Kay Swift

Composer + Songwriter + Musician

Female

Born Apr 19, 1897

Died Jan 28, 1993

Kay Swift was an American composer of popular and classical music, the first woman to score a complete musical. Written in 1930, Fine and Dandy includes some of her best known songs; the title song has become a jazz standard. "Can't We Be Friends?" (1929… Read More

Romance

Check out the latest love interests for Kay Swift.

George Gershwin
Dated 1927 - 1937
James Warburg
Married 1918 - 1934

News + Updates

Browse recent news and stories about Kay Swift.

A Legacy Of Lies And Myths Boston Globe
Google News - Aug 07, 2011

Weber's thrice-married maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was a successful popular songwriter, the first female composer of a Broadway hit show (“Fine and Dandy''). She was also George Gershwin's lover for the last decade of his short life
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A Look At Composer Kay Swift, Lover Of Gershwin Hartford Courant
Google News - Aug 05, 2011

Katharine Weber, the novelist from Bethany whose memoir/biography of her grandmother, Kay Swift, has just been published, will give a free talk at RJ Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison, tonight at 7. Weber's latest is "The Memory of All
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Excerpt; Excerpt The Memory Of All That By Katharine Weber
NYTimes - Jul 26, 2011

When I started spending time with the man who would be my husband, I began to notice a strong and pleasing odor of coffee wafting up from his feet. Not only did his shoes smell good, they also occasionally contained a few grains of actual coffee grounds. This was, I soon discovered, the consequence of Nick having purchased an enormous and ancient
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Related Articles
Books Of The Times; When Granny Met Gershwin, And Other Gossip - NYTimes
When Granny Met Gershwin, And Other Gossip New York Times
Google News - Jul 25, 2011

Its music was written by George Gershwin, who had been the lover of Kay Swift, Ms. Weber's maternal grandmother, who may have inspired the show's title character. In any case, one of Ms. Weber's theatergoing companions, an old friend of the family,
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Timeline

Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Kay Swift.

CHILDHOOD

1897 Birth Born on April 19, 1897.

TWENTIES

1925 28 Years Old Before meeting George Gershwin in 1925, she was said to have been elitist about classical music. … Read More

THIRTIES

1930 33 Years Old Before her 1930 hit show Fine and Dandy, Kay Swift contributed numbers to The First Little Show ("Can't We Be Friends?") and The Garrick Gaieties. … Read More

1934 37 Years Old But Swift's marriage dissolved in 1934. … Read More

FORTIES

1939 42 Years Old In the intervening years Swift had composed a ballet for George Balanchine, been staff composer at Radio City Music Hall where she wrote musical numbers for The Rockettes, and been Director of Light Music for the 1939 World's Fair. … Read More

1943 46 Years Old Her 1943 book about life on his Oregon ranch, "Who Could Ask For Anything More?" was made into the 1950 movie Never a Dull Moment, which featured Fred MacMurray as the cowboy and Irene Dunne as Kay.

LATE ADULTHOOD

1991 94 Years Old Her later years were devoted to transcribing, performing, and annotating Gershwin's music, which she did until being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 1991.

1993 96 Years Old She died at the Alzheimer's Resource Center in Southington, Connecticut on January 28, 1993 at the age of 95.

Original Authors of this text are noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Swift.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.