George and Ira Gershwin were asked to compose music for The Goldwyn Follies (1938), a film produced by Samuel Goldwyn, a film pioneer. Ultimately, this project was to be the last that George Gershwin worked on before his death from a brain tumor. Previous to this commission, the brothers were fulfilling another engagement by composing songs for the Fred Astaire film, A Damsel in Distress (1937). The almost constant work that the brothers were doing was beginning to wear them down. They planned to take a week's vacation after the completion of Damsel, before starting on The Goldwyn Follies. This was not possible though and they had to begin work immediately on the new film in the middle of May 1937. A month's vacation was planned after the new film's work was done. By the end of May, George began complaining of headaches and extreme fatigue. He also had a couple of brief spells of dizziness.

The Goldwyn Follies was going to be a lavish production lasting three hours, and including an extraordinary amount of Hollywood stars, but with a continuous plot. Samuel Goldwyn was one of the very first accomplished producers of films. He was successful because he chose quality people, such as directors, actors, and writers, to make his movies. Goldwyn was a very stubborn, and sometimes rude man. George often referred to him sarcastically as the "Great Goldwyn," and would refer to the Follies as the "super, stupendous, colossal moving picture extravaganza." Included in the cast of the film were ventriloquists, comedians, opera singers, and choreographer George Balanchine, who was to provide a ballet from Gershwin's Swing Symphony, which was yet to be composed.

In June, the brothers worked hurriedly on the songs for the Follies, to leave time for George to write his Swing Symphony. Around this time, though, George's health continued to deteriorate. George was urged to undergo a physical examination. His tumor could not be detected at this time and it was concluded that stress was most likely the cause. Work on the Follies was soon resumed, but George began to lose his coordination. He could not play the piano and was very clumsy with his hands. Eventually, George was not able to compose because of his ailments. On 8 July, Goldwyn was told of George's condition and he was released from the contract. The next day, George had convulsions, his eyes began to swell, and he lapsed into a coma. The doctors were called and George was admitted to a hospital. On July 10, the prognosis was that George had a brain tumor. After an attempted surgery to remove the tumor, George died on Sunday morning, July 11, 1937, at the age of 38.

The music for the Follies was completed with the assistance of Vernon Duke. The film opened in February 1938, and was a complete failure. It was seen as an over-the-top variety show with an unconvincing plot.

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(Our) Love Is Here To Stay

Love Is Here to Stay was the Gershwins' last song. Already, in May 1937, George began to complain of fatigue, and by June he was suffering frequent headaches and spells of dizziness. Under contract to Samuel Goldwyn to supply songs and extended musical sequences for a film extravaganza, The Goldwyn Follies, the brothers worked between George's sieges of malaise and Ira confected one of his most unaffectedly affecting lyrics:

It's very clear, our love is here to stay -

Not for a year, but ever and a day.

The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know

May just be passing fancies and in time may go -

But oh, my dear, our love is here to stay...

Of the five songs composed for The Goldwyn Follies, Love Walked In and Love Is Here to Stay, though cast in the simple verse-refrain mode of popular song, both possess a disarming directness transcending categories and defying time. During June, George's headaches and spells of dizziness became more frequent and worse as a cadre of doctors continued to misdiagnose the malignant brain tumor for which he was, at last, operated upon and from which he died on July 11. His friend, composer Vernon Duke (born Vladimir Dukelsky in Parafianovo, Russia), was engaged by Goldwyn to pick up the musical threads. "All that could be found of 'Love Is Here to Stay,'" he recalled, "was a 20-bar incomplete lead sheet; fortunately, Oscar Levant remembered the harmonies from George's frequent piano performances of the song and I was able faithfully to reconstruct it." In The Goldwyn Follies it was given short shrift—over in a flash—and had to wait until Gene Kelly's sympathetic rendering, as an American soldier who remains in Paris after World War II to paint, in the 1951 An American in Paris, to make its impact from the screen.

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Love Walked In

After providing words and music for two RKO film vehicles for Fred Astaire—Shall We Dance and A Damsel in Distress—between September 1936 and May 1937, the Gershwins went immediately to work to fulfill a contract with movie magnate Samuel Goldwyn for what George called the "super, super, stupendous, colossal moving picture extravaganza"—The Goldwyn Follies—which turned out to be a revue disguised as a musical comedy. For it, Goldwyn secured top talent: Adolphe Menjou, Vera Zorina, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy), Met singers Helen Jepson and Charles Kullman, and the American Ballet (with choreography by George Balanchine), among others. Working for Goldwyn, a man who treated artist in a pharaonic manner, proved to be an unpleasant and unsettling experience. To makes things more complicated, George had embarked upon an affair with the 26-year-old starlet, Paulette Goddard, then married to Charlie Chaplin, which absorbed him in a bit of intrigue—Chaplin began having his wife followed. Then, too, there were recurrent headaches, dizziness, and bouts of fatigue. For the Follies, George and Ira completed five songs before George's illness halted work. Of these, four were used, and two—Love Walked In and Love Is Here to Stay—became standards. From the so-called Tune Book—George's sketchbook—for 1930 - 1931, he chose a 24-bar melody which he thought of as "Brahmsian" to work around Ira's words:

Love walked right in and drove the shadows away,

Love walked right in and brought my sunniest day.

One magic moment and my heart seemed to know

That love said "Hello,"

Though not a word was spoken...

Repeated triadic ascents, spanning and hovering about the octave, inform the melody with a hushed, breathless aura to confirm it as the Gershwins' most aspiring, fulfilled anthem. In April 1938 it was played on the popular radio program, Your Hit Parade, for 14 weeks, achieving first place four times.

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