ISSUE DATE: July 20, 1925
THE BUZZ:
Maneuvering around two grand pianos which took up most of the available floor space of a small Manhattan apartment, a young Jew last week went about the business of packing a suitcase. Old newspapers—the inseparable, useless adjuncts of this operation—lay here and there in crumpled disorder, but two, each containing an item which had been circled with a pencil mark, reposed on a table. The first item related how Composer George Gershwin, famed jazzbo, had recently returned from Europe; the second stated that this Gershwin, when he had finished the piano concerto which Dr. Walter Damrosch has commissioned him to write for the New York Symphony Orchestra (TIME, May 4), will compose the score of a new musical comedy for the producers of Lady, Be Good. Soprano excitement abruptly galvanized the telephone at the young man’s elbow: he began to address its black aperture. “Yes,” he said, “this is Gershwin. . . . No, no, it’s too hot. … . I’m going away for the weekend. … I can’t see anyone” Smiling, he hung up the receiver, tossed a last striped shirt into his bag. It was sometimes a nuisance, but he could not honestly pretend that it bored him, this growing public interest in his movements, his past, his plans.
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