If you’re not familiar with the name George Gershwin, you might just recognize some of the songs he wrote. “Summertime,” “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me, and “Swanee,” are just a few of the songs that remain benchmark standards to this day that, written alongside his brother Ira, defined the big band era, and set the bar for the legion of Tin Pan Alley songwriters striving to make a name for themselves.
With a fast rise to the top during the Roaring Twenties, a career that continued to flourish during the Great Depression and ended by a tragic death at the age of 38, George Gershwin’s life has the makings of a great, Oscar-ready biopic and Dreamworks is ready to bring it to the big screen. The studio recently acquired the rights to the script by Doug Wright, who is on a hot streak right having just sold “Town House” to Fox 2000 that already has Amy Adams and Zach Galifianakis circling it. The studio has also wisely brought on Marc Platt (who is producing this year’s musical Oscar contender “Nine”) and pianist, Gershwin expert and American Songbook enthusiast Michael Feinstein to produce. Feinstein spent six years working for Ira Gershwin, archiving and cataloging the brothers’ numerous works and compositions and will be a great asset to have on hand as the project develops.
If you’re thinking how such ripe biopic material could’ve waited so long before hitting the big screen, you would be forgetting about Warner Brothers’ 1945 film “Rhapsody In Blue” which starred character actor Robert Alda as the iconic songwriter, and featured cameos from Al Jolson and George White (a bandleader of the era). That film is currently unavailable on DVD, but with this project already moving, you can bet Warner Brothers are headed to the vaults right now.
In related news, Brian Wilson is currently at work on an album of Gershwin tunes that will also feature two unfinished compositions that the Beach Boys legend will complete. Wilson received his blessing from the Gershwin estate to tackle incomplete tunes which are over seven decades old.
If Dreamworks can get a director and star attached to this soon, we can see them fastracking this for Oscar season 2010 as they currently only have Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” as a possible contender.
To give you an idea of the sweep and power of Gershwin’s music, here are the gorgeous opening and closing credits to Woody Allen’s “Manhattan,” magnificently edited to “Rhapsody In Blue”:
Opening:
Closing: