Seated behind his Steinway, the iconic American composer George Gershwin penned some of the world’s most beloved songs – from Rhapsody in Blue to The Man I Love.

But his performances in his apartment while suspended by his wrists and flogged by his married lover were something else entirely.

The terrible sounds of his screams that carried through the open windows got him kicked out of the building.

A show in a Paris brothel in 1923 received an equally unenthusiastic response.

Gershwin’s friends had arranged to watch the Brooklyn-born artiste in action through a peephole.  They, too, were less than impressed.

‘He completed the sexual act quickly in an almost mechanical way,’ noted one of the great man’s biographers.

Tough critics.

Seated behind his Steinway, the iconic American composer George Gershwin penned some of the world’s most beloved songs – from Rhapsody in Blue to The Man I Love.

His performances in his apartment while suspended by his wrists and flogged by his married lover were something else entirely. (Above) Gershwin’s lover Kay Swift

An unrequited infatuation with Charlie Chaplin’s wife, actress and socialite Paulette Goddard (above), was another source of his torment. 

Of course, the genius musical innovator behind the first American opera, who churned out popular hits, like the sultry Summertime and the toe-tapping I’ve Got Rhythm, is best known for his first playing of Rhapsody in Blue at the Aeolian Hall in Manhattan on February 12, 1924.

Now, one hundred years this month from that historic event this enigmatic creator is due for an unaffected encore.

Much of what is now written about Gershwin treads lightly around his unusual erotic behavior, sexual experiences at age nine and serial womanizing.

Perhaps that is because for the man, whose jazz-infused Rhapsody soundtracked everything from the opening scene of Woody Allen’s Manhattan to United Airlines advertisements and wrote the great American song book, there was no happily ever after. 

Before Gershwin died prematurely, he descended into tumor-induced madness. In one incident, he smeared chocolates all over his body, in another, he tried to push his chauffeur from a moving car.

An unrequited infatuation with Charlie Chaplin’s wife, actress and socialite Paulette Goddard, was another source of his torment. His ten-year adulterous affair with American composer Kay Swift appears to be the nearest he came to finding true love.

Swift’s superior classical music training and ability to notate his music was always valuable to him, among other things…

‘She would tie him up, then hang him from the ceiling and whip him,’ said theatrical producer Ben Bagley.

But even George’s longest relationships, such as with a well-to-do and besotted Pauline Heifetz, sister of a renowned violinist, played second fiddle to his true passion. 

An ambivalent Gershwin once remarked: ‘If I weren’t so busy, I’d feel terrible’ after another long-term girlfriend married someone else.

The genius musical innovator behind the first American opera, who churned out popular hits, like the sultry Summertime and the toe-tapping I’ve Got Rhythm , is best known for his first playing of Rhapsody in Blue at the Aeolian Hall in Manhattan on February 12, 1924.

Much of what is now written about Gershwin treads lightly around his unusual erotic behavior, sexual experiences at age nine and serial womanizing. (Above) George Gershwin (center) with his brother Ira (left) working on a score for the fim ‘Delicious’

It could have been that only an audience’s accolades brought him the recognition that he craved and was denied as a child.

Born Jacob Gershwin in Brooklyn in 1898 to Russian Jewish immigrants – George, a Turkish bath owner and an icy, indifferent mother Rose – George remained close to his older brother Ira, who would become his full-time lyricist and guiding angel.

Streetwise and academically unremarkable, the young George was boasting of sexual conquests aged nine, according to his friend and biographer Isaac Goldberg. He dabbled in petty theft on the Lower East Side, while attending concert recitals and idolizing the great classical composers.

‘Studying the piano made a good boy out of a bad one. It took the piano to tone me down…’ Gershwin famously said, ‘I was a changed person after I took it up’.

By 15 he was an industrious pianist for hire at Tin Pan Alley on New York’s Fifth and Sixth Avenues, while he worked on his compositions inspired by the improvised, bluesy sounds of the black musicians he watched in Harlem.

Gershwin’s breakthrough came with the smash hit, Swanee, in 1920, selling two million copies when Columbia Records released it and performed by singer and actor Al Jolson.

Rhapsody in Blue’s triumph opened the way for Gershwin to embark on even more ambitious projects, like the musical American in Paris and the opera Porgy and Bess – sadly to be the last of his great works before his illness took hold. (Above) Dorothy Dandridge who was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Porgy and Bess

Before Gershwin died prematurely, he descended into tumor-induced madness. In one incident, he smeared chocolates all over his body, in another, he tried to push his chauffeur from a moving car. 

It made Gershwin $10,000 in royalties that year and coterie of new VIP friends including the English playwright and composer Noel Coward and American singer and dancer Fred Astaire (Above, Astaire with Paulette Goddard ).

It made Gershwin $10,000 in royalties that year and a coterie of new VIP friends including the English playwright and composer Noel Coward and American singer and dancer Fred Astaire.

Success struck early for Gershwin but his famous performance of Rhapsody in Blue to a packed Aeolian Hall guaranteed his place among America’s masters.

Gershwin outlined the fast, frenzied genesis of the masterpiece that he hurriedly composed after initially turning down a request from the ‘The King of Jazz’, bandleader Paul Whiteman to write a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz experimental performance.

‘It was on that train, with its steely rhythms, its rattley-bang that is so often stimulating to the composer – I frequently hear music in the heart of noise – I suddenly heard – and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the rhapsody from beginning to end,’ he wrote in a letter to his first biographer.

The train wasn’t the only inspiration. The swinging touch he brought to the classical piece was heavily influenced by the sound he had soaked up in Harlem as a teen.

This sonic mix made him a target of frivolous accusations of cultural appropriation – that he diluted the grittier African American beats for a mainstream, white audience and reaped the financial rewards.

For Gershwin, the extent of Rhapsody’s broader success far outweighed the sniping.

The audience in Aeolian Hall – restless and underwhelmed by the previous performances – erupted into rapturous applause after Gershwin and Whiteman’s band performed the fated composition with its wailing clarinet and rising and falling whimsical melody.

The piece was a knockout hit with nearly everyone save a few elite reviewers. By the end of 1927, Gershwin and Whiteman’s Palais Royal Orchestra had sold one million copies on 12-inch double-sided vinyl records.

Perhaps that is because for the man, whose jazz-infused Rhapsody soundtracked everything from the opening scene of Woody Allen’s Manhattan to United Airlines advertisements and wrote the great American song book there was no happily ever after. (Above, scene from the film)

Gershwin outlined the fast, frenzied genesis of the masterpiece that he hurriedly composed after initially turning down a request from the ‘The King of Jazz’, bandleader Paul Whiteman (above) to write a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz experimental performance.

Rhapsody in Blue’s triumph opened the way for Gershwin to embark on even more ambitious projects, like the musical American in Paris and the opera Porgy and Bess – sadly to be the last of his great works before his illness took hold.

On February 11, 1937, Gershwin was performing his own Concerto in F Major with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, when the notes suddenly escaped him.

For 10 or 20 seconds, the 38-year-old sat upright at his piano – frozen.

After the performance, he complained of a pounding headache and the acidic smell of burning rubber.

Amid even more debilitating symptoms, Gershwin sought out several doctors and therapists.

Some told him that his maladies were all in his head – hysteria and hypochondria – rather than any physical issue, even as his condition continued to decline.

In those days, there were no computerized tomography scans or magnetic resonance imaging technologies to easily diagnose a cancerous brain tumor.

The man whose romantic compositions were immortalized by the likes of Nina Simone (above), Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and even Amy Winehouse, never did get the girl and died alone.

Gershwin was plagued by severe headaches, seizures, depression and loss of balance and hand-eye coordination.

He would drop food from his fork while eating. A male nurse was hired to care for him at home and his behavior became increasingly irrational.

He smeared an entire box of chocolates, gifted to him by his brother’s wife Leonore, all over his body. On a trip to see a psychiatrist, he tried to throw his driver out of the door, while they sped down the road.

Then on July 9, 1937, his brother Ira visited George’s Beverly Hills home to find him too weak to stand or even use the bathroom on his own.

When Ira tried to rouse him, George collapsed and lost consciousness.

The great popular composer was rushed to the hospital and the partially paralyzed Gershwin was subjected to a painful procedure that forced air through his spinal column and employed X-rays to examine his brain.

For the first time, doctors were able to see the large tumor growing in Gershwin’s right temporal lobe.

They rushed him into surgery to undergo an operation to remove the malignant growth early on the morning of July 10, but it was too little too late.

George Gershwin never woke up and he was declared dead at 10:30 a.m.

His musical mastery on the world stage brought him wealth, acclaim and the freedom to indulge his life-long passion, but the man whose romantic compositions were immortalized by the likes of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and even Amy Winehouse, never did get the girl and died alone.