Passport to Paris

the long version

Autobiographical account by the Russian born composer Vladmir Dukelsky, who in the middle 1930s became better known as Vernon Duke, writer of songs for stage and screen. Duke recounts his earliest, privileged years in Russia, his musical exposure and education, the haunting memories of his father's death, the generous spirit and strength of his mother and the nightmarish few years of suffering during the revolution of 1917, which eventually forced the family from their homeland for good in 1920. Duke follows with accounts of his extensive travel in Europe and the US, the development of his conflicting musical leanings, details of the origins of his compositions and how they fared in their respective arenas, and his wide range of intimate friends and colleagues in both musical realms in which he became accomplished: Diaghilev, Prokofiev, Koussevitsky, Massine, Balanchine, the Gershwins, Ogden Nash, Larry Hart and countless others. Duke recounts his repeated, deeply painful heartbreaks over failed relationships, his years of service in the United States Coast Guard during WWII and follows with an honest, often indignant, assessment of his subsequent failures on the American stage. His final chapter reveals a happy, final relocation to California, where both his creative and personal lives slowly become simpler and more focused. Personally self-effacing, professionally self-important, and ever loyal to his family, friends and musical roots and ideals, Vernon Duke paints a direct and highly literate picture of a determined, born artist who possessed perhaps too many gifts.