Word: iras
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...Ira Gershwin...
...oldtime radio announcer is supposed to have intoned, "here is a new song by George Gershwin and his lovely wife Ira." Such is the curse of being "the other one," of being merely famous when your younger brother is a legend in American music. Even within his family, Ira was heir to the unintentional slight: his father Morris could remember George's melodies, but to him Ira's song title Fascinating Rhythm was Fashion on the River. Working in George's immense shadow bred a wry modesty in Ira. For a 1959 collection of his lyrics...
...someone whose career began in 1917 with the lyric "You may throw all the rice you desire.But please, friends, throw no shoes" and concluded in 1954 with his lyrics for the Bing Crosby movie The Country Girl, Ira Gershwin did not do badly. Last week, when he died at 86, he had a "new" Broadway hit on Broadway (My One and Only, featuring 17 Gershwin songs) and a "new" movie about to be released (the restored, three-hour version of A Star Is Born, the 1954 Judy Garland vehicle he wrote with Harold Arlen). The words he set to music...
Four years before the turn of the century (and two years before George), Ira was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side of middle-class Russian-Jewish parents. In 1920 George, who had already contributed songs to shows, asked his brother for some lyrics, and the Gershwin partnership was born, although Ira at first used the pseudonym Arthur Francis. In their first Broadway show, Lady, Be Good (1924), they began a fruitful collaboration with Fred Astaire, who was starring with his sister Adele. Other stars soon recognized a good thing. Gertrude Lawrence sang Someone to Watch over...
...collaborations with George, and with a host of other composers including Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke, Ira could write lyrics that appeared clumsy or cliched; he could skip or cram syllables into a melodic line. But no lyricist used slang phrases earlier or as cleverly; none devised catchier titles; nobody got to the dramatic point faster than Ira. One reason so many Gershwin songs are so memorable is that Ira punched through the theme in the first few words ("They're writing songs of love,/ But not for me"). And in at least one song...