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IRVING BERLIN (1888–1989)
was one of the
great American songwriters whose compo-
sitions have entertained and inspired people
around the world. He published the lyrics to
his rst song, “Marie from Sunny Italy,” in
,
while he was employed at the Pelham Café. Café
pianist M. Nicholson wrote the music. A print-
er’s error on the title page changed the course
of the composer’s life, as his name was rendered
I. Berlin.
e rst name was replaced later be-
cause Berlin liked the name Irving. He took a
job as a song plugger before making his stage
debut in his own revue,
Up and Down Broad-
way
, in
. e following year, he achieved in-
stant success with his song “Alexander’s Ragtime
Band,” which quickly became one of the most
popular Tin Pan Alley ragtime songs. Some
,
songs followed as Berlin’s interests spread
beyond the Broadway stage. He wrote music for
several important lms, including
Puttin’ on the
Ritz
(
),
Top Hat
( ),
Alexander’s Ragtime
Band
( ),
Holiday Inn
(
),
White Christ-
mas
(
), and
ere’s No Business like Show
Business
( ).
Born into a family of Russian émigrés living
in New York City’s Lower East Side,
JEROME
MOROSS (1913–83)
displayed prodigious
musical abilities as a youth, beginning piano
lessons at and writing his rst composition
at . He entered New York University not long
a er, graduating at the age of while simulta-
neously holding a conducting fellowship at e
Juilliard School during his senior year. Moross
earned distinction in several musical genres,
including the ballet
Frankie and Johnny
( ),
for Ruth Page’s dance company in Chicago; his
Symphony No. (
– ), premiered by the
Seattle Symphony Orchestra under Sir
omas
Beecham; and the Academy Award–nominated
soundtrack to
e Big Country
( ), which
virtually established the musical language of the
Western lm score.
Moross’s
musical without spoken dia-
logue,
e Golden Apple
, was based on a book
and lyrics by John Latouche.
e story retells
the ancient tale of Ulysses and Penelope in
modern times. Ulysses has gone o to ght in
the Spanish-American War while Penelope is
le behind in the small town of Angel’s Roost
at the foot of Mount Olympus in Washington.
Helen, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage
to an older man, ies o with Paris in his hot-
air balloon (“ e Lazy A ernoon”).
e Gold-
en Apple
received the New York Drama Critics’
Circle Award for Best Musical in
, the rst
o -Broadway production to receive that honor.
Few works merit immediate “classic” status, but
the folk opera
Porgy and Bess
is surely one. In
it,
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898–1937)
tore
down the barriers between American musical
theater and opera, popular and formal musi-
cal styles, social classes, and races. Gershwin
set his sights on the best-selling novel
Porgy
by Southern writer DuBose Heyward. Hey-
ward portrayed life among the Gullah blacks of
Charleston, SC. (“Gullah” is dialect for Angola,
the African nation from which the blacks were
taken as slaves.)
e basis of Heyward’s novel
was a series of Charleston newspaper reports
about the crippled Samuel Smalls, who was
drawn by a goat through the impoverished Cab-
bage Row district on a cart. Heyward named his
tragic hero Porgo (later Porgy) and changed the
setting slightly to the ctitious Cat sh Row. e
curtain rises on a summer evening at a former
mansion on the waterfront of Charleston, now
occupied by shermen, stevedores, and other
working-class people, where Clara rocks her
baby son and sings a tender lullaby (“Summer-
time”), accompanied by a chorus of women.
James Michener’s wartime novel
Tales of the
South Paci c
became
RICHARD RODGERS
(1902–79)
and Oscar Hammerstein II’s major
hit of
, following the critical failure of their
musical
Allegro
. On April , the musical
South Paci c
opened at Broadway’s Majestic
eatre, later moving to Boston’s Opera House
and then back to New York’s Broadway eatre
for a total of ,
performances. e World War
II scenario takes place on a small South Paci c
island.
e Frenchman Emile de Becque, who
has a native wife and two children, captures the
a ections of the young American nurse Ensign
Nellie Forbush.
South Paci c
won the
Pu-
litzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama
Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical.
e
movie
Swing Time
, directed by George
Stevens for RKO Pictures, was the
h on-
screen collaboration between Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers and, in the estimation of many,
their most re ned dance lm.
JEROME KERN
(1885–1945)
contributed an outstanding mu-
sical score with uncredited orchestrations by
Robert Russell Bennett. Several songs, with lyr-
ics by Dorothy Fields, mimicked popular dance
forms (e.g., “Waltz in Swing Time”).
e lm’s
Irving Berlin
Jerome Moross
Promotional poster for
The Golden Apple
Promotional poster for
Porgy and Bess
Richard Rodgers
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 2 – JULY 8, 2018
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