M. M. Warburg & Co. sought no visible role in the celebration, but Jimmy did want to witness history. He asked Kay to walk with him to Fifth Avenue. As the throngs waited and brass bands passed—then the mayor’s convoy, then that of President Coolidge, and finally the convertible in which the boyish Mister Lindbergh stood in his top hat, waving—the crowd erupted in waves of cheering. Ticker tape flew from apartment balconies.
Kay noticed the expression on the young aviator’s face. He looked both drained and astonished. Of course what he had accomplished was courageous. All that signified was that, like every soldier who dashes bayonet-in-hand to the front line, he was young enough to have no concept of death. And yes, the technological triumph was impressive—but it was not his. The intensity of the throng’s worship seemed to puzzle the gangly Midwestern aviator himself, even though it was the fruit of his endeavor and aspiration.
“It’s about pent-up sexual energy,” Jimmy told Kay, with the confidence of a devotee of the latest intellectual trends as they returned to their apartment.
Kay shook her head, smiling and frowning at the same time as if to ask, where do you come up with these crazy ideas?
“Sigmund Freud,” said Jimmy. “The Viennese neurologist.”
“Oh, that one,” said Kay. “Everything is pent-up sexual energy, isn’t it. At least everything we’re passionate about, right? Only problem? I’ve been passionate about music since before I even heard of the sex drive.”
At the top of the stairs he kissed her forehead. “You stay that way,” he said.
* * *
Kay rode a cab down to Twenty-Eighth Street, the historical beating heart of the popular music industry, known as Tin Pan Alley because in the summer, when all the “song pluggers” were demonstrating new compositions in different keys and rhythms on pianos, with the windows open, the cacophony reminded sarcastic pedestrians below of children beating on tin pans. It was here that T. B. Harms had invented the concept of publishing popular music, an outrageous proposition in 1875, when only classical music and religious hymns were deemed worthy of printing. And it was here that George Gershwin, as a sixteen-year-old pianist, had first set foot in the music industry.
Since that time, many of the music publishers had shed their Yiddish accents and moved uptown, but some still maintained offices on Twenty-Eighth Street. Kay sat in a waiting room with other aspiring songwriters. A peppy blonde introduced her to Sonny Remick, a nephew of the founder of Jerome H. Remick & Co.
“We don’t manage singers here,” he told her as she entered his office, without bothering to remove the toothpick from his mouth.
“I’m not a singer,” said Kay. “I’m a songwriter.”
“You look like a singer,” he said, eyeing her bust and her trim figure.
“Unfortunately, I don’t sound like one,” she said.
He removed the toothpick. “A lady songwriter. That’s a new one. Why not? Long as you know what you’re getting into. The music biz can be pretty rough.”
“I can be plenty rough, myself,” said Kay, sitting at the piano.
He laughed. “All right, let’s see what you’ve got.”
“This song is by me, Kay Swift, and my lyricist Paul James.” She played and sang “Little White Lies.”
Sonny Remick removed the toothpick from his mouth. “You got something else?”
She played the other two songs that she and Jimmy had written. “And we have others,” she lied.
“Okay,” said Sonny. “You seem like a nice lady. Classy. I’m not sayin’ no and I’m not sayin’ yes. You can play piano, I can tell. The lyrics are sharp. That’s why I’m not sayin’ no. Do I see a show for this tune, or the one before, or the one before that?” He twisted his mouth. “That’s why I’m not sayin’ yes.”
She tried other houses, who praised her talent but found excuses for not signing her. Some complained that the piano part was too busy; others, that it was too simple. Some explained that the market, at the moment, was finicky. Others offered versions of, “it’s good, real good, but not my thing personally.”
The songs she and Jimmy were now writing were catchier and more clever than many that the big publishers interpolated into shows and promoted with posters, radio spots, and star power. That was the verb they used: interpolate. An important-sounding word, as if the process of inserting a song into a Broadway revue were a delicate surgical procedure, when in reality the numbers interpolated often seemed unrelated to the vaudeville antics and dance acts that enveloped them. The publishers’ mindset eluded Kay and Jimmy.
How, then, was one to break in? What cosmic principle justified the power these people wielded over the dreams and careers of aspiring artists? Did any of them even know the difference between a pentatonic scale and a dry-goods scale?
* * *
At the end of a balmy Sunday, George rang. Kay and Jimmy were burnishing another song. George listened, his hand on his cheek. Kay ended the song with a jazzy coda. “You lucky S.O.B.,” George told Jimmy.
“And I intend to remain that way, Gershwin. Will you join us for dinner?”
Jimmy and Kay ate trout, Lyonnaise potatoes, and string beans, and drank a white Puligny-Montrachet. Gershwin requested a bowl of oatmeal and peppered Jimmy with questions about safe investments, developments in European politics, and domestic sports. A chest-puffing fellow named Mussolini, leader of the Fascist Party, had taken control of Italy and turned it into a one-party dictatorship, with impressive popular support. Babe Ruth was on track to hit more home runs this season than any other baseball player in history. Buster Keaton’s new motion picture, The General, was a smash.
Between dinner and dessert Kay demonstrated “Little White Lies,” which Gershwin asked her to play again. He held up his glass. “Mazel tov. Terrific.”
Kay described her quest for a publisher. Gershwin laughed. “That’ll never work. These people, they don’t believe their own ears. They don’t even know what they like. Hell, they don’t know what their kids are up to. No, you have to prove it to them.” He tasted the cherry pie.
“How?” asked Kay.
“Come around my place noon tomorrow.” He removed a business card from a Tiffany case.
“I’ll try,” said Kay, glancing at her poker-faced husband.
* * *
The first-floor entrance at 316 West 103rd Street was ajar when Kay arrived the next day. She heard ragged piano music and peeked inside. A colored boy played ping-pong with a red-haired girl in the center of the front room. A skinny kid with glasses sat at the upright piano. A young couple talked on a sofa. Diffidently she asked, “Is this the home of George Gershwin?”
The pianist stopped. “Upstairs.”
She turned back to the street, climbed a few steps to the front door, and rang the electric doorbell. A tall, elegant man of indistinct European origin answered. “Is Mister Gershwin in? Kay Swift calling.”
The man bowed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Swift. My name is Paul. Paul Mueller. Please, follow me.” George’s valet held himself like a distinguished member of the family rather than a servant.
“Who are those kids?” asked Kay as he led her into the foyer.
“That’s George’s idea,” said Paul. “The neighborhood clubhouse.”
He stopped at the first-floor door. “Papa and Rose wish to meet you, Miss Swift.” Paul knocked. A fine-featured middle-aged woman, in a powder-blue dress and pearls, answered. Her head cocked, scowling, she eyed Kay from head to toe. “What are you waiting for? Come in.” The accent was Russian. “Morris,” she called. “She’s here!”
Kay looked at the floral wallpaper and reproduction Catherine II furniture in walnut and maple. A stooped man in a silk bathrobe and slippers stepped in. “Would you like drink? Juice, whiskey, water?”
Kay smiled and shook her head. “Thank you.”
“All right,” Rose Gershwin told her husband. “We met her.”
“We met her,” nodded her husband. Paul ushered Kay
back out to the stairwell.
Jeepers creepers, thought Kay. As they ascended one flight after another, Paul played the tour guide. “Arthur’s apartment,” he announced at the third-floor landing, “George’s kid brother.” And at the fourth: “Ira and his wife, Leonore.”
Approaching the top floor, Kay heard George’s unmistakable piano. Paul led her into the expansive drawing room, where George worked at one of two back-to-back pianos, cigar in mouth, pencil in hand, a picture of disheveled elegance in a sweater, open-collar shirt, wool slacks, and socks. He stood and hugged her. “I missed you, Kay.”
“Your mother doesn’t approve of me.”
He laughed. “She’s afraid I’m going to marry you.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
“For her? A calamity!”
“Because I’m not Jewish.”
He pursed his lips.
She kissed him. “And for you?”
“You’re already married, Kay. And not just to anyone. Paul, grab those horns, will you?”
George’s servant fetched a small suitcase. George opened it revealing two oversized rubber-bulb horns with curled chrome tubing, wrapped in a gray and cream cashmere shawl.
“Where on earth did you dig those up?” asked Kay.
“The music of the Champs-Élysées,” said George. “Taxi horns. They reach out with their left hands and squeeze the bulbs, like this.” He honked. It was boisterous and offensive. He handed it to her, unwrapped the other, and tooted it. “The shawl’s for you. Picked it up in London.”
He placed the second horn on the piano and draped the shawl over her head and shoulders. “Wait ’til you get a whiff of this.” He sat at the piano. “I’ve got various parts in my head. It’s called An American in Paris. When I say honk, squeeze the smaller horn three times, eighth notes. And when I say honk again, do the same thing with the larger horn.”
“Honk!” he called shortly after he started playing. And a few moments later, “honk again!”
“It’s modern,” said Kay, as she listened to the piece, its smashed-together melodic fragments, its leaping bass line punctuated with dissonant chords. “French enough. A little wacky. But where’s the melody?”
He grinned. “That’s the point! My answer to the scribblers who say I’m just a tunester.”
“I thought you didn’t pay attention to critics.”
“Once I’ve proved the schmucks wrong, I’ll answer my own answer with a contrasting, lyrical B-section. It’s all mapped out up here.” He tapped his head. “All I need is time.”
“You know I can help with that,” offered Kay.
* * *
Hours later, they awoke in each other’s arms. They showered. They strolled in Riverside Park eating Eskimo Pies. George mentioned he had spoken with his friends Dick Rodgers and Larry Hart, who were working on a new musical. “They’re hot as spiked chili. Did you catch The Girl Friend?”
“We saw it while you were in London. Or Paris. Or wherever you were.”
“They’ll need a rehearsal pianist. It’ll be several months but you’ve got the gig. That’s how I broke in, working for Kern.”
“I thought you started as a song plugger.”
“I started as a plugger, but I broke in working for Kern.”
It seemed a subtle distinction, but then the music industry was rife with subtleties. “Thank you.” Kay wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. Generosity like George’s was alarmingly rare. The arts teemed with people who yearned, it seemed, to deny opportunity to talent. Or simply to overlook it. Miraculously, George—their greatest star—was not one of them.
“I’m not doing you a favor,” he assured her. “I’m doing Dick a favor.”
Ironically, she reflected, had she sought a position like this when she needed it financially, she would not have made it through the door. Work was like men. She thought of George’s very first published song, “When You Want ’Em, You Can’t Get ’Em, When You’ve Got ’Em, You Don’t Want ’Em.”
They hailed a cab and rode down to Fifty-Second Street, where theatergoers had lined up in front of the Guild Theatre. The marquee announced Dorothy Kuhn’s adaptation of DuBose Heyward’s Porgy, starring Frank Wilson and Evelyn Ellis, colored performers unknown to white audiences.
Dorothy and DuBose had found producers for their play. Despite its all-Negro cast and the fierce competition of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat and Guy Bolton’s Rio Rita, Dorothy’s Porgy was a hit. As with the novel, the critics had taken the lead, starting with Alexander Woollcott’s praise, in the New York World, of its “high, startling beauty.” Such was Woollcott’s prestige that even the lead New York Times reviewer, Brooks Atkinson, had felt compelled to revise his initial pan with a second article that heaped praise on the show. And Stark Young, in the New Republic, judged it “one of the high points of this or any other season.”
DuBose had invited George to the opening night, but George had been traveling. Now he led Kay to the front of the line, spoke with the doorman, and stepped into the theater without a ticket.
Kay observed George watching the show, his attention total and unmitigated. The novel had been a detailed, almost anthropological study of Catfish Row. The stage play substituted spectacle, including ensemble set pieces, for the novel’s rich character development. It offered the audience a hint of optimism, infused with bitter irony, in place of the novel’s poignant ending.
After the show they hailed a cab back to Riverside Park at Ninetieth Street, where they strolled hand in hand discussing the ways in which the play differed from the book. George loved this Porgy even more than the novel. The play’s director, Rouben Mamoulian, in partnership with the Heywards, had made the story even more suitable to an operatic adaptation.
“But will theatergoers want to see it again?” wondered Kay. “And the novel readers, will they be willing to experience this story in a third format?”
“The world’s a big place,” said George. “The future’s a long time.”
They sat on a bench contemplating the glittering New Jersey shoreline. The same view she had shared with her husband the night of the Rhapsody concert, but closer and brighter. She rested her head on his shoulder. “George, would it upset you terribly if I confessed I’m in love with you?”
“Not unless it was a lie.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck. A tugboat groaned on the Hudson River below the full moon and the sparks of the Ferris wheel.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1927
I like the octagram.” Dick Rodgers stood behind Kay at an upright piano in a Brooklyn warehouse. “Who doesn’t like octagrams, Busby? But where’s the beat?”
Light filtered through slit windows set high in brick walls above piles of crates, catching dust motes in its path. Fifteen women in rehearsal tights, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-three, held hands awaiting instructions. Some were prettier than others but all possessed long legs, trim figures, and pert busts. The choreographer, Busby Berkeley, rubbed his cheek in thought.
“Okay, Constance, Bill, you’re in front. Look at me.” He stepped, twirled, and jumped. They mimicked him. “Everyone else, push it back a little and open it up.”
For two weeks Rodgers had been quarreling with Berkeley about the choreographer’s new-dance concept. Berkeley visualized dancers as groups forming geometrical patterns: stars, circles rotating within circles, oscillating waves. Rodgers insisted that the sense of individual body motion not be lost. However, neither Berkeley nor Rodgers was the director. The actual director was wrapping another show. The purpose of this rehearsal was to learn the music and sketch out possible dance patterns to present to the director.
“Let’s pick it up five bars before the intro. One, two, three, four,” Rodgers counted.
Kay played again. The dancers crossed their feet and stretched their arms. Bill Gaxton and Connie Carpenter, the stars, sang. Busby Berkeley clapped and
called out the beats.
“No, no,” Rodgers waved. He pointed to the score on Kay’s piano. “I’m very sorry. Those two eighth notes.” He reached down with a pencil. “They should be tied. The second beat in measure thirty-two, accented. Once again, five before the verse.”
And so it continued through the afternoon. Repetitive, chilly, excruciating—and Kay savored every moment. For the first time in years, she was working. For the first time in her life, her job lasted more than a few hours.
She worked as rehearsal pianist for Dick Rodgers every day and most nights until the November opening of A Connecticut Yankee at the Vanderbilt Theatre. She observed Rodgers rewriting, discarding, and replacing songs. She sat with her arms folded on the closed piano keyboard lid watching the book writer, the choreographer, and the director debate, compromise, and argue more. She absorbed the ambience and learned how the mechanism of a show slowly aligned.
She lunched with zesty flappers and with her fellow Institute graduate, the composer. Unlike George Gershwin, Dick Rodgers was a son of privilege. Prior to attending the Institute of Musical Art, now known as the Juilliard School of Music, he had attended Columbia University. For him, songwriting was a task to be performed methodically, according to a timetable. He glanced at his wristwatch every ten minutes and expected his coworkers to do the same. He dined on roast beef, peas, and mashed potatoes. He slicked back his dark hair as George did. Younger than George, and less experienced in the entertainment business, he dressed more conservatively. He would never think of wearing a sweater rather than a jacket, as George sometimes did. Kay thought Rodgers lacked George’s spontaneity, vivacity, curiosity, and charm. But there was no denying his talent or ambition.
In contrast, his lyricist Lorenz Hart was witty, often drunk, anything but punctilious. The two men balanced each other like the Greek Gods Apollo and Dionysus. On one occasion, George joined them for dinner. “Isn’t Kay the best, guys?”
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