Her reign as London’s most illustrious socialite coincided with the years of the Jazz Age. Mountbatten in the uniform of the St Johns Ambulance Brigade, during World War II.īut in the early 1920s, while across the ocean a young George Gershwin was rocketing to the top of America’s popular music scene, Mountbatten was busy conquering London’s high society. Later she took her social work abroad: when she and Lord Mountbatten became Viceroy and Vicereine of India, she worked tirelessly to improve post-war conditions. She put her superior faculties to use during World War II when she became extensively involved in relief efforts, fundraising in the United States and assuming the position of Superintendent-in-Chief of the St.
While her position in life was exceptional, her personality was all the more remarkable, described by her contemporaries as shrewd, vivacious, and fearless. On her father’s side was the lineage of the Earls of Shaftesbury, a title that dates back to 1672. Her maternal grandfather, Sir Ernest Cassel, became one of the most affluent members of British society after making his fortune as a merchant banker, and was a close friend of King Edward VII. But who was Lady Mountbatten, the woman who single-handedly saved a now-standard Gershwin tune from almost certain oblivion?Įdwina and Louis Mountbatten in the early 1920s George Gershwin, circa 1920īorn Edwina Ashley on November 28, 1901, Edwina was the heir to both social and pecuniary advantages. It wasn’t long before all the dance bands in London had taken up ‘The Man I Love’…Paradoxical enough, I now had a London song hit on my hands without being able to sell a single copy!”ĭelighted at its success east of the Atlantic, Gershwin recycled the “The Man I Love” in Strike up the Band (1927), and his personal affection for the number was eventually validated when singer Helen Morgan made it universally popular in the States. “Soon Montbatten’s favorite dance band, The Berkeley Square Orchestra, was playing ‘The Man I Love.’ Of course they had no orchestra arrangement, so they “faked” an arrangement-that is, they played the song by ear. George recalled the song’s ensuing renaissance fondly: But “The Man I Love” was soon gifted a second chance when a friend of George’s, a certain Lady Mountbatten, heard the song and asked him for a copy to take back with her to England. It eventually found a home in their 1924 musical Lady Be Good!, only to be promptly dropped due to lack of audience response. “The Man I Love,” a George-and-Ira collaboration, began life as a misfit a few years prior. It was 1925, and a particular Gershwin tune was looking to be in pretty sad shape.
Few, however, were quite as compelling as the London socialite and heiress, Lady Edwina Mountbatten. George Gershwin rubbed elbows with some interesting personalities throughout his rise to stardom.
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