ABSTRACT
Like many other Broadway composers, George Gershwin worked his way up through the Tin Pan Alley ranks. Gershwin's reputation continued to grow with his scores for the annual George White's Scandals between 1920 and 1924. He worked with various lyricists for these revues, including his brother Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin is often credited with introducing jazz onto the musical stage, but he did not do it alone. George and Ira hit a bit of a dry spell with their next two musicals. The team's good fortune returned with a revised version of Strike up the Band— the production. Their next show, Girl Crazy, was also a hit, although it contradicts Lerner's assertion that "the silly skittish plots of the Flapper Age" had vanished. Gershwins' Of Thee I Sing was the first Broadway musical to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it was the first musical to have the text of its book published separately.
