left to right: Harry Truman, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Albert Einstein, Einstein’s wife and cousin, Ella Einstein, Bess Truman,pianist Teddy Wilson. Standing behind the First Lady is Clyde Collins, her (fictional) personal body guard. Explains Joel: “When jazz greats Goodman, Holiday, and Wilson drop in
on the Einsteins at Princeton, Albert is delighted to break out his violin and jam. Unfortunately for Wilson, President and Mrs. Truman pick the same day to visit. Harry commandeers the piano, bumping Teddy to the sidelines.”
left to right: The three M’s, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, and Mae West.
top left: Joel reclining on a couch beneath portraits of himself in the styles of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), and Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) as, clockwise from top right, Kahlo, Modigliani, Rousseau, and van Gogh paint him from life.
Alludes to Kate’s lifelong sensation of flying in her dreams and the recurring soaring lovers motif in the work of Russian-French painter Marc Chagall (1887–1985).
German-American illusionist Alexander Herrmann (1844–1896)
was a leading stage magician a generation before Houdini.
left to right: Chick Webb, Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt, Glenn Miller, Charlie Christian, Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmie Lunceford,
Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. All died before the age of 45.
Jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
A longtime favorite of Joel, the Brazilian singer and actress achieved international stardom with a string of 1940s Hollywood musicals. Beginning with Down Argentine Way in 1940, Miranda starred in ten films in seven years for Twentieth Century-Fox.
Scenes from the career of legendary Bronx-born congressman and New York City mayor Fiorello
La Guardia (1882–1947). from left: with Eleanor Roosevelt on the War Ration Board; reading comics to kids over the radio during the 1945 New York newspaper strike; smashing illegal slot machines as an anti-mob crusader; holding up a newspaper during a mayoral campaign, when he famously said, “I could run on a laundry ticket and beat these political bums”; as mayor, chasing a fire with the NYFD.
