George Gershwin by David Alfaro Siqueiros, 1936
MTT, Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, a San Francisco musical legend, has passed away. I don’t know if he ever saw Pan American Unity. But he is part of the mural’s story.
In 2007 I came across an internet blurb that intrigued me. Composer George Gershwin had encountered Diego Rivera and Frida in Mexico in November 1935. Their connection was a complete surprise to me. The evidence was a postcard Gershwin had sent from Mexico City’s San Ángel Inn to a friend Mabel Schirmer in NYC. In the postcard George mentioned that Diego had shown him the newly finished Palacio Nacional murals. The postcard had gone from Mexico City to NYC and was then in Houston. The owner was not a fan of Diego Rivera because he’d had an encounter with Paulette Goddard, Charlie Chaplin’s wife. She couldn’t give me an image of the post card because she had gifted it. To MTT. The SF Symphony conductor was a devotee of George Gershwin. The postcard had traversed time (over 70 years) and space (over 5000 miles) and was now two miles away. MTT’s staff very graciously sent me this digital copy.
This postcard unlocked a new world. When I mentioned the postcard at a mural talk, Jean Strunsky confided that she had information to share and invited me to visit. She and her late husband Michael Strunsky ran the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trust, a block away from SFMOMA. Michael Owen, a former City College library student, was their archivist. Their collection included more postcards, letters, and a Tehuana dress Gershwin had purchased with Frida’s help. George painted a portrait of his dear friend Emily Paley in the dress.
Later, prior to sending the collection to the Library of Congress, the Trust invited me over and privately shared with me copies of color pictures of the 1935 Mexico trip that George had taken. In return, I annotated the locations and people in the photos. Here is Frida modeling the dress in one of several pictures George took of her.
George Gershwin first met Diego in 1932 on a specially chartered car of a train going from NYC to Philly. The passengers, including composers Aaron Copland and Carlos Chavez, were headed to the premier of the Mexican composer’s symphonic ballet, H.P. (Horsepower) for which Rivera had designed the sets and costumes. According to Lucienne Bloch’s journal Frida was ill and couldn’t make the trip to Philadelphia, though photos seem to show her there. According to Lucienne, Diego, Frida, and George had sodas together in 1933 after a concert of her father’s, Ernest Bloch, music in NYC.
George Gershwin ultimately ran into Diego and Frida in Mexico. The October 1935 Broadway premiere of Porgy and Bess was poorly received by the music critics, the score was not operatic, the cast was Black. A dejected Gershwin escaped at the suggestion of his cousin artist Henry Botkin, who had taught George to paint. Gershwin serendipitously checked into the San Ángel Inn, across the street from Diego and Frida’s studios. They spent time together and gathered along with Isamu Noguchi, Miguel Covarrubias, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others at a party for Gershwin hosted by socialite Estrella Elizaga. (Isamu had done a bronze bust of George Gershwin in 1929. In 1925 Miguel Covarrubias had done a Gershwin caricature for his book, The Prince of Wales and Other Americans.) In a 2018 phone interview from Wales, the late Cynthia Boissevain, Estrella’s daughter, told me that George played and sang Porgy and Bess for the guests. Though it was past her bedtime, the 11 year old Cynthia watched from the stairs. She directed me to their house on Paseo de la Reforma, where the party had taken place. (Photo of a grown-up Cynthia with Diego about 11 years later.)
In 1937 at a Beverly Hills party hosted by actor and avid art collector Edward G. Robinson to honor composer Igor Stravinsky, Gershwin met Paulette Goddard. He wrote to Emily Paley on March 16, 1937:
“Gladys [Robinson] sat me next to the most glamorous & enchanting girl in the west. Paulette Goddard. She is a really exciting creature. Gladys knows my taste better than I thought. The whole evening was grand, what with those pictures, Stravinsky, Miss P.G….”
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos, NY
Divorced from Frida in late 1939, Diego was reportedly slated to marry artist Irene Bohus or his model Nieves Orozco (whom I interviewed). His infatuation upon meeting Paulette (he and Gershwin were not the first, nor the last) caused him to burn those two marital bridges. Paulette, however, was just passing through. So Diego remained single by default.
Frida was brutally interrogated by the police in the wake of Leon Trotsky’s assassination in August 1940. She was a “suspect” because Trotsky had lived in her Casa Azul and because she and her sister Cristina had unwittingly had the assassin Ramon Mercader over for lunch. The police probably didn’t know Frida and Trotsky had been an item. Alarmingly, the police accused, that since she was divorced from Diego and her father was German, that she wasn’t even a Mexican. Being a German national passing herself off as Jewish was not a good combination at the time. Diego feared for her safety in a country not unfriendly with the Nazis. On August 26, 1940 she was expeditiously naturalized a Mexican and applied for a visa. Her confidant Dr. Leo Eloesser had told her to come to him in San Francisco and a fragile Frida showed up in early September 1940.
Shortly after Frida arrived she was checked into St. Luke’s Hospital on Valencia. Diego orchestrated a liaison for her with Heinz Berggruen, his translator and chauffeur, to keep her engaged while he finished the Pan American Unity mural at the Treasure Island fair. It was still not half painted. On December 8, 1940, his 54th birthday, Diego re-married Frida in San Francisco’s City Hall. But their pre-nups stipulated that they would no longer be lovers. From papers Julia Bergman and I located in Canada, this stipulation was observed. There would be no infidelity because that was not part of the “deal.” (This was the last research trip Julia and I ever took. She passed away in 2017 after a 20 year friendship/partnership.)
Prior to this time Frida had only two solo shows. The first in late 1938 at the Julian Levy Gallery in NYC might have been influenced by Gershwin, who supported Levy’s film program. (Has anyone ever come across the colored drawing of Frida, which George said that he did?) The other show in early 1939 in Paris was supposed to have been managed by Andre Breton, but was botched and only salvaged by Marcel DuChamp and Mary Reynolds. Breton had met Frida when he came to visit Trotsky in Mexico and he wanted to foist her off as a Surrealist. She famously replied, “I don’t paint my dreams, I paint my own reality.” Frida’s only solo show in Mexico came shortly before she died.
Frida’s early access to the limelight came mainly through Diego. Edward G. Robinson bought four of Frida’s works in 1938, but only under duress. Diego forced Robinson to buy them to acquire his own work as related to me by David and Karen Crommie, who interviewed Robinson as part of their first ever documentary on Frida. It was clear that Dolores Olmedo only bought Frida’s work under the same duress. The two women did not not like each other. (The Museo Dolores Olmedo has recently re-opened with its major Frida holdings.)
Earlier, Diego was “married” and had children with two other woman artists in Paris, Angelina Beloff and Marevna, who have been relegated to footnotes in his life story. Might the same fate have awaited Frida, if she and Diego hadn’t remarried?
On June 11, 1940 Frida had written Diego just after he arrived in San Francisco that she was being treated badly in Mexico because she wasn’t one of the upper tier of famous artists and above all because she was no longer his wife. (Escrituras, Raquel Tibol)
”…todas la demás gentes me tratan como su basuda desde que no tengo el honor de pertenecer a la élite de los artistas famosos y sobre todo que no soy tu mujer.”
If Porgy and Bess had instead enjoyed a better initial reception, history’s trajectory would have enscribed a different arc. Gershwin wouldn’t have gone to Mexico to run into Rivera and to later offer his suggestion to Goddard. In fact he would not have met Goddard if he had not exiled NYC for Hollywood. His brain tumor might have been diagnosed earlier. We would have had more of George’s music. Diego might have married Nieves. (Bohus had shown up in San Francisco pregnant by Diego, immediately disqualifying herself.) History’s outcomes balance on a knife-edge. Instead, we have Frida becoming a global phenomenon. Although he does not appear in the mural, George Gershwin’s pivotal role in our story is almost like a deus ex machina in a Greek play, an off stage agent driving the story.
Thank you for the gift of your Music and the postcard, MTT.
