Biography? -- Gershwin Book Proves To Be Sexy But Wrong

What motivates a biographer?

Certainly there are many reasons to immerse oneself for the months, even years, required to research and write a biography. High-minded idealism, honest scholarship, filthy lucre: all these and more might motivate a writer.

A reader's fond hope is that chief among the biographer's reasons is a deep involvement in the life and achievement of the subject. But if you buy Kitty Kelley's biographies of Nancy Reagan or Jackie Onassis, your hope is likely to be different: titillating scandal, outrageous allegations, maybe the leveling of a larger-than-life public figure.

Joan Peyser's controversial new biography of George Gershwin, "The Memory of All That" (Simon & Schuster, $25), is closer to the Kitty Kelley School than to a biography reader's ideal. Peyser's stated motive is to cast more light on Gershwin's life, but what emerges through 303 pages is more like a portrait of Peyser as a revisionist biographer bent on sensationalism.

This isn't the first time. Peyser, who was the longtime editor of the scholarly "Musical Quarterly," most recently produced a book on Leonard Bernstein that shocked even those who thought they knew about the composer/conductor's secret life. The subtext (and all too frequently the whole text) was Bernstein's omnivorous sexuality, from youthful incest to fatherhood to a flamboyantly gay private life.

In the Gershwin book, the composer's sexuality is again a focus, with much space devoted to material on an illegitimate son and a woman who alleges she is Gershwin's daughter (neither is recognized by Gershwin's official heirs). Judging from Peyser's foreword and her comments in interviews, the revelation of the illegitimate son, who calls himself Alan Gershwin, was the main reason for the biography.

"I guess I'm against bullies," Peyser told The Wall Street Journal. "They (Gershwin's heirs) have the money and the power and this poor guy doesn't have a token. But his walk is George's, his voice, his hands, his face."

The book, she said, is Alan Gershwin's ultimate revenge on the family.

The biography-as-revenge would be a lot more convincing if Peyser's facts were in better order. It doesn't take a Gershwin specialist to discover one photo labeled "June 19, 1937, three weeks before Gershwin's death," with the photo below it of a helmet-like device the composer "began using in April 1939" (presumably posthumously).

Even the book's title, "The Memory of All That" (a line from Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me"), is tainted by Peyser's contention that the song represents Gershwin's adoration of movie actress Paulette Goddard, the love of his life. But the song, according to other researchers, was written a year before Gershwin met Goddard.

This shows how reliable Peyser's other major contention is likely to be. She makes much of the point that Gershwin's lyricist-brother, Ira, was his "crypto-biographer" and that all his lyrics described episodes in the composer's love life - a preposterous contention given the wide spectrum of musical comedy which the brothers wrote.

What happened to veracity? The real Gershwin remains an enigmatic figure whose life was shadowed by a cold, unloving mother (she refused to come to her son's death bed because there was "nothing for her to do"), and by a domineering sister-in-law bent on keeping George and his profits in the family.

Readers are likely to come away from "The Memory of All That" with scores of unanswered questions. The saddest involves the curious delay on the part of both Gershwin and his family (with whom he lived) in seeking medical treatment for the brain tumor that killed him at 38, despite years of worsening symptoms. Peyser cites two neurosurgeons who believe it was a slow-growing benign tumor that turned malignant only after long neglect.

Peyser's readers also are likely to ponder the same question posed by Kitty Kelley's fans: Where will she strike next?

Unlucky Luciano: Luciano Pavarotti, who recently cancelled several opera engagements for a major weight-loss campaign, is now taking hits from the art community after exhibiting his paintings and silkscreen prints. Sharp-eyed critics spotted the real source of the tenor's artistic inspirations: not his "inexplicable mania" to paint, but line-for-line copies of a how-to-paint book titled "My Adventures in Europe," by 87-year-old Mary E. Hicks. Hicks, outraged, told reporters, "I would just like recognition that his originals are my originals." Dio mio!

Melinda Bargreen's column appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment.