For all his run-ins with the press, Iturbi was still wildly popular—and becoming more so all the time. The New YorkTelegram’s annual radio poll, released February 1, 1937, listed Iturbi as one of the USA’s top five conductors and top three instrumental soloists.

In 1936 he had become principal conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra—the third in the orchestra’s 14-year history. He would remain conductor until 1944, and make several records with this orchestra, being the first regular conductor to record with the RPO.

Iturbi had been “encouraging” his younger sister Amparo for years to join him. With World War II looming on the horizon in 1937, Paris was no longer safe, and Spain was embroiled in a bitter civil war. Now was the time to make the move, and so Amparo, her five-year-old daughter, and her mother boarded the Ile de France and sailed to New York. Within a couple of months she had debuted in Detroit and on radio, and in July of 1937 she made her local debut with her brother and the Philadelphia Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, where they performed Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E-flat to wonderful reviews.

In 1938, Iturbi had been taking flying lessons for two years. He soloed in Atlanta, emerging with a jubilant “What has Lindbergh got that I haven’t?” He had the flying fever, badly.

He took off in his new plane—dubbed “El Turia,” after the river that ran through Valencia—and spent the next few months hopping from country to country on an extended South American tour that enabled him to perform some 35 concerts all over the continent in less than two months.

The newspapers must have expected the flying “stunt” to be a mere fad, for in 1940 an interviewer expressed some surprise not only of Iturbi’s love of flying, but his extensive knowledge as well. “He just about eats it and sleeps it,” said the writer. “Aside from someone actually connected with the industry, it’s doubtful you can run across a man who knows more about planes and what makes them fly.” With the help of his plane, Iturbi was making three transcontinental trips a week for some 100,000 miles a year.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Iturbi was as enraged as any born-and-bred American. He immediately wrote letters to President and Mrs. Roosevelt , asking to serve in any way he could. He had hoped to get into the U.S. Army Air Corps but at 46 was considered too old, so he joined the newly formed Civil Air Patrol (CAP) instead. He already had more than 800 hours as a pilot by that time, and was commissioned a major.

Whether it was bond drives, USO shows, or entertaining troops at their bases, he was there. At one post he was invited to accompany the soldiers on their training exercises. It was a bad day, with rain pouring. After the concert an officer approached and said he was sorry Iturbi wouldn’t be able to watch the maneuvers. “Why can’t I?” Iturbi asked. Surprised, the officer began to stammer about the weather. Iturbi laughed. “I bet the sergeants didn’t ask those fellows out there whether they wanted to wade about in the mud and rain. Come on, let’s go.”

He joined a group of Hollywood stars on a huge nationwide tour to sell war bonds. Calling itself “the Bondardiers,” the 75-person group of musicians, movie stars, and managers traveled in a special red, white and blue train, stopping in 15 cities to perform. At bond drives Iturbi was frequently found playing the piano while Fred Astaire danced and Harpo Marx clowned on top of it. The tour’s goal was to sell $500 million dollars worth of bonds. Actual bond sales totaled over a billion dollars—in 1943 currency!

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, a fellow named Joe Pasternak was punching out musicals for MGM. “To Europeans,” Pasternak said, “ America is the installment plan, canned soup, and used car lots. I want to prove that the American people also appreciate quality of the highest sort.” He paid a call on a reluctant Iturbi.

“I’m a pianist,” Iturbi said. “My job is to play the piano.”

“I’ll bet you that after a movie with me you’ll double your record sales.”

Iturbi laughed. “But what will we bet?”

“How about a piano?” Pasternak suggested.

Pasternak then came up with the idea of having Iturbi play a boogie-woogie number. He approached director George Sidney and musical director Roger Edens with his idea, himself feeling very skeptical.

“We’d have to be very diplomatic,” Sidney said.

Pasternak thought it over. “Let’s just be honest with him,” he finally decided.

When Iturbi came to Pasternak’s office, Pasternak told him how soldiers really enjoyed boogie-woogie. He then asked Iturbi to accompany Judy Garland in a boogie-woogie number.

“When do I start?” Iturbi asked.

Flummoxed, Pasternak blurted, “Don’t you object?”

“Why should I?” Iturbi replied.

The next step was to find out if Iturbi actually could play it, since many classical pianists found jazz incomprehensible. Pasternak got a renowned “boogie-woogie expert” to accompany him and his delegation to a soundstage where they found Iturbi playing Debussy. Iturbi took the music, looked it over briefly, and brought his hands down on the keys. “He had the hottest left hand you ever heard,” Pasternak said proudly. And the boogie-woogie expert slunk away.

A few months after the release of Thousands Cheeer, Pasternak’s wife called him at his office. “Did you order a piano?”

“No, why?”

“There are some fellows here to deliver a brand new Baldwin grand!”

Iturbi appeared in seven movies. They all contained heavy doses of classical music, ranging from a Grieg concerto in one to Rachmaninoff in another, but many of them boasted at least one modern piece as well, whether the “Joint is Jumpin’” number Iturbi played with Judy Garland in Thousands Cheer, or the honky-tonk “Route 66” he played in Three Daring Daughters.

His parts varied from cameo appearances, as in Two Girls and a Sailor, to important support roles, as in That Midnight Kiss, to leading man, in Three Daring Daughters. But whatever kind of movie he was in, and whatever kind of part he played, the roles all had two things in common. He was never far from a piano or an orchestra, and he always played José Iturbi.

Not only did he always play José Iturbi, but he also managed to bring aspects of his own life into his movies. In Anchors Aweigh the motorcycle he rode through MGM studios was his own. His sister Amparo appeared in three of his movies; even his niece and two granddaughters showed up on film.

In a strange twist, however, Iturbi began to lose credibility as a musician. By the time he made his movie debut—Thousands Cheer premiered in 1943—Iturbi had been a successful concert pianist for 20 years and a world-class conductor for ten years. But in spite of this résumé, there were people who now doubted his musical ability, simply because he was a movie star.

Iturbi said on several occasions that other musicians resented him and that some refused to speak to him after he entered the movies. He also said the music critics yowled about him “disgracing his art.”

Movie star or not, Iturbi’s playing still fascinated people, even when they didn’t know to whom they were listening. One of his best-known movies was one in which he did not star or even appear. A Song to Remember—a 1944 heavily fictionalized biography of Chopin—was a much bigger hit than the acting or story rated. People saw this lukewarm movie because the music was superb. The music, of course, was provided by Iturbi, unseen. But word leaked out; Iturbi’s recording of Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat quickly became a top seller and remained one for four years. In a six-month period Iturbi received royalties of more than $118,000, the largest single royalty check RCA had ever issued.

Two of Iturbi’s classical recordings went gold (the other being Debussy’s Clair de Lune)—an unheard-of feat for a classical record in the 1940’s. It had never happened before, and has seldom happened since.

Iturbi’s professional success, however, was heavily offset by personal problems. He had moved to California in 1939, and in 1944 his filming commitments were such that he had to give up the Rochester Philharmonic. He collapsed a week after filming Holiday in Mexico and had to be rushed to the hospital, where he was operated on for gallstones. He was supposed to have left the next day for a concert tour. The tour was canceled.

And in 1946, shortly before filming began on Three Daring Daughters, Maria Iturbi Hero died. Jean Dalrymple called it the second great tragedy of Iturbi’s life.

In 1949 Iturbi returned to Europe, going home to Valencia where his hometown turned out in force to greet him. There he whipped the Valencia Municipal Orchestra into shape and took them on a European tour—the first time a Spanish orchestra had toured Europe. In London they even cut two albums for RCA-Victor.

ut his granddaughters, of whom he had custody after Maria’s death, went home to their father, and Iturbi was alone again.