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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now, the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the conclusion of a three-part series paying tribute to universally admired wordsmith, Ira Gershwin. This program originally aired in 1983 and featured many of Gershwin's standards from shows like Funny Face, Porgy and Bess, and Of Thee I Sing. One of our listeners, a man named Al Remsen, provided us with some interview material that was made in 1969. We are going to also feature, along with this interview, some songs performed by Ira Gershwin himself. To begin with, Ira talked about how he chose the pseudonym Arthur Francis when he first started writing.

[0:58] Ira Gershwin: My brother came out of town, he'd been rehearsing some show, and he told me that a show called The Beauty Shop was to come to New York, and they needed a new song in a hurry. He said, why don't you make a stab at it? I remember we were living on 144th Street, so in a couple of hours he wrote a song called, not a very good song, but it seemed to suit the purpose, called Waiting for the Sun to Come Out. I wrote it to submit it to the producer the next day, and then I realized that if it was a sibling collaboration, they might say, well, who is this? I thought it was just your brother. So I decided to use it, not use the name Gershwin, but to use the pseudonym. Offhand, I chose a combination of my brother Arthur's pre-name and my sister's, Frances.

So I became Arthur Francis. When George played the song the next day for this producer, he said, who is this Arthur Francis? He said, oh, he's a clever college boy, and I think he's gonna be pretty good. And that's how I became Arthur Francis for about four years. The show had been a big success in Chicago, but it wasn't in New York, and I think they were to pay $250 for the song, and they couldn't do it. My brother went up to the producer and said, look, it's all right about my $125, but this college boy really needs the money, and I got the $125. George was very nice about it. Of course, he was working and getting $35 a week, which was a lot of money in those days, and it was a real, what is the word, to me, God sends, no, it's too strong a word.

But anyway, $125 was a lot of money for me then, and I was Arthur Francis, as I said before, for four or five years, until 1924. The song I mentioned earlier was 1920. I got tired of being Arthur Francis because I found out that in the British, the equivalent of ASCAP, the British Performing Society, that there was a writer named Arthur Francis in England. So to avoid any future confusion, I decided to go back to the name of Gershwin, and became Ira Gershwin then.

[4:02] ♪ Musical number: "Put Me to the Test" — performed by Ira Gershwin ♪

[6:31] Ira Gershwin: Ira Gershwin singing Put Me to the Test from the 1937 movie Damsel in Distress. Please forgive the quality of some of these recordings. They are indeed made from acetate demos which deteriorate over the years. We'll now continue with the interview made in 1969 with Ira Gershwin.

[7:02] Ira Gershwin: My brother and I came out to do a picture eventually called Shall We Dance? Which first title was Stepping Toes. The very first time we were at the hotel, Beverly Wilshire, for three weeks before we found a house. And the very first song we wrote was called Hi-Ho, and it was supposed to be an introduction to the picture, the first musical number, where Fred Astaire is in Paris. He sees a picture of an American girl on a poster who's performing, and he falls for her immediately. And he goes around Paris extolling her virtues, although he hasn't met her or anything. It was kind of a different song. It wasn't a regular form. The producer and director were really crazy about the song, and then when the budgets came up, they found that to do that number and showing parts of Paris and Fred Astaire going through the streets singing about this image that this lovely figure he'd seen on the poster, the business department said it would cost $55,000 to do that scene.

Now this is 1936, and we're still in the midst of the Depression, and $55,000 was, I think, was more than we got for doing the whole picture. So they dropped it. However, there were many people who talked about it. I remember S. N. Bearman, the playwright, was so crazy about it, he introduced it into a show of his based on some aspect of Fred Fitzgerald's life. Unfortunately, the show never came to New York, but he thought it enough of it to ask that it be interpolated, the one song, in the show, in a Hollywood setting.

[9:17] ♪ Musical number: "Hi-Ho" — performed by Kenneth and Carol Marland ♪

[10:14] ♪ Musical number: "Hi Ho" — performed by Ira Gershwin ♪

[13:03] Jeff Lunden: Ira Gershwin singing "Hi Ho," a cut song from the film "Shall We Dance." Later on in this interview made in 1969, Ira discussed the notion of an integrated score.

[13:23] Ira Gershwin: I would sing, I would call that an integrated score because of finales and whole scenes and done to words and music, completely 20-minute scene running on, all songs as in an operetta or even a light opera. But all this talk about integrated, I don't know, Gilbert and Sullivan certainly everything pertained to it, everything Gilbert wrote pertained to his libretto, every lyric he wrote, and certainly those were integrated scores. So I mean, you can go back to John Gay and the Beggar's Opera and whatever he used, current songs of the day, tunes of the day with new lyrics, if they fit it into what he was trying to achieve, it was integrated. It was an integrated score.

[14:27] ♪ Musical number: "Who Cares?" — performed by Ira Gershwin, accompanied by Serge Covey ♪

[15:17] Jeff Lunden: Ira Gershwin singing "Who Cares" from his score to "Of Thee I Sing," and back to our interview with Ira Gershwin.

[15:32] Ira Gershwin: You asked me about "They Can't Take That Away From Me." Well, this was a best song nominee in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar Awards. And since then, if I remember correctly, only two others of mine have been nominated. "Long Ago and Far Away," which I wrote with Kern, and "The Man That Got Away," which I wrote with Harold Arlen, and of course, "They Can't Take That Away From Me," which I wrote with my brother. And these three songs have two things in common. In the final voting, they lost. And secondly, the title of each contains the word away. So, away with away, maybe?

[16:32] ♪ Musical number: "Stiff Upper Lip" — performed by Ira Gershwin ♪

[18:51] Jeff Lunden: Ira Gershwin singing "Stiff Upper Lip" from "Damsel in Distress." Now, back to an interview made in the year 1969. Ira Gershwin discussed the song "The Babbit and the Bromide."

[19:07] Ira Gershwin: The show "Funny Face," which featured, starred Fred and Adele Astaire, we did a song which they always used to end, the type of dance that they would end the song with called, a show called "The Runaround," and usually it was a sort of nonsense song. I remember one was called "Swish Miss." And "Funny Face" wrote a thing called "The Babbit and the Bromide," which incidentally has been in three anthologies of live verse. Even Dorothy Parker quoted it in the New Yorker story. And it was, hello, how are you, how are the folks, what's new, that kind of thing. We introduced the song in Wilmington, when we were on the road. And it seemed to go well at the rehearsal. And the day my brother and I demonstrated the song, Fred Astaire took me aside and said, I know what a babbit is, but what's a bromide?

[20:30] Ira Gershwin: Just about an hour later in the Wilmington Hotel elevator, co-producer Vinton Friedly said to me, "I was brought up on Jell-O Burgess and the Boops, so I know what a bromide is, but what's a Babbitt?"

[23:34] Jeff Lunden: That was, of course, Fred Nadelistere singing George and Ira Gershwin's "The Babbitt and the Bromide" from Funny Face in 1924. We're running a little short today, so I'm able to feature a couple of bonus Ira Gershwin songs. Here are two standards he wrote with his brother George.

[24:14] ♪ Musical number: "I Got Rhythm" — performed by Unknown ♪

[26:51] ♪ Musical number: "Love Is Here to Stay" — performed by Unknown ♪

[30:01] Jeff Lunden: Perhaps my personal favorite of all the songs written by George and Ira Gershwin. You've been listening to part three of a tribute to lyricist Ira Gershwin. Associate producer Jeff Lunden. Anything Goes – Backstage with Broadway's Best – is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. For more information, visit anythinggoespl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.