Short answers, pulled from the story.
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist, born Jacob Gershwine on the 26th of September 1898 and died on the 11th of July 1937. His compositions spanned jazz, popular, and classical music, including Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the opera Porgy and Bess.
George Gershwin died of a brain tumor on the 11th of July 1937 at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 38 and died after surgeons removed a large tumor believed to be a glioblastoma, following his collapse on the 9th of July 1937.
George Gershwin scored his first big national hit in 1919 with "Swanee," with words by Irving Caesar. Broadway star Al Jolson heard Gershwin perform it at a party and made it famous by singing it in one of his shows.
Nadia Boulanger and Maurice Ravel turned George Gershwin down because they feared rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style. Ravel reportedly told him, "Why be a second-rate Ravel, when you are a first-rate Gershwin?"
Of Thee I Sing in 1931 was the first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, awarded to George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin. A special Pulitzer Prize honored George Gershwin in 1998 for the centennial of his birth, and the Library of Congress named its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song after the brothers in 2007.
George Gershwin left school in 1913 at age fifteen to work as a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, earning $15 a week from Jerome H. Remick and Company. His first published song appeared in 1916 and earned him fifty cents.