Friday, August 30, 2019

Associate Professor of Music and affiliated faculty member of Cinematic Arts, Nathan Platte, has just published a chapter on George Gershwin's musical contributions to Shall We Dance (1937) and A Damsel in Distress (1937) in The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin.

An excerpt:

When George and Ira Gershwin returned to Hollywood in 1936, the town had changed. New songwriters, stars, and sound technologies had made the Hollywood musical a much more appealing medium for the Gershwins; their first effort, Delicious (1931), had fallen short of George’s hopes for the form. Among those in the vanguard of the film musical were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, both of whom had worked with the Gershwins on Broadway and now enjoyed star duo status at RKO. Gershwin’s reputation had changed too. His most ambitious composition, the “folk opera” Porgy and Bess, had opened in 1935. Some in Hollywood wondered whether the new opera composer would deign to write catchy tunes. “They are afraid you will only do highbrow songs,” explained a California-based associate. Gershwin’s wired response was unequivocal: “Rumors about highbrow music ridiculous. Stop. Am out to write hits.” 

As biographer Howard Pollack notes, the two films that Gershwin worked on next treat stories preoccupied with highbrow/lowbrow, serious/ popular distinctions that Gershwin’s music repeatedly undermined. This chapter will examine select numbers from Shall We Dance and A Damsel in Distress to consider how the mechanisms of film production, especially visual editing and music department practices, constructed complementary views of Gershwin’s legacy and music.