Pulitzer Prize Recipient. He gained fame for his award-winning musical compositions with his younger brother, George Gershwin. They are responsible for such hit songs as "Someone to Watch over Me" in 1926, "Love Walked In" in 1937, "Love is Here to Stay" in 1937, and "Rhapsody in Blue" in 1924. He received the 1932 Pulitzer Prize with Morrie Ryskind and George Kaufman for musical "Of Thee I Sing", which was the first musical to received the converted award. Another well-known musical was "Porgy and Bess" in 1935. Born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, he was trained on the piano early by his mother, who felt music was important to a growing child. While attending the City College of New York, he began writing verse and short poetry bits to the various newspapers. After college, while working as a desk attendant in a Turkish Bath, he began a tentative collaboration with his brother, George, and their first song together, "The Real American Folk Song is a Rag" in 1919 was heard in Nora Bayes' Broadway musical "Ladies First" in 1919. For a while, he used the pseudonym of Arthur Francis, combining the first names of his brother, Arthur, and sister, Frances. Under this pen name, he supplied lyrics for the Broadway show "Two Little Girls in Blue" in 1921. By 1924, he began a successful collaboration with his brother, George, and dropped the use of his nom de plume. After George's death in 1937, he continued to collaborate with such composers as Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Kurt Weil, Jerome Kern, and Harry Warren. For his achievements in film scoring, Ira Gershwin was nominated three times for Academy Award Oscars, for the songs "They Can't Take That Away From Me", "Long Ago and Far Away," and "The Man That Got Away." In 1966, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland. In 1992, the Tony Award for best musical was given to "Crazy For You", which he wrote the lyrics. He continuously watched over the Gershwin legacy by donating manuscripts and materials that he and his brother, George, had collaborated on to the Library of Congress, to become part of the American Heritage. Ira Gershwin would die in his sleep in 1983 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, the home that he shared with his wife of 56 years, Leonore. In 1973, the US Postal Service honored the Gershwins with an 8-cent postage stamp in the American Art series. In 1985, Congress posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal to the Gershwin brothers, to honor their contribution to the American Spirit. In 1998, the men received a posthumous special Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded on the centennial of his brother's birth.