Ira Gershwin On Television: Of Thee We Sing, Baby

December 6, 1996, marked the 100th birthday of the "other" Gershwin, George's older brother and closest collaborator, Ira (who died 14 years ago). That night, Carnegie Hall presented a gala tribute. This Tuesday, March 11, at 9 p.m., WGBH is showing a 90-minute telecast Ira Gershwin at 100, on its Great Performances series.

Some of our best poets are the song lyricists whose lively language, fresh imagery, and what Ira Gershwin called "fascinating rhythm" capture aspects of American life -- from personal relationships to politics -- that our more serious poets don't often deal with. "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers," Ira wrote during the Depression, "Long as you've got the kiss that conquers?" "Of thee I sing, baby," begins the cheeky title song of the 1931 political satire for which Ira became the first lyricist to win the Pulitzer Prize. He launches the pre-eminent American opera, Porgy and Bess, with the evocative "Summertime, and the livin' is easy/Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high," then later tells us, "It Ain't Necessarily So." The witty contraction " 'S Wonderful" swings into the ensuing song with the exhilaration of colloquial American English at its most colorful -- don't trust anyone who sings "It's wonderful." I wouldn't trust anyone who changed Ira's words. Then there's the foolish form of PC that made Karen Akers, one of the most sensitive singers in the long line-up of stars and semi-stars at Carnegie Hall, change the line in "But Not for Me" from "It all began so well, but what an end/This is the time a fella needs a friend" to "This is the time a person needs a friend"? Didn't she hear the rhyme of "well" and "fella?" Didn't she get the irony of Ira's gender bending?

This Ira Gershwin special is one of those formula enterprises -- you know, the generically over-orchestrated overture, the announcer introducing the movie-star co-hosts as "Mister" Michael York and "Miss" Angie Dickinson, the production numbers with ballet dancing that has nothing to do with the songs, and the hosts reading from a script that has barely enough facts to be informative and barely enough anecdotes to be entertaining. At Carnegie Hall I saw some marvelous home movies, but a lot of them have been edited out of the TV version, along with Michael York's recitation of some lyrics and the late composer Burton Lane's reminiscences of his collaboration with Ira. Lane died just a few weeks afterward; his only appearance on the video is as the effervescent accompanist to the smarmy, preening Michael Feinstein, one of those performers who gives the term "song stylist" such a bad name. Lane's presence, though, is an important reminder that after George Gershwin's untimely death his brother worked brilliantly with other composers, including Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vincent Youmans, Kurt Weill, even Aaron Copland!

But the point of the show is to present Gershwin's lyrics, and we get a good balance between great standards like "The Man That Got Away" and obscure novelties like "Just Another Rhumba," which Jon Lovitz delivers with deadpan charm. The performer who most lives up to the material is Rosemary Clooney, who used to live next door to the Gershwins and is probably our greatest living interpreter of classic popular songs. She sings a couple of the best ones ever written, including "Love Is Here To Stay," the intro to which George Gershwin didn't live to write. Clooney tells us that it's the only music ever composed by Ira himself. At the end, the entire cast, including Kitty Carlisle Hart (in great voice) and the Gershwins' 90-year-old kid sister "Frankie" (10 years to the day Ira's junior), crowd the stage and belt out: "Of thee we sing, Ira!"

-- Lloyd Schwartz