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.”
