1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [47]
Gerry, Elbridge (1744–1814) A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Gerry was vice president during the second term of James Madison. His name is memorialized in the term “gerrymandering”—dividing electoral districts for partisan political advantage—a practice first associated with Gerry’s administration as governor of Massachusetts (1810–1812).
Gershwin, George (1898–1937) Born in Brooklyn, Gershwin was one of the most important of all popular American composers. He wrote highly successful Broadway musicals, which included some of the most beautiful of American popular songs (many with lyrics by brother Ira), and also major orchestral compositions, the most famous of which is Rhapsody in Blue, which successfully combines elements of the classical piano concerto with 1920s jazz. He called his 1935 Porgy and Bess an “American folk opera.” Filled with beautiful music, it featured an all African-American cast.
Gershwin, Ira (1896–1983) Born in Brooklyn, Ira Gershwin became most famous as the lyricist who collaborated with his composer brother, George, on more than 20 Broadway musicals. After George Gershwin’s death in 1937, Ira served as lyricist to such greats as Kurt Weill, Jerome Kern, Harry Warren, and Harold Arlen. Witty, lyrical master of the American colloquial idiom, Gershwin was among the very greatest of popular lyricists.
Getty, J. Paul (1892–1976) Getty owned a controlling interest in the Getty Oil Company and in hundreds of other firms. He was celebrated for his eccentricity—an extravagant, irascible, and unsettled character who married and divorced five times—and for his fabulous art collection, which became the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum, built at Malibu in 1953, expanded in 1974, then transformed in 1997 into the spectacular Getty Center, which houses the art collection and other philanthropic activities.
Giancana, Sam (1908–1975) Giancana was Chicago’s top syndicate boss from 1957 to 1966, and was reputedly tapped by John F. Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, to exert his influence among labor unions to swing the 1960 election in favor of JFK. In 1975, Giancana was gunned down in his Oak Park (Illinois) home by unknown assailants shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to testify concerning his alleged involvement in a CIA plot to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.
Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian (1868–1924 and 1878–1972) Frank Gilbreth was trained as an engineer and his wife, Lillian (née Moller) as a literary scholar. Together, they pioneered the science of time-motion study, the analysis of the motions and the amount of time required to carry out specific industrial tasks. Their 1911 Motion Study was groundbreaking and made them the world’s first consulting “efficiency experts.” The Gilbreths raised 12 children, two of whom, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, described how their parents applied their efficiency methods to family rearing in the popular 1949 memoir Cheaper by the Dozen, which became a hit film the following year.
Gillespie, Dizzy (1917–1993) John Birks Gillespie—called Dizzy—was a jazz trumpet virtuoso, bandleader, and innovative composer who developed bebop—or bop—out of big band swing popular in the 1930s and 1940s. The new style was greatly accelerated and made use of often wild chord progressions and syncopated rhythms so rapid that only a virtuoso could play them. Bebop—whose heyday extended from the mid 1940s to the early 1960s—was the sound of modern jazz.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1860–1935) In fiction and nonfiction, Gilman critically analyzed