I. Portraits of the Artist

1 Ira Gershwin: “In person, my brother was a good deal like his music ” (1961)

2 Frances Gershwin Godowsky: “George Gershwin Was My Brother ” (1962)

3 Kay Swift: “Did you ever feel that a composer resembled his music?” (ca. 1970)

4 Oscar Levant: “Variations on a Gershwin Theme” (1939)

5 Verna Arvey: “George Gershwin through the Eyes of a Friend” (1948)

6 “Gershwin Bros.” (1925)

7 Isaac Goldberg: “Childhood of a Composer” (1931)

II. The Growing Limelight (1919–1924)

8 George Gershwin: Letter to Max Abramson (1918)

9 Dolly Dalrymple: “Pianist, Playing Role of Columbus, Makes Another American Discovery: Beryl Rubinstein Says This Country Possesses Genius Composer” (1922)

10 George Gershwin: Letter to Ira Gershwin (February 18, 1923)

11 “Whiteman Judges Named: Committee Will Decide ‘What Is American Music’” (1924)

12 Paul Whiteman and Mary Margaret McBride: “An Experiment” (1926)

13 Olin Downes: “A Concert of Jazz” (1924)

14 Carl Van Vechten: Letter to George Gershwin (February 14, 1924)

15 James Ross Moore: “The Gershwins in Britain’” (1994)

16 Ira Gershwin: “Which Came First?” (1959)

III. Fame and Fortune (1924–1930)

17 Philip Furia: “Lady, Be Good!” (1996)

18 Ira Gershwin: Letter to Lou and Emily Paley (November 26, 1924)

19 Alec Wilder: “That Certain Feeling” (1972)

20 Carl Van Vechten: “George Gershwin, an Amencan Composer Who is Writing Notable Music in the Jazz Idiom” (1925)

21 Samuel Chotzinoff: “New York Symphony at Carnegie Hall” (1925)

22 Lawrence Gilman: “Mr. George Gershwin Plays His New Jazz Concerto” (1925)

23 “Paul Whiteman Gives ‘Vivid’ Grand Opera; Jazz Rhythms of Gershwin’s ‘135th Street’”(1925)

24 George Gershwin: “Our New National Anthem” (1925)

25 George Gershwin: “Jazz Is the Voice of the American Soul” (1926)

26 George Gershwin: “Does Jazz Belong to Art?” (1926)

27 George Gershwin: “Mr. Gershwin Replies to Mr. Kramer” (1926)

28 Abbe Niles: “The Ewe Lamb of Widow Jazz” (1926)

29 Carleton Sprague Smith: “d’Alvarez-Gershwin Recital”(1927)

30 Allen Forte: “Someone to Watch over Me’” (1990)

31 “George Gershwin Accepts $100,000 Movietone Offer; Fox to Pay that Sum for Film Version of Musical Comedy—Composer Gets Bid of $50,000 for Rhapsody in Blue Rights” (1928)

32 George Gershwin: Letter to Mabel Schirmer (1928)

33 Deems Taylor: “An American in Paris: Narrative Guide” (1928)

34 Olin Downes: “Gershwin’s New Score Acclaimed” (1928)

35 George Gershwin: “Fifiy Years of American Music…Younger Composers, Freed from European Influences, Labor toward Achieving a Distinctive American Musical Idiom” (1929)

36 George Gershwin: “The Composer in the Machine Age” (1930)

37 Mary Herron Dupree: “‘Jazz,’ the Cntics, and American Art Music in the 1920s” (1986)

IV. Maturity (1930–1935)

38 George Gershwin: “Making Music” (1930)

39 Robert Benchley: “Satire to Music” (1930)

40 John Harkins: “George Gershwin” (1932)

41 Arthur Ruhl: “Of Thee I Sing; Kaufman-Ryskind Musical Comedy Satire at the Music Box” (1931)

42 “A Music Master Talks of His Trials” (1932)

43 Cathenne Parsons Smith: From William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions (2000)

44 Richard Crawford “George Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’ (1930)” (1993)

45 Allan Lincoln Langley “The Gershwin Myth” (1932)

46 William Daly: “George Gershwin as Orchestrator” (1933)

47 Olin Downes: “George Gershwin Plays His Second Rhapsody for the First Time Here with Koussevitzky and Boston Orchestra” (1932)

48 George Gershwin: Letter to Rose Gershwin (June or July 1932)

49 Alexander Woollcott: “George the Ingenuous” (1933)

50 George Gershwin: Letter to Emily Paley (1934)

51 George Gershwin: Letter to Ira Gershwin (193s)

52 Frederick Jacobi: “The Future of Gershwin” (1937)

V. Porgy and Bess

53 Joseph Swain: From “America’s Folk Opera” (1990)

54 George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward: Selected Correspondence (1932–1934)

55 “George Gershwin Arrives to Plan Opera on Porgy” (1933)

56 Brooks Atkinson and Olin Downes: “Porgy and Bess, Native Opera, Opens at the Alvin; Gershwin’s Work Based on DuBose Heyward’s Play” (1935)

57 George Gershwin: “Rhapsody in Catfish Row: Mr. Gershwin Tells the Ongin and Scheme for His Music in that New Folk Opera Called ‘Porgy and Bess’” (1935)

58 Todd Duncan: From an Interview by Robert Wyatt (1990)

59 Anne Brown: From an Interview by Robert Wyatt (1995)

VI. Last Years: Hollywood (1936–1937)

60 Edith Garson: “Hollywood—An Ending” (1938)

61 Isabel Morse Jones: “Gershwin Analyzes Science of Rhythm” (1937)

62 Nanette Kutner: “Radio Pays a Debt” (1936)

63 Alec Wilder: “A Foggy Day” (1972)

64 George Gershwin: Letters to Zenna Hannenfeldt (1936)

65 George Gershwin: Letters to Mabel Schirmer (1936–1937)

66 George Gershwin: Letter to Emily Paley (1937)

67 George Gershwin: Letter to Henry Botkin (1937)

68 George Gershwin: Letter to Rose Gershwin (1937)

69 George Gershwin: Letter to Rose Gershwin (1937)

70 George A. Pallay: Letter to Irene Gallagher (1937)

VII. Obituaries and Eulogies

71 Report in Variety (1937)

72 Arnold Schoenberg: “George Gershwin” (1938)

73 Olin Dowries: “Hail and Farewell: Career and Position of George Gershwin in Amencan Music” (1937)

74 Irving Berlin: “Poem” (1938)

75 Jerome Kern: “Tribute” (1938)

76 “Gershwin Left $341,089 Estate to His Mother; ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ Appraised at ‘Greatest Value’ and Opera Rights of Nominal Interest’ to the Residue” (1938)

77 Ira Gershwin: Letter to Rose Gershwin (1937)

VIII. As Time Passes

78 “Music by Slide Rule” (1944)

79 Ira Gershwin: “Gershwin on Gershwin” (1944)

80 Vernon Duke: “Gershwin, Schülinger, and Dukelsky: Some Reminiscences” (1947)

81 Leonard Bernstein: “Why Don’t You Run Upstairs and Wnte a Nice Gershwin Tune?” (1955)

82 Duke Ellington: “George Gershwin” (1973)

83 Wayne Shirley: “George Gershwin: yes, the sounds as well as the tunes are his” (1998)