George Gershwin had known Chico Marx since his teenage days in Tin Pan Alley. Over the years, he developed a friendship with Groucho Marx. George liked to show up at parties, sit down at the piano and entertain the assembled guests with his songs. He was in full party mode one night when Groucho arrived.
”Groucho,” a mutual friend asked, “do you think George’s music will still be heard a hundred years from now?”
“It will if George is around to play it,” he answered.
Groucho turned out to be wrong, much to his own surprise.
”Strike Up the Band” had two different runs with two different books. The 1927 version failed, but the 1930 version succeeded.
The plot satirized the American penchant for war. In the 1927 version, the US went to war with Switzerland over cheese; in the 1930 version, it was chocolate. There are some similarities between this show and the 1959 classic English film, “The Mouse That Roared.”
This is a historic sound film of Gershwin rehearsing the show in 1929. That’s George at the piano. Just think, it’s 88 years old.
New Zealand’s favorite opera soprano took her shot at the Gershwin songbook in 1987.