Above all, the rush: Gershwin at the piano

Playwright S.N. Behrman summed up what it was like to be in Gershwin’s orbit: “I felt on the instant, when he sat down to play, the newness, the humor, above all the rush of the great heady surf of vitality. The room became freshly oxygenated; everybody felt it, everybody breathed it.” Another friend recalled, “You cannot imagine what a party was like when he was expected and he did not appear.” His death, needless to say, cast a pall over his soiree set. “When George died, a great many people felt not only sad but bored,” said Kay Swift, a composer and longtime romantic friend. “People thought that they could never sense that special joy again.”