{"id":502,"date":"2013-08-14T00:49:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T04:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=502"},"modified":"2013-08-14T00:49:30","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T04:49:30","slug":"how-did-porgy-and-bess-originate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2013\/08\/how-did-porgy-and-bess-originate.html","title":{"rendered":"How Did &#8220;Porgy and Bess&#8221; Originate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhere did the big set pieces of <em>Porgy and Bess<\/em> originate? With Rouben Mamoulian, it seems,\u201d writes Steven Suskin in his copious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.playbill.com\/features\/article\/181010-THE-BOOK-SHELF-On-My-Way-The-Untold-Story-of-Rouben-Mamoulian-George-Gershwin-and-Porgy-and-Bess\">Playbill.com review<\/a> of my new book <em>\u201cOn My Way\u201d \u2013 The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and \u201cPorgy and Bess.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, thank you, Mr. Suskin.  As a book has no fixed meaning, it\u2019s often informative (and sometimes not) to discover how others read what you yourself thought and wrote.  My book is about many things. It\u2019s a Mamoulian book (arguing for his rediscovery as a forgotten hero of Broadway and Hollywood). It\u2019s a Gershwin book (arguing that we must stop patronizing him as a dilettante of genius). And it\u2019s a <em>Porgy and<\/em> <em>Bess<\/em> book (revealing that the opera\u2019s most famous line \u2013 \u201cBring my goat!\u201d \u2013 and the entirety of its redemptive ending were fashioned by Mamoulian eight years before the premiere in 1935).  <\/p>\n<p>Yes, the opera\u2019s big set pieces \u2013 Robbins\u2019 funeral, the hurricane, \u201cO Lawd I\u2019m on My Way\u201d &#8212; actually originate with <em>Porgy <\/em>the play as directed and refashioned by Mamoulian in 1927. The reason we didn\u2019t know that before is that all published versions of the play omit Mamoulian\u2019s crucial revisions \u2013 which have only now come to light with the opening of the Mamoulian Archives at the Library of Congress. <\/p>\n<p>As an author, I\u2019m grateful for any attention I get, and the reviews of <em>\u201cOn My Way\u201d<\/em> have been uniformly gratifying. But the core of my book, as I myself read it, happens to be those set pieces, and the revelation that it was Mamoulian who transformed what had been a snapshot of a regional black subculture (DuBose Heyward\u2019s novel <em>Porgy<\/em>, with its languorous depressed ending) into an epic human saga (with a redemptive finale utterly at odds with Heyward\u2019s sentimentality and anthropological verisimilitude).<\/p>\n<p><em>Porgy and Bess<\/em> as we know it could never have happened without Rouben Mamoulian.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhere did the big set pieces of Porgy and Bess originate? With Rouben Mamoulian, it seems,\u201d writes Steven Suskin in his copious Playbill.com review of my new book \u201cOn My Way\u201d \u2013 The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and \u201cPorgy and Bess.\u201d Well, thank you, Mr. Suskin. As a book has no fixed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-86","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}