half-dozen years Kern demonstrated again and again that his serious and prolonged illness had not tarnished the quality of his inspiration. In his best songs for motion pictures he could still tap that rich and sensitive creative vein uniquely his: “Dearly Beloved” (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) from Rita Hayworth’s film, You Were Never Lovelier; “Long Ago and Far Away” (words by Ira Gershwin, who here scored his biggest commercial hit) for another Rita Hayworth picture, Cover Girl; “And Russia Is Her Name” (E. Y. Harburg) from Song of Russia, but first introduced by Jan Peerce and the André Kostelanetz Orchestra over the CBS network in June, 1942, to commemorate the first anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union; “More and More” (E. Y. Harburg) from Can’t Help Singing with Deanna Durbin; and, perhaps most significant of all, “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (Hammerstein).
“The Last Time I Saw Paris” was unique among Kern’s songs in that the lyric was written before the music. Oscar Hammerstein II had known Paris from his boyhood days when he had accompanied his father on a talent-hunting trip and stayed at the Grand Hotel; he grew intimate with the city in early manhood when for five months he occupied an apartment near the Etoile. Therefore when, in June 1940, during World War II, France capitulated to the Nazis—and Hitler, as a conqueror, surveyed Paris from the terrace of the Hotel des Invalides—Hammerstein was so stirred he found it impossible to concentrate on Sunny River, a musical comedy he was then writing with Sigmund Romberg. Not until he had been able to put down on paper a poignant lyric about the city of his dreams and memories was he able to find emotional release from his heartache.
Soon after finishing the lyric of “The Last Time I Saw Paris” Hammerstein left for Beverly Hills to discuss Sunny River with Romberg. At that time Hammerstein confided to Romberg that he planned to ask Kern to write the music for his lyric about Paris. Kern wrote his music only one day after Hammerstein had shown him the lyric, and virtually in a single sitting.
The first performance of “The Last Time I Saw Paris” was given by Kate Smith on her radio program. Since she had been given a six-week exclusive on the song nobody else could present it over the radio in that time. Soon after the termination of this six-week period ASCAP, in a bitter contractual dispute with the radio networks, placed a ban on performances over radio of music by its members. This ban closed the air channels to “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” But the song nonetheless became exceptionally popular. Hildegarde issued a remarkable recording—personally supervised by Kern himself—which enjoyed a fabulous sale. Hildegarde also presented the song with extraordinary effect in supper and night clubs, as did Noel Coward and Sophie Tucker, among others.
“The Last Time I Saw Paris” was unusual among Kerns songs for a reason other than that the lyric preceded the melody. It was also the only Kern song not written for a specific stage or screen production. Nevertheless, it was interpolated into a motion picture, Lady Be Good, in 1941, an old George and Ira Gershwin Broadway musical adapted for the screen, with Ann Sothern, Eleanor Powell, and Robert Young. Though it was the only Kern song in a score that included three Gershwin numbers and two others by Roger Edens, “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (presented by Ann Sothern) won the Academy Award that year.
Whatever exhilaration Kern might have felt in winning an Academy Award a second time was considerably diluted by his conviction that Harold Arlen should have won it that year with his remarkable song from Star-Spangled Rhythm, “That Old Black Magic”; and that “The Last Time I Saw Paris” was not deserving of an Academy Award since it had not been written expressly for motion pictures. It was characteristic of Kern that feeling as he did, he should immediately have become the prime mover in changing the Academy Award rules so that only songs written expressly for motion pictures be henceforth eligible.
At the same time he was producing such notable songs Kern was also enlarging the scope and dimensions of his writing by completing projects for string quartet and symphony orchestra. In 1940-1941 he transcribed for string quartet (with the assistance of Charles Miller) several of his songs: “All the Things You Are,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “Yesterdays,” “Once in a Blue Moon,” “The Song Is You,” and “Bill.” These transcriptions were made at the behest of Jack Kapp, head of Decca Records, and were recorded for Decca by the Gordon String Quartet.
In 1941 Kern wrote Scenario, the symphonic adaptation and enlargement of melodies from Show Boat, already mentioned. Before he turned the completed score over to Artur Rodzinski, the conductor who had commissioned it and who was introducing it in Cleveland, Kern tried out his music with the David Meremblum Children’s Orchestra in Hollywood. Kerns experience with that orchestra proved so rewarding that he instituted for that organization an annual scholarship for gifted musical children.
One of the proudest moments in Kerns life came when Rodzinski gave the New York première of Scenario with the New York Philharmonic on November 19, 1941. Kern, who had come to New York for the performance, was called upon to step from his seat, mount the stage of Carnegie Hall, and respond to a rousing ovation from a serious concert audience.
Soon after Pearl Harbor, André Kostelanetz called upon Kern to write another symphonic work, this time with original melodic materials, and inspired by some great American. This was one of several orchestral works on American subjects commissioned by Kostelanetz from important American composers “to mirror,” as he put it, “the magnificent spirit of our country. The greatness of a nation is expressed through its people, and those people who have achieved greatness are the logical subjects for a series of musical portraits.” (One of these, Lincoln Portrait, was written for Kostelanetz by Aaron Copland; another, the Mayor La Guardia Waltzes, by Virgil Thomson.) The recent success of Scenario in performances by several major American orchestras made Kern more receptive to such an ambitious project than he might otherwise have been. For his American subject Kern chose one of his literary idols, Mark Twain.
Composition soon absorbed Kern completely. As he wrote to Kostelanetz: “All else is laid aside in my tremendous enthusiasm for our project which for the past forty-eight hours or so has made me well-nigh breathless.” As he kept on working, he showered Kostelanetz with letters explaining what he was doing and why. “Kern took nothing for granted,” says Kostelanetz, “left nothing to chance. Every line of the score was planned and motivated. And he kept on working on the most minute details of his work not only to the very moment he dispatched the manuscript to me, but even afterwards.”
Immediately after the première performance, which took place in Cincinnati on May 14, 1942, Kostelanetz conducting the Cincinnati Symphony, Kern dispatched the following wire to the conductor: “In my delight, completely forgot to suggest you raise bass of bar 341 to D-sharp, which then slides into E-natural of the bar of 345 unnoticeably.” This was followed by a detailed letter pointing out to Kostelanetz what had sounded well in the performance and what had missed aim. But Kern was not the man to regard anything he wrote as so much life’s blood, even a work so serious in purpose and so ambitious in design as Mark Twain: A Portrait for Orchestra. As Kostelanetz says:
Though he was as fastidious about his work as a master craftsman, there was no suggestion of temperament about him, no pigheaded stubbornness when others had an improvement to suggest....Once as a matter of fact, he took me to task for playing his music with too strict an adherence to his own intentions. “When you next program it, how about a little more Kostelanetz, and a little less Kern? Mind you, I’m not being coy. Between us there is no room for nonsense of that sort. You were a mite too respectful. More of the Kostelanetz dash and fire sounds mighty agreeable to these old ears.”
The work is in four movements or episodes. The first “Hannibal Days” describes a “white town...drowsing in the sunshine of a summer morning, ninety years ago.” Kerns program goes on to explain: “Ste-e-am-boat Comin’! The town awakens....Minutes later the steamer is under way again, the town dozes off.” In the second part, “Gorgeous Pilot House,” Mark leaves his home to fulfill a boyhood ambition of becoming a Pilot’s assistant. “Mark’s piping call as a leadman is heard: ‘M-a-r-k T-w-a-i-n!’ It develops in grandiose fashion covering his nine years of full-fledged piloting. It is all shattered by the coming of the war in 1861.” This is followed by “Wandering Westward,” in which Twain becomes a prospector in Nevada, meets failure, and turns to journalism and his first use of the pseudonym, Mark Twain. In the finale, “Mark in Eruption,” we follow Mark Twain’s triumphant career as a writer, his visit to England to receive an honorary degree from Oxford, his meetings with European royalty. “Still the music recalls the river theme and the pilot house as a reminder that this honored great American man of letters never lost his nostalgia for the Mississippi and the river boats.”
Scenario and Mark Twain are the only two concert works for orchestra by Kern. Neither is of special distinction, though Scenario has sufficient melodic vitality to warrant occasional revival by symphony orchestras. Kern knew his strength and shortcomings when he preferred concentrating on the stage and screen within designs often no more ambitious than the thirty-two bar chorus. His strength was his formidable melodic invention, his seemingly inexhaustible supply of winning lyric ideas; and this remains the strongest asset of his two symphonic works. But he did not have the skill to create an organic unity of his material, nor did he possess the gift of thematic development. Both Scenario and Mark Twain are kaleidoscopic, with passing flashes of interesting or arresting colors and schemes. They are pleasant experiences to the ear in much the same way that kaleidoscopes are to the eye—but in both cases the experiences are ephemeral. Even if a passing thought or two has fascination the fact remains that neither Scenario nor Mark Twain is an integrated artistic concept; and for this reason their survival in the symphonic repertory is extremely doubtful.
Two other symphonic works, while actually not by Kern himself, were based on Kern’s music and deserve attention. Both are by Robert Russell Bennett, who was also responsible for the brilliant orchestrations of several of Kern’s stage scores including Music in the Air, Very Warm for May, and the 1948 revival of Show Boat. In 1934 Bennett wrote the Variations on a Theme by Jerome Kern for orchestra, which soon after its completion was introduced by Bernard Herrmann and his chamber orchestra in Town Hall, New York. The theme used here was “Once in a Blue Moon” from Stepping Stones. In 1946 Bennett created a tone poem entitled Symphonic Study (first performed that year over the NBC network, Frank Black conducting). This was a symphonic synthesis of several of Kern’s best-loved melodies, presented chronologically. The work opened with “They Didn’t Believe Me” and ended with “All the Things You Are.” In between were heard several other Kern songs including, “Babes in the Wood,” “The Siren’s Song,” “Left All Alone Again Blues,” “Who?”, “Ol’ Man River,” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”