Lyrics by "the Other One"

By RICHARD CORLISS

Ira Gershwin: 1896-1983

And now," the oldtime radio announcer is supposed to have intoned, "here is a new song by George Gershwin and his lovely wife Ira." Such is the curse of being "the other one," of being merely famous when your younger brother is a legend in American music. Even within his family, Ira was heir to the unintentional slight: his father Morris could remember George's melodies, but to him Ira's song title Fascinating Rhythm was Fashion on the River. Working in George's immense shadow bred a wry modesty in Ira. For a 1959 collection of his lyrics, he wrote that "any resemblance to actual poetry, living or dead, is highly improbable." True, when printed on the naked page. But dressed in a sumptuous refrain and delivered by the right performer, Ira's lyrics could sing like sonnets.

For someone whose career began in 1917 with the lyric "You may throw all the rice you desire.But please, friends, throw no shoes" and concluded in 1954 with his lyrics for the Bing Crosby movie The Country Girl, Ira Gershwin did not do badly. Last week, when he died at 86, he had a "new" Broadway hit on Broadway (My One and Only, featuring 17 Gershwin songs) and a "new" movie about to be released (the restored, three-hour version of A Star Is Born, the 1954 Judy Garland vehicle he wrote with Harold Arlen). The words he set to music are still sung regularly in nightclubs and shower stalls around the world. With his brother, he helped shape modern popular music. He set toes tapping, the movies singing and millions of lovers listening to an Iradescent lyric and proclaiming, " 'S wonderful."

Four years before the turn of the century (and two years before George), Ira was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side of middle-class Russian-Jewish parents. In 1920 George, who had already contributed songs to shows, asked his brother for some lyrics, and the Gershwin partnership was born, although Ira at first used the pseudonym Arthur Francis. In their first Broadway show, Lady, Be Good (1924), they began a fruitful collaboration with Fred Astaire, who was starring with his sister Adele. Other stars soon recognized a good thing. Gertrude Lawrence sang Someone to Watch over Me in Oh, Kay! (1926); in Girl Crazy (1930), young Ginger Rogers sang But Not for Me and Embraceable You, and Ethel Merman razed the roof with I Got Rhythm. Of Thee I Sing (1931) won Ira the first Pulitzer Prize for a lyricist. For George's crowning triumph, Porgy and Bess (1935), Ira contributed about half of the lyrics (the others were by DuBose Heyward). The brothers repeated their success in Hollywood, especially with Fred Astaire: Shall We Dance included They All Laughed and Let's Call the Whole Thing Off; for Damsel in Distress they wrote A Foggy Day (in London Town). But before Damsel was released, George was dead at 38 of a brain tumor.

In his collaborations with George, and with a host of other composers including Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke, Ira could write lyrics that appeared clumsy or cliched; he could skip or cram syllables into a melodic line. But no lyricist used slang phrases earlier or as cleverly; none devised catchier titles; nobody got to the dramatic point faster than Ira. One reason so many Gershwin songs are so memorable is that Ira punched through the theme in the first few words ("They're writing songs of love,/ But not for me"). And in at least one song Ira could achieve the compression of poetry with three astonishing leaps of mood: "The way you hold your knife. "The way we danced till three," The way you've changed my life--/ No, no! They can't take that away from me!" Wrote Broadway Songwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green of lyrics like these: "It's very clear they're here to stay--as long as anyone remembers anything about the 20th century.''

-- By Richard Corliss

BORN. To Meryl Streep, 34, elegant, luminous, Oscar-winning actress (Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice); and Donald Gummer, 36, sculptor; their second child, a daughter; in New York City. Name: Mary Willa. Weight: 7 Ibs. 1 1/2 oz.

RECONCILED. Jimmy Connors, 30, aggressive comeback king of tennis who last year won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open for the first time since 1974; and Patti McGuire Connors, 31, Playboy's 1977 Playmate of the Year; after Patti canceled a hearing last week in the divorce suit she filed last May; in Miami.

SENTENCED. Billy Cannon, 46, former pro football star and a living legend in Louisiana, where he earned a 1959 Heisman Trophy as running back for L.S.U.; to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, the maximum penalty, after he pleaded guilty to involvement in a massive counterfeiting scheme; in Baton Rouge. A successful Baton Rouge orthodontist after he retired from football in 1970, Cannon appeared to be a model citizen until federal investigators in July traced a staggering $6 million in bogus $100 bills to him.

DIED. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, 81, art historian and architectural critic; in London. A university lecturer in Germany who fled Hitler in 1933, Pevsner became a devoted student and admirer of his adoptive England, where a fascination with the society and its architecture inspired his 46-volume, still definitive critique The Buildings of England, which he wrote from 1951 to 1974. A comprehensively informed, exhaustively organized scholar, who taught at both Cambridge and Oxford, Pevsner supervised and contributed to a multivolume history of world art.

DIED. Ross Roy, 85, founder and chairman of the thriving Detroit-based advertising agency (1982 billings: $222 million) that bears his name, who revolutionized auto ad-sales techniques by introducing comparison studies for Dodge in the mid-1920s, and then applied the strategy to a variety of other products; of Parkinson's disease; in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich.

DIED. Benjamin V. Cohen, 88, principal draftsman of Franklin D. Roosevelt's early New Deal legislation; of pneumonia; in Washington, D.C. One of the brightest of F.D.R.'s bright young men, Cohen came to Washington via Harvard Law School and a New York practice and quickly established himself as the most liberal troubleshooter in the President's brain trust. The bashful, bespectacled corporate lawyer--in partnership with the flamboyant politician Thomas G. Corcoran--masterminded the details of establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Fair Labor Standards Act and other governmental landmarks. Cohen, who returned to private practice in 1947, served President Truman as a delegate to the U.N. Disarmament Commission. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.