In 1988, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Channel 13 produced a Gershwin Festival for George's centenary. There was a gala concert, for which I was librarian and fill-in orchestrator, with guest stars including Julia Migenes, Madeline Kahn, Maureen McGovern, Larry Kert, Leonard Bernstein, Greg Birch, Chris Walken, Chita Rivera, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rosemary Clooney, and Johnny Green. This was followed by a week run of Of Thee I Sing and Let Them Eat Cake in concert. Rge wqhoke affair was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Johnny had arranged many of Fred Astaire's recordings from the 1930s, and there was a whole sequence planned around those Astaire arrangements, which are quite wonderful. I ended up working most of the rehearsal week with Johnny; he was a bit of a curmudgeon, prickly and curt, yet he and I bonded, and I looked forward to spending each day gossiping, bitching and laughing, and working with him. He liked me because I was there to work, I had plenty to do, and I accomplished it. There was a great deal of needless PBS money spent - while they pleaded poverty - and much wasted time by unprepared directors and choreographers.
One day, while I was asking questions about Johnny's career, he mentioned the score to Raintree County. I had seen the film, and I knew from all my cast and soundtrack recording that the recording was a very rare and very desired commodity. We talked about that, but I wanted to talk more about the work on the film Oliver!, his 30s recording work, and his conducting the Rodgers & Hart show A Connecticut Yankee. After the gala, when we said goodbye, and he returned to LA, I creid like a baby; it was as though I'd lost a grandfather. He died not long after, and I still miss him enormously.
