Irving Berlin was a Russian-born American composer and
lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in
American history.
Irving Berlin published his first song, "Marie from Sunny
Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit,
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911.
Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in
places as far away as
Irving Berlin 's native Russia, which also "flung itself into
the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania." Over the years
Irving Berlin was known for writing music and lyrics in the
American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim
being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom
Irving Berlin
saw as the "real soul of the country."
Irving Berlin
wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a
legend" before Irving
Berlin turned thirty. During his 60-year career
Irving Berlin wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the
scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs
nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular
themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade", "White Christmas",
"Happy Holiday", "This is the Army, Mr. Jones", and "There's No
Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1942 film,
This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing
Irving Berlin 's "God Bless America" which was first performed
in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television
series, The Kate Smith Show. After the September 11 attacks in 2001,
Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.
Irving Berlin 's
songs have reached the top of the charts 25 times and have been
extensively re-recorded by numerous singers including Ethel Merman,
Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Linda
Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Cher, Diana Ross, Bing Crosby, Rita Reys,
Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray, Al Jolson, Nat King Cole, Billie
Holiday, Doris Day and Ella Fitzgerald. Composer Douglas Moore sets
Irving Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters,
and includes him instead with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, and Carl
Sandburg, as a "great American minstrel"—someone who has "caught and
immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what
we believe."[1] Composer George Gershwin called him "the greatest
songwriter that has ever lived",[2]:117 and composer Jerome Kern
concluded that "Irving
Berlin has no place in American music—Irving
Berlin is American music."[3]
Early life
Belarussian immigrant
Life in Belarus
Irving Berlin
was born Israel Isidore Baline on May 11, 1888, one of eight
children of Moses and Lena Lipkin Baline. There are several
possibilities concerning his birth city. It could be Tyumen (Tumen)
or any one of several villages near the city of Mogilyov, Belarus.
His father, a cantor in a synagogue, uprooted the family to America,
as did many other Jewish
families in the late 19th century. In 1893 they settled in New York
City. According to his biographer, Laurence Bergreen, as an adult
Irving Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years
in Russia except for one: "Irving
Berlin was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching
his house burn to the ground. By daylight the house was in
ashes."[4]:10
Ian Whitcomb described
Irving Berlin 's life in Belarus:
Life might have seemed irksome to Israel Baline: God was watching
you everywhere. From the dawn bath to the night straw cot,
everything was of religious significance. God was in the food and in
the clothing. When Moses caught Israel pulling on his little shoes
in a manner proscribed by the Talmud
Irving Berlin beat him…
The floor of the Baline hut-home was of hard black dirt. Outside,
the squiggly streets of Tyumen were either mud or dust according to
the season. Lining the squiggles were horrid wooden huts. Sometimes
wild pigs would rage into town and bite children to death…It was not
a setting to sing about… Instead, cantor Moses took his children to
the synagogue where, in soothing sing-song readings from the Talmud,
the cares of the day were eased away. Life in Tyumen sounds pretty
awful but, in later years,
Irving Berlin said
Irving Berlin was unaware of being raised in abject poverty.
Irving Berlin knew no other life and there was always hot food
on the table, even if it was God-riddled.[5]
Whitcomb also describes further the turning point in
Irving Berlin 's early life:
But, suddenly one day, the Cossacks rampaged in on a pogrom... they
simply burned it to the ground. Israel and his family watched from a
distant road. Israel was wrapped in a warm feather quilt. Then they
made a hasty exit. Knowing that they were breaking the law by
leaving without a passport (Russia at that time was the only country
requiring passports), the Balines smuggled themselves creepingly
from town to town, from satellite to satellite, from sea to shining
sea, until finally they reached their star: the Statue of
Liberty.[5]:19
Nicholas II, the new Tsar of Russia, notes Whitcomb, had revived
with utmost brutality the anti-Jewish
pogroms, which created the spontaneous mass exodus to America. The
pogroms were to continue until 1906, and thousands of other families
besides the Balines would also escape, including those of George
Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe
Gilbert ("Waiting for the Robert E. Lee"), Jack Yellen ("Happy Days
Are Here Again"), Louis B. Mayer (MGM) and the Warner
brothers.[5]:14
Settling in New York City
They eventually settled on Cherry Street, a "cold-water basement
flat with no windows,"[5] on the Lower East Side. His father, unable
to find comparable work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a
kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side, and
struggled to support his family.
Irving Berlin died a few years later when Irving was thirteen
years old. With only a few years of schooling, Irving found it
necessary to take to the streets to help support his family.[1]
Irving Berlin became a newspaper boy, hawking The Evening
Journal. On his first day of the job, according to
Irving Berlin ’s
biographer and friend, Alexander Woollcott, the boy “stopped to look
at a ship about to put out for China. So entranced was
Irving Berlin that
Irving Berlin failed to notice a swinging crane, and
Irving Berlin was knocked into the river. When Irving Berlin
was fished out, after going down for the third time, Irving Berlin
was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies that
constituted his first day's receipts, his contribution to the family
budget.”[1][6] His mother took jobs as a midwife, and three of his
sisters worked wrapping cigars, common for immigrant girls. His
older brother worked in a sweatshop assembling shirts. Each evening,
when the family came home from their day's work, Bergreen writes,
"they would deposit the coins they had earned that day into Lena's
outspread apron."[4] :11
Music historian, Philip Furia, writes that when eight-year-old
"Izzy" quit school to sell newspapers in the Bowery,
Irving Berlin no doubt would "hear the hits of the day drift
through the doors of saloons and restaurants" that lined the streets
of New York. Irving
Berlin
found that if Irving
Berlin sang some of the songs while selling papers, people
would toss him coins in appreciation, which gave him a vision of
things to come. One night to his mother,
Irving Berlin
"confessed his life's ambition—to become a singing waiter in a
saloon."[7]:48
Before turning fourteen, according to Woollcott,
Irving Berlin began to realize that "Irving
Berlin contributed less than the least of his sisters... and
Irving Berlin was sick with a sense of his own
worthlessness."[6] Bergreen writes that it was at this point that
Irving Berlin
left home to become a "foot soldier in the city's ragged army of
immigrants." Irving
Berlin entered a lifestyle along the Bowery where an entire
subindustry of lodging houses had sprung up to shelter the thousands
of homeless boys choking the Lower East Side streets. "They were not
settlement houses or charitable institutions; rather, they were
Dickensian in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to ordinary
human beings."[4]:15
Early jobs Irving Berlin at
his first job with a music publisher, age 18
With few survival skills and little education,
Irving Berlin
realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only
ability was acquired from his father's vocation: singing. Irving
Berlin joined with a few other youngsters and went to saloons on the
Bowery to sing to customers. These itinerant young singers were
common on the Lower East Side.
Irving Berlin would sing a few of the popular ballads
Irving Berlin heard on the street, hoping that customers would
"pitch a few pennies in his direction." As Bergreen notes, "it was
in these seamy surroundings that the runaway boy received his real
and lasting education." Music became his sole source of income and
Irving Berlin emerged culturally from the ghetto lifestyle,
learning the "language of the street."
To survive Irving
Berlin began to recognize the kind of songs that appealed to
audiences: "well-known tunes expressing simple sentiments were the
most reliable."[4]:17
Irving Berlin began plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall
in Union Square and finally, in 1906 when
Irving Berlin was 18, working as a singing waiter at the Pelham
Cafe in Chinatown. Besides serving drinks,
Irving Berlin
sang made-up "blue" parodies of hit songs to the delight of
customers. Irving
Berlin biographer Charles Hamm writes that "in his free time
Irving Berlin taught himself to play the piano."[8] When the
bar closed for the night, young
Irving Berlin
would sit at a piano in the back and pick out tunes.[1] His first
attempt at songwriting was "Marie From Sunny Italy," written in
collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist, Mike Nicholson.
The sheet music to this song made history because of a printer's
error in the score. The name printed on the cover read: 'I. Irving
Berlin.' [9] (Irving
Berlin never learned to play in more than one key and used a
custom-made 1940 Weser Brothers piano with a transposing lever to
change keys.)[10]
Irving Berlin
admired the words to the songs but the rhythms were "kind of boggy".
One night Irving
Berlin delivered some hits by friend George M. Cohan, another
kid who was getting known on Broadway with his own songs. When
Irving Berlin ended with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy," notes
Whichtomb, "everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little
fellow. Some tarts said they felt proud to be American; a couple of
thugs, who specialized in chewing off ears and breaking legs, gave
Izzy the nod. And Connors, the saloon's Irish owner, said, 'You know
what you are, me boy? You're the Yiddishe Yankee Doodle!'"[5]:26
Nobel prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling, living up the coast
during that period, "was shocked and intrigued by the screeching
squalor Irving Berlin
found in the dirty gray tenement canyons of immigrant New York,"
writes Whitcomb. "Irving
Berlin thought it worse than the notorious slums of Bombay. But
Irving Berlin was impressed and moved by the Jews, noting the
little immigrant boys saluting the Stars and Stripes." Kipling
wrote, "For these immigrant Jews are a race that survives and
thrives against all odds and flags."[5]:20
Recognition as songwriter
Max Winslow (c.1883-1942),[11] a staff member at music publisher
Harry Von Tilzer Company, noticed
Irving Berlin 's singing on many occasions and became so taken
with his talent that
Irving Berlin
tried to get him a job with his firm. Von Tilzer described an
episode in his autobiography:
Max Winslow came to me and said, "I have discovered a great kid, I
would like to see you write some songs with." Max raved about him so
much that I said, "Who is
Irving Berlin ?"
Irving Berlin said a boy down on the east side by the name of
Irving Berlin ... I said, "Max, How can I write with him, you
know I have got the best lyric writers in the country?" But Max
would not stop boosting
Irving Berlin to me, and I want to say right here that
Irving Berlin can attribute a great deal of his success to Max
Winslow."[8]:viii
In 1908, at the age of 20,
Irving Berlin took a new job at a saloon in the Union Square
neighborhood. There,
Irving Berlin was able to collaborate with other young
songwriters, such as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi, and
George A. Whiting, and in 1909, the year of the premiere of Israel
Zangwill's The Melting Pot,
Irving Berlin
got his big break as a staff lyricist with the Ted Snyder Company.
Songwriting career
Before 1920
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911)
From this early position, Hamm writes, his "meteoric rise as a
songwriter" in Tin Pan Alley and then on Broadway, began with his
first world-famous hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," in 1911 at
the Friars' Frolic of 1911. As a result of his instant celebrity,
Irving Berlin
was the feature performer later that year at Oscar Hammerstein's
vaudeville house, where
Irving Berlin introduced dozens of other songs to the audience.
The New York Telegraph wrote a story about the event, reporting that
a "delegation of two hundred of his friends from the pent and
huddled East Side appeared... to see 'their boy.'" The news story
added that "all the little writer could do was to finger the buttons
on his coat while tears ran down his cheeks--in a vaudeville
house!"[8]:ix
Richard Corliss, wrote about the song in a Time magazine profile of
Irving Berlin in
2001:
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911). It was a march, not a rag, and
its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and
"Swanee River". But the tune, which revived the ragtime fervor that
Scott Joplin had stoked a decade earlier, made
Irving Berlin a songwriting star. On its first release and
subsequent releases, the song was consistently near the top of the
charts: Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937; # 1 by
Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; Al Jolson, in 1947. Johnny Mercer in
1945, and Nellie Lutcher in 1948. Add Ray Charles's big-band version
in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in a bit under a
half century.[12]
Despite its success, the song was not initially recognized as a hit:
at a private audition of the song to Broadway producer Jesse Lasky,
Lasky’s response was uncertain, although
Irving Berlin did put it in his “Follies” show. After a number
of performances as an instrumental, the song did not impress
audiences, and was soon dropped from the show’s score, causing
Irving Berlin to regard it as a “dead failure.” But later that
year, after writing lyrics to the music, it played again in another
Broadway Review, and Variety news weekly proclaimed the song "the
musical sensation of the decade."[4]:68 Composer George Gershwin,
foreseeing its influence, said, "The first real American musical
work is 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.'
Irving Berlin had shown us the way; it was now easier to attain
our ideal."[2]:117
Sparking a national dance craze
Enjoying early success c. 1911
Irving Berlin
was "flabbergasted" by the sudden international popularity of the
song, and began to ask himself "Why? Why?" Irving Berlin later
wrote,
And I got an answer. The melody... started the heels and shoulders
of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking. The lyric,
silly though it was, was fundamentally right.[4]:69
"Watch Your Step"
Furia writes that the international success of "Alexander's Ragtime
Band" gave ragtime "new life and sparked a national dance craze."
Two dancers who expressed that craze were Irene and Vernon Castle.
In 1914, Irving
Berlin wrote a ragtime revue, "Watch Your Step," which starred
the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical revue
became Irving Berlin
's first complete score and Furia notes that "its songs radiated
musical and lyrical sophistication."
Irving Berlin 's
ragtime songs, Irving
Berlin adds, had "quickly come to signify modernism, and
Irving Berlin caught the cultural struggle between Victorian
gentility and the purveyors of liberation, indulgence, and leisure
with songs such as "Play a Simple Melody." That particular song,
according to Furia, also became the first of his famous "double"
songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed
against one another.[7]
Variety called it "The First Syncopated Musical," where the "sets
and the girls were gorgeous." But most of the success or otherwise
of the show was riding on the
Irving Berlin name, according to Whitcomb.
Irving Berlin notes that Variety... marked the show as a
"terrific hit" from opening night alone:
Irving Berlin
stands out like the Times building does in the Square. That youthful
marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in 'Watch Your Step',
firstly that Irving
Berlin is not alone a rag composer, and that
Irving Berlin is one of the greatest lyric writers America has
ever produced.... Besides rags
Irving Berlin
wrote a polka that was very pretty, and
Irving Berlin intermingled ballads with trots, which, including
the grand opera medley, gives Watch Your Step all the kind of music
there is.[5]:173
Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Irving
Berlin's family was forced to leave, flung itself into "the ragtime
beat with an abandon bordering on mania":
... like a display of medieval religious frenzy; some seemed to be
doing a dance of death. Lady Diana Manners, at a London ball
reviving the Age of Chivalry, was escorted by Prince Felix Yusupov.
This young man, a recent Oxford undergraduate, had an impeccable
Russian noble lineage: a descendant of Frederick of Prussia, Irving
Berlin was heir to the largest estate in Russia,
Irving Berlin would be richer than the Tsar.
Irving Berlin was exquisite and heavily bejewelled, but Lady
Diana was irritated by his 'wriggling around the ballroom like a
demented worm, screaming for 'more ragtime and more
champagne'.[5]:183
Lady Diana Manners was apparently not alone in her dislike of
ragtime. A newspaper clipping found in
Irving Berlin 's scrapbook included an article titled, "Calls
Ragtime Insanity Sign":
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" is a public menace.... The authority for
these statements is Dr. Ludwig Gruener of
Irving Berlin , a German [doctor] who has devoted twenty years'
study to the criminally insane....
Irving Berlin says, 'Hysteria is the form of insanity that an
abnormal love for ragtime seems to produce. It is as much a mental
disease as acute mania—it has the same symptoms. When there is
nothing done to check this form it produces idiocy'. Irving Berlin
also stated that 90 percent of the inmates of the American asylums
Irving Berlin has visited are abnormally fond of
ragtime.[13]:23
Simple and romantic ballads
In future years
Irving Berlin made every effort to write lyrics in the American
vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, once stating:
My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the
highbrow nor the lowbrow but that vast intermediate crew which is
the real soul of the country. The highbrow is likely to be
superficial, overtrained, supersensitive. The lowbrow is warped,
subnormal. My public is the real people.[1]
With Al Jolson, star of The Jazz Singer, c. 1927
Irving Berlin
also created songs out of his own sadness. In 1912,
Irving Berlin
married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz. She
died six months later of typhoid fever contracted during their
honeymoon in Havana. The song
Irving Berlin wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You,"
was his first ballad. It was an immediate popular hit and sold more
than a million copies.[1] In 1916,
Irving Berlin collaborated with Victor Herbert on the score of
"The Century Girl."
Irving Berlin
began to realize that the slang of ragtime would be an
"inappropriate idiom for serious romantic expression," and over the
next few years would begin to adapt his style by writing more love
songs.[7] In 1915
Irving Berlin wrote the hit, "I Love a Piano," which was an
erotic, but comical, ragtime love song (Read lyrics).
By 1918 Irving Berlin
had written hundreds of songs, mostly topical, which enjoyed brief
popularity. Many of the songs were for the new dances then
appearing, such as the "grizzly bear," "chicken walk," or fox trot.
After a Hawaiian dance craze began,
Irving Berlin wrote "That Hula-Hula," and then did a string of
southern songs, such as "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for
Alabam." During this period
Irving Berlin
was creating a few new songs every week, including numerous rags and
songs aimed at the various immigrant cultures arriving from Europe.
Furia tells of a train trip
Irving Berlin was on where
Irving Berlin decided to entertain the fellow passengers. Later
on they asked him how
Irving Berlin knew so many hit songs, and
Irving Berlin would modestly reply, "I wrote them."[7]:53
One of the key songs that
Irving Berlin wrote in his transition from ragtime to lyrical
ballads was "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody," which was considered
one of Irving Berlin
's "first big guns," according to historian Alec Wilder. The song
was written for Ziegfeld's Follies of 1919 and became the musical's
leading song. Its popularity was so great that it became the theme
for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and later the theme song in the 1936
film The Great Ziegfeld (Watch). Wilder puts it "on a level with
Jerome Kern's "pure melodies," and in comparison with
Irving Berlin 's earlier music, finds it "extraordinary that
such a development in style and sophistication should have taken
place in a single year."[7]:53
World War I
On 1 April 1917 President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would
enter World War I, and, as Whitcomb writes:
The beleaguered Allies would be rescued from the evil Central Powers
by a noble American game-plan and a barrel of morals.... The whistle
was blown, the game was on. There must be no shirkers or doubters in
the team. Americans must pull together as one man or else. Said
President Wilson: 'Woe to the man or group of men that seeks to
stand in our way in this day of high resolution!' Irish-Americans,
Italian-Americans,
Jewish-Americans, and, especially, German-Americans, must now be
plain, straight-ahead Americans. Tin Pan Alley would do its duty and
support the slogan at the time that "Music is essential to win the
war." Irving Berlin
joined the effort and wrote, "For Your Country and My Country,"
adding "we must speak with the sword not the pen to show our
appreciation to America for opening up her heart and welcoming every
immigrant group." Irving Berlin then joined with George Meyer and
his old colleague Edgar Leslie in a song that demanded an end to
ethnicity: "Let's All Be Americans Now."[5]:197
"Yip Yip Yaphank"
In 1917 Irving Berlin
was drafted into the army, and the news of his induction became
headline news: "Army Takes
Irving Berlin !" one paper read. However, the army only wanted
Irving Berlin , now aged 30, to do what
Irving Berlin knew best: to write songs of patriotism. Hence,
while stationed at Camp Upton in New York, Irving Berlin composed an
all-soldier musical revue titled "Yip Yip Yaphank", written to be
patriotic tribute to the United States Army. By the following summer
the show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of
hits, including "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the
Morning," which
Irving Berlin performed himself.[1] The shows earned $150,000
for a camp service center. One song Irving Berlin wrote for the show
but decided not use,
Irving Berlin would introduce twenty years later: "God Bless
America."[12][14]
According to Whitcomb, "at the grand finale, General Bell made a
thank-you speech from his box, while Sergeant
Irving Berlin , on stage, declined to utter a word. Then, under
orders from the War Department, Sergeant
Irving Berlin led the entire 300-person cast off the stage,
marching them down the theater's aisles, singing 'We're on Our Way
to France,' all to tumultuous applause. The cast carried off their
little producer like
Irving Berlin was victor ludorum."
Irving Berlin 's mother, having seen her son perform for the
first (and last) time in her life, was shocked. The soldier-actors
continued out into the downtown street and up the plank to the
waiting troop carrier. "Tin Pan Alley had joined hands with real
life," writes Whitcomb.[5]
1920 to 1940
Circa 1920
Irving Berlin
returned to Tin Pan Alley after the war and in 1921 created a
partnership with Sam Harris to build the Music Box Theater.
Irving Berlin maintained an interest in the theater throughout
his life, and even in his last years was known to call the Shubert
Organization, his partner, to check on the receipts. In its early
years, the theater was a showcase for revues by Irving Berlin. As
theater owner, producer and composer,
Irving Berlin
looked after every detail of his shows, from the costumes and sets
to the casting and musical arrangements.[15]
According to Irving
Berlin biographer David Leopold, the theater, located at 239
West 45th St., was the only Broadway house built to accommodate the
works of a songwriter. It was the home of Irving Berlin's "Music Box
Revue" from 1921 to 1925 and "As Thousands Cheer" in 1933 and today
includes an exhibition devoted to Irving Berlin in the lobby.[16]
Various hit songs
By 1926, Irving
Berlin had written the scores to two editions of the Ziegfeld
Follies and four "Music Box Revues." Life magazine called him the
"Lullaby Kid," noting that "couples at country-club dances grew
misty-eyed when the band went into "Always," because they were
positive that Irving
Berlin had written it just for them. When they quarreled and
parted in the crepuscular bitter-sweetness of the 1920s, it was
Irving Berlin who gave eloquence to their heartbreak by way of
"What'll I Do" and "Remember" and "All Alone."[17]
"What'll I Do?" (1924)
This ballad of love and longing was a #1 hit for Paul Whiteman and
had five other top-12 renditions in 1924. Twenty-four years later,
the song went to #22 for Nat Cole and #23 for Frank Sinatra.[12]
"Always" (1925)
Written when Irving
Berlin fell in love with Ellin Mackay, who later became his
wife. The song became #1 twice (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen)
in its first incarnation. There were four more hit versions in
1944–45. In 1959 Sammy Turner took the song to #2 on the R&B chart.
It became Patsy Cline's postmortem anthem and hit #18 on the country
chart in 1980, 17 years after her death, and a tribute musical
called "Patsy Cline ... Always," played a two-year Nashville run
that ended in 1995.[12]
"Blue Skies" (1926)
Written after his first daughter's birth as a song just for her. In
it Irving Berlin
distilled his feelings about being married and a father for the
first time: "Blue days, all of them gone; nothing but blue skies,
from now on."[18] #1 for Ben Selvin with five other hits in 1927
besides being the first song performed by Al Jolson in the first
feature sound film, "The Jazz Singer," that same year. In 1946 it
returned to the top 10 on the charts with Count Basie and Benny
Goodman. In 1978, Willie Nelson made the song a #1 country hit—52
years after it was written.[12]
"Marie" (1929)
This waltz-time hit went to #2 with Rudy Vallee and in 1937 reached
#1 with Tommy Dorsey. It was again on the charts at #13 in 1953 for
The Four Tunes and at #15 for the Bachelors in 1965–36 years after
its first appearance.[12]
"Puttin' on the Ritz" (1930)
An instant standard with one of
Irving Berlin 's most "intricately syncopated choruses," this
song is associated with Fred Astaire, who danced to it in the 1946
film "Blue Skies." It was first sung by Harry Richman in 1930 and
became a #1 hit, and in 1939 Clark Gable sang it in the movie
"Idiot's Delight." It was also featured in the movie Young
Frankenstein by Mel Brooks and a #4 hit for the techno artist Taco
in 1983 (Irving
Berlin thus became the oldest songwriter to have a current top
Ten hit).
"Say It Isn't So" (1932)
Rudy Vallee performed it on his radio show, and the song was a #1
hit for George Olsen and awarded top-10 positions with versions by
Connee Boswell and Ozzie Nelson's band. In 1963 Aretha Franklin
produced a single of the song in 1963–31 years later.[12] Furia
notes that when Rudy Vallee first introduced the song on his radio
show, the "song not only became an overnight hit, it saved Vallee's
marriage: The Vallees had planned to get a divorce, but after Vallee
sang Irving Berlin
's romantic lyrics on the air, "both
Irving Berlin
and his wife dissolved in tears" and decided to stay together.[7]
"I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" (1937)
Performed by Dick Powell in the 1937 film "On the Avenue." Later it
had four top-12 versions, including by Billie Holiday and Les Brown,
who took it to #1.[12]
"God Bless America" (1938)
Singing "God Bless America" at the Pentagon memorial dedication,
September 11, 2008
Written by Irving
Berlin twenty years earlier,
Irving Berlin filed it away until 1938, when Kate Smith's
manager asked Irving
Berlin if
Irving Berlin
had a patriotic song Smith might sing to mark the 20th anniversary
of Armistice Day. It was "a simple plea for divine protection in a
dark time—a plangent anthem in just 40 words," writes Corliss. It
quickly became the second National Anthem after America entered
World War II and over the decades has earned millions for the Boy
Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom
Irving Berlin
assigned all royalties.[12][14] The phrase "God Bless America" was
taken from Irving
Berlin 's mother:
While Irving Berlin
was growing up on the Lower East Side, she would say "God bless
America" often, to indicate that, without America, her family would
have had no place to go.[19] The Economist magazine wrote that by
writing "God Bless America",
Irving Berlin was "producing a deep-felt paean to the country
that had given him what
Irving Berlin
would have said was everything. It is a melody that still makes his
fellow countrymen want to stand up and place their hands over their
hearts." [20]
On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, U.S. senators and
congressmen stood on the capitol steps and sang it after the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Two nights later, when
Broadway turned its lights back on, the casts of numerous shows led
theatergoers in renditions of the same song.
Richard Corliss notes that the next day, at an official requiem at
the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., it was played by the
U.S. Army Orchestra. The following Monday, to mark the reopening of
the New York Stock Exchange, New York Governor George Pataki and
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani joined traders in singing it. That evening,
as major league baseball games resumed around the country it
replaced "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as the theme song of the
seventh-inning stretch. Over the following weeks, everyone—Celine
Dion, Marc Anthony, New York City Police Department officer Daniel
Rodriguez, the whole country—sang "God Bless America".[12]
Describing the mood at the time and the significance of the song,
Corliss wrote in Time magazine that December:
In times of crisis, the nation loses its short-term cultural
memory—puts aside idiot movie comics, suicidal rock lyrics, must-see
reality TV and the pursuit of the moral triviality that is Gary
Condit—and, like a senior citizen finding solace in the distant
past, rekindles that old feeling. In pop culture, at least for a
while, many Americans traded in cool pop culture for warm, sarcasm
for sentiment, alienation for community. In the blink of a national
tragedy, we went from jaded to nice, just like that.[12]
The popularity of the song, when it was first introduced in 1938,
was also related to its release near the end of the Depression,
which had gone on for nine years. As a result, one writer concludes
that the song's introduction at that time "enshrines a strain of
official patriotism intertwined with a religious faith that runs
deep in the American psyche. Patriotic razzle-dazzle, sophisticated
melancholy and humble sentiments:
Irving Berlin songs span the emotional terrain of America with
a thoroughness that others may have equaled but none have
surpassed."[3]
The song has also been adopted by various sports teams over the
years. The Philadelphia Flyers hockey team started playing it before
crucial contests and won some 80% of those games—including all three
when Kate Smith arrived to sing it in person. "Many credited Smith
for lifting the crowd and the team to new heights," notes columnist
John Bacon. When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team pulled off the
"greatest upset in sports history," referred to as the "Miracle on
Ice", the players spontaneously broke into a chorus—not of "The Star
Spangled Banner," but "God Bless America,"[21] with ESPN TV noting,
"Americans were overcome by patriotism."[22]
Other songs
Though most of his works for the Broadway stage took the form of
revues—collections of songs with no unifying plot—Irving
Berlin did write a number of book shows. The Cocoanuts (1929)
was a light comedy with a cast featuring, among others, the Marx
Brothers. Face the Music (1932) was a political satire with a book
by Moss Hart, and Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a
Southern politician obviously based on the exploits of Huey Long. As
Thousands Cheer (1933) was a revue, also with book by Moss Hart,
with a theme: each number was presented as an item in a newspaper,
some of them touching on issues of the day. The show yielded a
succession of hit songs, including "Easter Parade" sung by Marilyn
Miller and William Gaxton, "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather
forecast), "Harlem on My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about
racial bigotry that was sung by Ethel Waters.
1941 to 1962
World War II patriotism—"This is the Army" (1943)
Singing aboard USS Arkansas, 1944
When the U.S. joined World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor
in December 1941,
Irving Berlin immediately began composing a number of patriotic
songs. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau requested a song to
inspire Americans to buy war bonds, for which
Irving Berlin
wrote "Any Bonds Today?"
Irving Berlin assigned all royalties to the United States
Treasury Department.
Irving Berlin then wrote songs for various government agencies
and likewise assigned all profits to them: "Angels of Mercy" for the
American Red Cross; "Arms for the Love of America," for the Army
Ordnance Department; and "I Paid My Income Tax Today,"[23] again to
Treasury.[12]
But his most notable and valuable contribution to the war effort was
a stage show Irving
Berlin wrote called "This is the Army". It was taken to
Broadway and then on to Washington, D.C. (where President Franklin
D. Roosevelt attended). It was eventually shown at military bases
throughout the world, including London, North Africa, Italy, Middle
East, and Pacific countries, sometimes in close proximity to battle
zones. Irving Berlin
wrote nearly three dozen songs for the show which contained a cast
of 300 men. Irving
Berlin supervised the production and traveled with it, always
singing "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". The show kept him
away from his family for three and a half years, during which time
Irving Berlin took neither salary nor expenses, and turned over
all profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.[24]:81 The play was
adapted into a movie of the same name in 1943, directed by Michael
Curtiz, costarring Joan Leslie and Ronald Reagan, who was then an
army lieutenant. Kate Smith also sang "God Bless America" in the
film with a backdrop showing families anxious over the coming war.
The show became a hit movie and a morale-boosting road show that
toured the battlefronts of Europe.[25] The shows and movie combined
raised more than $10 million for the Army,[12] and in recognition of
his contributions to troop morale,
Irving Berlin was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Harry
S. Truman. His daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, who was 15 when she was
at the opening-night performance of "This is the Army" on Broadway,
remembered that when her father, who normally shunned the spotlight,
appeared in the second act in soldier's garb to sing "Oh, How I Hate
to Get Up in the Morning,"
Irving Berlin was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted
10 minutes. She adds that
Irving Berlin was in his mid-50's at the time, and later
declared those years with the show were the "most thrilling time of
his life."[25]
"Annie Get Your Gun" (1946)
The grueling tours
Irving Berlin did performing "This Is The Army" left him
exhausted. But his old and close friend Jerome Kern, who was the
composer for "Annie Get Your Gun," suddenly died of a cerebral
hemorrhage. Producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
persuaded Irving
Berlin to take over composing the score.
Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music
and lyrics were written by
Irving Berlin , with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister
Dorothy Fields. At first
Irving Berlin refused to take on the job, claiming that
Irving Berlin knew nothing about "hillbilly music", but the
show ran for 1,147 performances and became his most successful
score. It is said that the showstopper song, "There's No Business
Like Show Business", was almost left out of the show altogether
because Irving Berlin
mistakenly thought that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't like it.
However, it became the "ultimate uptempo show tune." One reviewer
stating that "Its tough wisecracking lyrics are as tersely
all-knowing as its melody, which is nailed down in brassy syncopated
lines that have been copied -but never equaled in sheer melodic
memorability—by hundreds of theater composers ever since."[3]
McCorkle writes that the score "meant more to me than ever, now that
I knew that Irving
Berlin wrote it after a grueling world tour and years of
separation from his wife and daughters."[24]:81
Historian and composer Alec Wilder noted the difference between this
score and Irving
Berlin 's much earlier works:
To hear... that "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) was the hit of
Vienna and probably every large city of Europe by late 1912, and
then to realize that the writer of this song, forty years later,
wrote the nearly perfect score of Annie Get Your Gun, comes as a
profound shock.[26]:94
Apparently the "creative spurt" in which
Irving Berlin turned out several songs for the score in a
single weekend was an anomaly. According to this daughter,
Irving Berlin usually "sweated blood" to write his songs.[25]
Annie Get Your Gun is considered to be Irving Berlin's best musical
theatre score not only because of the number of hits it contains,
but because its songs successfully combine character and plot
development. The song "There's No Business Like Show Business"
became "Ethel Merman's trademark."[3]
Final shows
Irving Berlin 's
next show, Miss Liberty (1949), was disappointing, but Call Me Madam
in 1950, starring Ethel Merman as Sally Adams, a Washington, D.C.
socialite, loosely based the famous Washington hostess Perle Mesta,
fared better, giving him his second greatest success. After a failed
attempt at retirement, in 1962, at the age of 74,
Irving Berlin returned to Broadway with Mr. President. Although
it ran for eight months, (with the premiere attended by President
John F. Kennedy), it did not become a successful show. But as
Richard Corliss points out, it did at least prove that Irving Berlin
was still the "uncomplicated lover of the country that had adopted
and enriched him . . . [and] his feelings were most directly
expressed" by the lyrics to the song, "This Is a Great Country:"[12]
Hats off to America,
The home of the free and the brave—
If this is flag waving,
Flag waving,
Do you know of a better flag to wave?
Afterwards, Irving
Berlin officially announced his retirement and spent his
remaining years in New York.
Movie scores
1920s–1950s
Easter Parade (1948)
In 1922, Madame Butterfly was his first composing film debut. In
1927, his song "Blue Skies", was featured in the first
feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson. Later,
movies like Top Hat (1935) became the first of a series of
distinctive film musicals by
Irving Berlin starring performers like Bing Crosby, Fred
Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, and Alice Faye. They usually
had light romantic plots and a seemingly endless string of his new
and old songs. Similar films included On the Avenue (1937), Gold
Diggers in Paris (1938), Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946), and
Easter Parade (1948), with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.
"White Christmas" (1942)
The 1942 film Holiday Inn introduced "White Christmas", one of the
most recorded songs in history. First sung in the film by Bing
Crosby, it sold over 30 million records and stayed #1 on the pop and
R&B charts for 10 weeks. Crosby's single was the best-selling single
in any music category for more than fifty years. Music critic
Stephen Holden credits this partly to the fact that "the song also
evokes a primal nostalgia—a pure childlike longing for roots, home
and childhood—that goes way beyond the greeting imagery."[3]
Richard Corliss also notes that the song was even more significant
having been released soon after America entered World War II: [it]
"connected with... GIs in their first winter away from home. To them
it voiced the ache of separation and the wistfulness they felt for
the girl back home, for the innocence of youth...."[12] Poet Carl
Sandburg said, "Way down under this latest hit of his,
Irving Berlin
catches us where we love peace."[12]
"White Christmas" won
Irving Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original
Song, one of seven Oscar nominations
Irving Berlin
received during his career. In subsequent years, it was re-recorded
and became a top-10 seller for numerous artists: Frank Sinatra, Jo
Stafford, Ernest Tubb, The Ravens, and The Drifters. It would also
be the last time a
Irving Berlin song went to #1 upon its release.
Talking about Irving
Berlin 's "White Christmas", composer–lyricist Garrison Hintz
stated that although songwriting can be a complicated process, its
final result should sound simplistic. Considering the fact that
"White Christmas" has only eight sentences in the entire song,
lyrically Mr. Irving
Berlin achieved all that was necessary to eventually sell over
100 million copies and capture the hearts of the American public at
the same time.[27]
Songwriting methods
According to Saul Bornstein,
Irving Berlin 's publishing company manager, "It was a ritual
for Irving Berlin
to write a complete song, words and music, every day."[26]:92
Irving Berlin has said that
Irving Berlin "does not believe in inspiration," and feels that
although Irving
Berlin may be gifted in certain areas, his "most successful
compositions were the "result of work." In an interview in 1916,
when Irving Berlin
was 28, Irving Berlin
said:
I do most of my work under pressure. When I have a song to write I
go home at night, and after dinner about 8 I begin to work.
Sometimes I keep at it till 4 or 5 in the morning. I do most of my
writing at night, and although I have lived in the same apartment
four years there has never been a complaint from any of my
neighbors.... Each day I would attend rehearsals and at night write
another song and bring it down the next day.[28]
Not always certain about his own writing abilities,
Irving Berlin
once asked a songwriter friend, Mr. Herbert, whether
Irving Berlin
should study composition. "You have a natural gift for words and
music," Mr. Herbert told him. "Learning theory might help you a
little, but it could cramp your style."
Irving Berlin took his advice. Herbert later became a moving
force behind the creation of ASCAP, the American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 1914,
Irving Berlin joined him as a charter member of the
organization that has protected the royalties of composers and
writers ever since.[1]
I never have, because if I don't know them I do not have to observe
any rules and can do as I like, which is much better for me than if
I allowed myself to be governed by the rules of versification. In
following my own method I can make my jingles fit my music or vice
versa with no qualms as to their correctness. Usually I compose my
tunes and then fit words to them, though sometimes it's the other
way about.[28]
In later years Irving
Berlin would emphasize his conviction, saying that "it's the
lyric that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what
makes it last."[29]:234
According to music historian Alec Wilder, it was well known that
Irving Berlin ,
unable to write his own music, paid a professional musician to
harmonize and write his music, but always did so under his close
supervision. Irving
Berlin notes that "though Irving Berlin may seldom have played
acceptable harmony,
Irving Berlin
nevertheless, by some mastery of his inner ear, senses it, in fact
writes many of his melodies with this natural, intuitive harmonic
sense at work in his head, but not in his hands."[26]:93
As a result, Wilder concludes that many admirers of the music of
Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, and Cole Porter were unlikely to
consider Irving
Berlin 's work in the same category. But Irving Berlin feels
that was due primarily to "forgetfulness and confusion," making them
inclined to minimize his talent. Irving Berlin writes:
They forget "Soft Lights and Sweet Music,' 'Supper Time,' and 'Cheek
to Cheek' because they are confused by his also having written
'What'll I Do?' and 'Always.' The solid, straightforward pop songs
of Irving Berlin
are minor masterpieces of economy, clarity, and memorability. But
they give little hint of the much more sophisticated aspects of his
talent as it is revealed in his theater and film music.[26]
Wilder tries to describe the source of
Irving Berlin 's gift for songwriting: "In his lyrics as in his
melodies, Irving
Berlin
reveals a constant awareness of the world around him: the pulse of
the times, the society in which his is functioning. There is nothing
of the hothouse about his work, urban though it may be."[26]
Music styles
There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
Music critic Stephen Holden writes that composer Jerome Kern
recognized that the essence of
Irving Berlin 's lyrics was his "faith in the American
vernacular" and was so profound that his best-known songs "seem
indivisible from the country's history and self-image."
Irving Berlin
adds that where the songs of Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers,
Oscar Hammerstein II and Cole Porter brought together Afro-American,
Latin American, rural pop, and European operetta,
Irving Berlin 's music "did not strive to be lofty in that way."
Irving Berlin adds that "The best of it is a simple,
exquisitely crafted street song whose diction feels so natural that
one scarcely notices the craft.... For all of their innovation, they
seem to flow straight out of the rhythms and inflections of everyday
speech."[3] Wilder also explains
Irving Berlin 's style of writing:
Whatever idealism some of his songs revealed, the core of his work
has been eminently practical: his has been truly a body of work...
his approach to songwriting is that of a craftsman rather than a
composer.... I have been searching assiduously for stylistic
characteristics in
Irving Berlin , but I can't find any. I find great songs, good
songs, average songs, and commercial songs. But I find no clue to a
single, or even duple, point of view in the music.[24]:76
Irving Berlin
did state a stylistic goal early in his career: to write a
"syncopated operetta."
Irving Berlin said, "If I were assigned the task of writing an
American opera I should not follow the style of the masters, whose
melodies can never be surpassed. Instead I would write a syncopated
opera, which, if it failed, would at least possess the merit of
novelty. That is what I really want to do eventually—write a
syncopated operetta."[28] Two decades later, composer George
Gershwin wrote, "I have learned many things from
Irving Berlin ,
but the most precious lesson has been that ragtime—or jazz, as its
more developed state was later called—was the only musical idiom in
existence that could aptly express America."[2]:117
Many musicians and music historians have attempted to define the
qualities about
Irving Berlin 's songs that made them unique. Gershwin once
tried:
His music has that vitality—both rhythmic and melodic—which never
seems to lose any of its exuberant freshness; it has that rich,
colorful melodic flow which is ever the wonder of all those of who,
too, compose songs; his ideas are endless.[2]:117
Among Irving Berlin
's contemporaries was Cole Porter, whose music style was often
considered more "witty, sophisticated, [and] dirty," according to
musicologist Susannah McCorkle. Of the five top songwriters, only
Porter and Irving
Berlin wrote both their words and music. However, she notes
that Porter, unlike
Irving Berlin , was a Yale-educated and wealthy Midwesterner
whose songs were not successful until
Irving Berlin was in his thirties. However, she notes that it
was "Irving Berlin
[who] got Porter the show that launched his career."[24]:76
During the early 1940s,
Irving Berlin became an enthusiastic reader of works by the
18th century English poet, Alexander Pope. Irving Berlin had a
genuine "enthusiasm for Pope's lean, compact heroic couplets."
Irving Berlin felt that Pope would have made a "brilliant lyric
writer."[17]
In 2000, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim reflected on the
greatest songs in the American Songbook, noting "What distinguishes
Irving Berlin is
the brilliance of his lyrics. 'You Can't Get a Man With a
Gun'—that's as good a comic song as has ever been written by
anybody. You look at the jokes and how quickly they're told, and it
still has a plot to it. It's sophisticated and very underrated."
[30]
Personal life
Marriages
In 1912, Irving
Berlin married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of the songwriter E.
Ray Goetz. She died six months later of typhoid fever, which she
contracted during their honeymoon in Havana. The song
Irving Berlin
wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You," was his first ballad.
With wife Ellin, c. 1920s
Years later in the 1920s,
Irving Berlin fell in love with a young heiress, Ellin Mackay,
the daughter of Clarence Mackay, the socially prominent head of the
Postal Telegraph Cable Company. Because Irving Berlin was <a
href="jew-entertainment-irving-berlin.html">Irving Berlin</a>
and she was Catholic, their life was followed in every possible
detail by the press, which found the romance of an immigrant from
the Lower East Side and a young heiress a good story.[1]
They met in 1925, and her father opposed the match from the start.
Irving Berlin
went so far as to send her off to Europe to find other suitors and
forget Mr. Irving
Berlin . However,
Irving Berlin wooed her over the airwaves with his songs,
"Remember" and "Always." His biographer, Philip Furia, writes that
"even before Ellin returned from Europe, newspapers rumored they
were engaged, and Broadway shows featured skits of the lovelorn
songwriter...." During the week after her return, both she and
Irving Berlin were "besieged by reporters, sometimes fifty at a
time." Variety reported that her father had vowed their marriage
"would only happen 'over my dead body.'"[29] As a result they
decided to elope and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the
Municipal Building away from media attention.
A front-page story in the New York Times about the wedding stated,
"Although Broadway for months had expected the one-time newsboy and
Bowery singer of songs to wed the prominent young society girl...
the marriage took Clarence H. Mackay, father of the bride,
completely by surprise.
Irving Berlin was reported to have been stunned when
Irving Berlin learned from a third person of the Municipal
Building ceremony." However, the bride's mother, who was divorced
from Mr. Mackay, was apparently not of the same mind according to
the story: "in fact, some quarters pictured her as desirous of
seeing her daughter follow the dictates of her own heart. It was
reported that the couple motored to the home of Mrs. Blake [her
mother], early in the evening and obtained her blessing."[31]
There were also reports that her father disowned his daughter
because of the marriage.
Irving Berlin then assigned all rights to a number of popular
songs, including "Always," a song still played at weddings, thereby
guaranteeing her a steady income regardless of what might happen
with their marriage. For some years, Mr. Mackay was not on speaking
terms with the Irving Berlins; however, during the Depression five
years later, Irving
Berlin is said to have bailed out his father-in-law when
Irving Berlin suffered because of the stock market crash.[1]
Their marriage remained a love affair and they were inseparable
until she died in July 1988 at the age of 85. They had four children
during their 63 years of marriage: Irving, who died in infancy; Mary
Ellin Barrett and Elizabeth Irving Peters of New York, and Linda
Louise Emmet, who lived in Paris.[1]
Lifestyle
In 1916, in the earlier phase of
Irving Berlin 's career, producer and composer George M. Cohan,
during a toast to the young Irving Berlin at a Friar's Club dinner
in his honor, described Irving Berlin:
The thing I like about Irvie is that although
Irving Berlin has moved up-town and made lots of money, it
hasn't turned his head.
Irving Berlin
hasn't forgotten his friends,
Irving Berlin doesn't wear funny clothes, and you will find his
watch and his handkerchief in his pockets, where they belong.[28]
It has been noted by Furia that "throughout his life
Irving Berlin
had a habit of returning to his old haunts in Union Square,
Chinatown, and the Bowery, a habit easily indulged in a city where
no matter how far up—or down—the ladder of success you had climbed,
you could reach your antipodes by walking a few blocks."[29] Irving
Berlin would always remember his childhood years when
Irving Berlin
"slept under tenement steps, ate scraps, and wore secondhand
clothes," describing those years as hard but good. "Every man should
have a Lower East Side in his life,"
Irving Berlin said. Irving Berlin used to visit The Music Box
Theater, which Irving
Berlin
founded and which still stands at 239 West Forty-Fifth St.
George Frazier of Life magazine found
Irving Berlin to be "intensely nervous," with a habit of
tapping his listener with his index finger to emphasize a point, and
continually pressing his hair down in back and "picking up any stray
crumbs left on a table after a meal." While listening, "Irving
Berlin leans forward tensely, with his hands clasped below his
knees like a prizefighter waiting in his corner for the bell.... For
a man who has known so much glory," writes Frazier, "Irving
Berlin has somehow managed to retain the enthusiasm of a
novice."[17]
Irving Berlin 's
daughter later wrote in her memoir that "she found her father a
loving, if workaholic, family man who was 'basically an upbeat
person, with down periods,' until his last decades, when
Irving Berlin
retreated from public life...."[24] She adds that her parents liked
to celebrate every single holiday with their children. "They seemed
to understand the importance, particularly in childhood, of the
special day, the same every year, the special stories, foods, and
decorations and that special sense of well-being that accompanies a
holiday."[24]:80 Although
Irving Berlin did comment to his daughter about her mother's
lavish Christmas spending, "I gave up trying to get your mother to
economize. It was easier just to make more money."[32]
Irving Berlin
supported the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower,
and his song "I Like Ike" featured prominently in the Eisenhower
campaign. In his later years
Irving Berlin also became more conservative in his views on
music. According to his daughter, "Irving
Berlin was consumed by patriotism."
Irving Berlin often said, "I owe all my success to my adopted
country" and once rejected his lawyers' advice to invest in tax
shelters, insisting, "I want to pay taxes. I love this
country."[24]:80
Irving Berlin
was devoted to the <a
href="jew-entertainment-irving-berlin.html">Irving Berlin</a>
faith and was a staunch advocate of civil rights.
Irving Berlin was later honored in 1944 by the National
Conference of Christians and Jews for "advancing the aims of the
conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict."[33] In 1949,
the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) honored him as one the
twelve "most outstanding Americans of <a
href="jew-entertainment-irving-berlin.html">Irving Berlin</a>
faith."[33] Irving
Berlin 's Civil Rights Movement support also made him a target
of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who endlessly investigated him for
years.[34]
Death
Irving Berlin
died in his sleep on September 22, 1989, in New York City at the age
of 101 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New
York. Irving Berlin
was survived by three daughters: Mary Ellin Barrett and Elizabeth
Irving Peters of New York, and Linda Louise Emmet, who lives in
Paris. Irving Berlin
is also survived by nine grandchildren and six great
grandchildren.[1]
On the evening following the announcement of his death, the marquee
lights of Broadway playhouses were dimmed before curtain time in his
memory. President George H. W. Bush said Mr.
Irving Berlin was "a legendary man whose words and music will
help define the history of our nation." Just minutes before the
President's statement was released,
Irving Berlin joined a crowd of thousands to sing Irving
Berlin's "God Bless America" at a luncheon in Boston. Former
President Ronald Reagan, who costarred in
Irving Berlin 's 1943 musical This Is the Army, said, "Nancy and
I are deeply saddened by the death of a wonderfully talented man
whose musical genius delighted and stirred millions and will live on
forever."[35]
Morton Gould, the composer and conductor who is president of the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), of
which Mr. Irving
Berlin was a founder, said, "What to me is fascinating about
this unique genius is that
Irving Berlin touched so many people in so many age groups over
so many years. Irving Berlin sounded our deepest feelings—happiness,
sadness, celebration, loneliness." Ginger Rogers, who danced to
Irving Berlin tunes with Fred Astaire, told The Associated
Press upon hearing of his death that working with Mr.
Irving Berlin had been "like heaven." [35]
Legacy and influence
The New York Times, after his death in 1989, wrote, "Irving
Berlin
set the tone and the tempo for the tunes America played and sang and
danced to for much of the 20th century." An immigrant from Russia,
his life became the "classic rags-to-riches story that
Irving Berlin
never forgot could have happened only in America."[1] During his
career Irving Berlin
wrote an estimated 1,500 songs[15] and was a legend by the time
Irving Berlin turned 30.
Irving Berlin went on to write the scores for 19 Broadway shows
and 18 Hollywood films,[36] with his songs nominated for Academy
Awards on eight occasions. Music historian Susannah McCorkle writes
that "in scope, quantity, and quality his work was amazing."[24]
Others, such as Broadway musician Anne Phillips, says simply that
"the man is an American institution."[37] During his six-decade
career, from 1907 to 1966,
Irving Berlin
produced sheet music, Broadway shows, recordings, and scores played
on radio, in films and on television, and his tunes continue to
evoke powerful emotions for millions around the world.
Irving Berlin
wrote songs like "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Cheek to Cheek",
"There's No Business Like Show Business", "Blue Skies" and "Puttin'
On the Ritz." Some of his songs have become holiday anthems, such as
"Easter Parade", "White Christmas", and "Happy Holiday". "White
Christmas" alone sold over 50 million records, the top-selling
single of all time, won an ASCAP and an Academy Award, and is one of
the most frequently played songs ever written.[1] According to
McCorkle, of the top five songwriters in America, only
Irving Berlin
and Cole Porter wrote both their words and music.[24]
In 1938 "God Bless America" became the unofficial national anthem of
the United States, and on September 11, 2001, members of the House
of Representatives stood on the steps of the Capitol and solemnly
sang "God Bless America" together. The song returned to #1 shortly
after 9/11, when Celine Dion recorded it as the title track of a
9/11 benefit album. The following year, the Postal Service issued a
commemorative stamp of
Irving Berlin . By then, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of New
York had received more than $10 million in royalties from "God Bless
America" as a result of
Irving Berlin 's donation of royalties.[15] According to music
historian Gary Giddins, "No other songwriter has written as many
anthems.... No one else has written as many pop songs, period...
[H]is gift for economy, directness, and slang, presents
Irving Berlin as an obsessive, often despairing commentator on
the passing scene."[38]:405
In 1934 Life Magazine put him on its cover and inside hailed "this
itinerant son of a Russian cantor" as "an American institution."[18]
And again in 1943 Life described his songs as follows:
They possess a permanence not generally associated with Tin Pan
Alley products and it is more than remotely possible that in days to
come Irving Berlin
will be looked upon as the Stephen Foster of the 20th century.[17]
At various times his songs were also rallying cries for different
causes: Irving Berlin
produced musical editorials supporting Al Smith and Dwight
Eisenhower as presidential candidates, Irving Berlin wrote songs
opposing Prohibition, defending the gold standard, calming the
wounds of the Great Depression, and helping the war against Hitler,
and in 1950 Irving
Berlin wrote an anthem for the state of Israel.[12] Biographer
David Leopold adds that "We all know his songs... they are all part
of who we are."
At his 100th-birthday celebration in May 1988, violinist Isaac Stern
said, "The career of
Irving Berlin and American music were intertwined
forever—American music was born at his piano,"[1] while songwriter
Sammy Cahn pointed out: "If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can
point to six songs that are immediately identifiable,
Irving Berlin
has achieved something.
Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable...
[Y]ou couldn't have a holiday without his permission."[1] Composer
Douglas Moore added:
It's a rare gift which sets
Irving Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters. It
is a gift which qualifies him, along with Stephen Foster, Walt
Whitman, Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg, as a great American
minstrel. Irving
Berlin has caught and immortalized in his songs what we say,
what we think about, and what we believe.[1]
ASCAP's records show that 25 of
Irving Berlin 's songs reached the top of the charts and were
re-recorded by dozens of famous singers over the years, such as
Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney,
Doris Day, Diana Ross, Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Nat King Cole, and
Ella Fitzgerald.[36] In 1924, when Irving Berlin was 36, his
biography, The Story of
Irving Berlin , was being written by Alexander Woollcott. In a
letter to Woollcott, Jerome Kern offered what one writer said "may
be the last word" on the significance of
Irving Berlin :
Irving Berlin
has no place in American music—Irving
Berlin is American music. Emotionally,
Irving Berlin honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from
the people, manners and life of his time and, in turn, gives these
impressions back to the world—simplified, clarified and
glorified.[3]
Composer George Gershwin (1898–1937) also tried to describe the
importance of Irving
Berlin 's compositions:
I want to say at once that I frankly believe that
Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever
lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one
of them is as beautiful as its neighbor.
Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert. But apart
from his genuine talent for song-writing,
Irving Berlin
has had a greater influence upon American music than any other one
man. It was Irving
Berlin who was the very first to have created a real, inherent
American music....
Irving Berlin was the first to free the American song from the
nauseating sentimentality which had previously characterized it, and
by introducing and perfecting ragtime
Irving Berlin had actually given us the first germ of an
American musical idiom;
Irving Berlin had sowed the first seeds of an American
music.[2]:117
Awards and celebrations
Received the Army's Medal of Merit on October 2, 1945 from General
George C. Marshall, at the direction of President Harry S. Truman,
in appreciation for writing the music and lyrics to "This Is the
Army."
Won a Tony Award in 1951 for Best Score for the musical, Call Me
Madam.
Received a special Congressional Gold Medal in 1954 from President
Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song, "God Bless America."
Irving Berlin
had also written three songs for his candidacy, including "I Like
Ike."
Won a Special Tony Award (New York City) in 1963 for his
contributions to the American musical.
Awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1968.
Was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
Was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 by
President Gerald Ford
Won a Lawrence Langner Tony Award (New York City) in 1978 for his
distinguished life in the American theater.
Awarded (in absentia,) a Medal of Liberty during centennial
celebrations for the Statue of Liberty in 1986.
His 100th-birthday celebration concert for the benefit of Carnegie
Hall and ASCAP on May 11, 1988.
Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Musical scores
The following list includes scores mostly produced by
Irving Berlin . Although some of the plays using his songs were
later adapted to films, the list will not include the film unless
Irving Berlin was the primary composer.[4]
Stage
"Watch Your Step" (1914)
"Stop! Look! Listen!" (1915)
"The Century Girl" (1916)
"Yip Yip Yaphank" (1918)
"Ziegfeld Follies" (1919)
"Music Box Revue" (1921)
"Music Box Revue" (1922)
"Music Box Revue" (1923)
"Music Box Revue" (1924)
"The Cocoanuts" (1925)
"Face the Music" (1932)
"As Thousands Cheer" (1933)
"Louisiana Purchase" (1940)
"This Is the Army" (1942)
"Annie Get Your Gun" (1946)
"Miss Liberty" (1949)
"Call Me Madam" (1950)
"Mr. President" (1962)
"White Christmas" (2004 post mortem production)
Film scores
The Cocoanuts (1929)
Puttin' on the Ritz (1930)
Top Hat (1935)
Follow the Fleet (1936)
On the Avenue (1937)
Carefree (1938)
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
Second Fiddle (1939)
Holiday Inn (1942)
This Is the Army (1943)
Easter Parade (1948)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Call Me Madam (1953)
There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
White Christmas (1954)
Footnotes
“Irving Berlin ,
Nation's Songwriter, Dies” New York Times, September 23, 1989
Wyatt, Robert; Johnson, John A. The George Gershwin Reader, Oxford
Univ. Press (2004)
"Pop View; Irving
Berlin 's American Landscape" New York Times, May 10, 1987
Bergreen, Laurence. As Thousands Cheer, Viking Penguin, 1990
Whitcomb, Ian. Irving
Berlin and Ragtime America, Limelight Editions (1988)
Woollcott, Alexander. The Story of
Irving Berlin , Da Capo Press, 1983
Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Oxford Univ. Press (1992)
Hamm, Charles. Irving
Berlin : Songs from the Melting Pot, Oxford Univ. Press, 1997
Freedland, Michael. 'Irving
Berlin ', Stein and Day, 1974
Transposing Upright Piano. National Museum of American History.
"Max Winslow Dead", New York Times, June 9, 1942
Corliss, Richard. "That Old Christmas Feeling: Irving America:
Richard Corliss remembers
Irving Berlin " TIME Magazine. December 24, 2001
Leopold, David.
Irving Berlin 's Show Business, Harry Abrams (2005)
"Swing Music History". Retrieved January 12, 2010.
"Dreaming of Irving
Berlin In the Season That
Irving Berlin Owned" New York Times, December 23, 2005
Leopold, David.
Irving Berlin 's Show Business: Broadway—Hollywood—America,
Harry N. Abrams, 2005
Frazier, George. Life Magazine, April 5, 1943, pgs. 79–88 Irving Berlin :
An American Song, film, 1999
"Irving Berlin 's
'God Bless America'", UPI, November 2, 2001 "Hand on heart. (Irving
Berlin )." The Economist , September 30, 1989
Bacon, John U., "Oh, Say Can You See a New Anthem?" Ann Arbor
Chronicle, February 20, 2010
"College kids perform Olympic miracle" ESPN TV network
Danny Kaye's Musical Tribute to the Income Tax, George Mason's
History News Network, November 14, 2008, retrieved April 17, 2012
McCorkle, Susannah. "Always: A Singer's Journey Through the Life of
Irving Berlin ",
American Heritage, November 1998, pgs 74–84
"BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Recalling the Somber Man Behind So Many Happy
Songs" New York Times (book review), January 20, 1995
Wilder, Alec. American Popular Song: The Great Innovators,
1900–1950, Oxford Univ. Press (1972)
Ascap magazine article, Tribute to
Irving Berlin December 1989
"The Story of Irving
Berlin " New York Times, January 2, 1916
Furia, Philip. Irving
Berlin : A Life in Song Schirmer Books, (1998)
Rich, Frank."Conversations With Sondheim" New York Times, March 12,
2000
"Ellin Mackay Wed to
Irving Berlin ; Surprises Father", New York Times, page one,
January 5, 1926
IMDB bio
"<a href="jew-entertainment-irving-berlin.html">Irving Berlin</a>
-American Hall of Fame - Virtual Tour". Amuseum.org. 2007-01-15.
Retrieved 2011-12-10.
Congressional Record, V. 144, Pt. 1, January 27, 1998 to February
13, 1998, pg. 679
"Irving Berlin 's
Work Is Recalled With Words and Music" New York Times, September 24,
1989
International Movie Database
Irving Berlin
"SING! SING! SING! Salutes
Irving Berlin " Broadwayworld.com, November 3, 2010
Giddins, Gary. Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century,
Oxford Univ. Press (2004)
References
Barrett, Mary Ellin (1994).
Irving Berlin : A Daughter's Memoir. ISBN 0-671-72533-5.
Berry, David Carson (2001). “Gambling with Chromaticism?
Extra-Diatonic Melodic Expression in the Songs of
Irving Berlin ,” Theory and Practice 26, 21–85.
Berry, David Carson (1999). “Dynamic Introductions: The Affective
Role of Melodic Ascent and Other Linear Devices in Selected Song
Verses of Irving
Berlin ,” Intégral 13, 1–62.
Hischak, Thomas S. (1991). Word Crazy, Broadway Lyricists from Cohan
to Sondheim. ISBN 0-275-93849-2.
Rosen, Jody (2002). White Christmas: The Story of an American Song.
ISBN 0-7432-1875-2.
External links
Find more about
Irving Berlin on Wikipedia's sister projects:
Images and media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Papers of Irving
Berlin , Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Irving Berlin at
the Internet Broadway Database Irving Berlin at
the Internet Off-Broadway Database Irving Berlin at
the Internet Movie Database Irving Berlin
Music Company
PBS page on Irving
Berlin , part of their Great Performances series
If Irving Berlin
could not read or write music, how did Irving Berlin compose? (from
The Straight Dope)
Liner notes for The Vintage
Irving Berlin , New World Records NW 238 Irving Berlin
collection of non-commercial sound recordings, at the New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts
The Judy Room "Easter Parade" section
Remarkable Sergeants: Ten Vignettes of Noteworthy NCOs Elder, Daniel
K.
U.S. Army Soldier Show Irving Berlin |
5th Avenue Theatre
Tony Awards
Songwriters Hall of Fame—Irving
Berlin
Free scores by Irving
Berlin at the International Music Score Library Project
Audios
"Irving Berlin
In Hollywood (Film Score Anthology)" Song clips
"Irving Berlin
Always" Song clips
"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the
Irving Berlin Songbook" Song clips
"Irving Berlin :
A Hundred Years" Song clips
"The Melody Lingers On: 25 Songs Of
Irving Berlin " Song clips
"Annie Get Your Gun" (film) score samples
"Annie Get Your Gun (Broadway play) song samples
"How Deep is the Ocean"—Frank Sinatra
"What'll I Do?"—Harry Nilsson
The International Rag at the Library of Congress Jukebox
Videos
"Ordway Center Spotlight on
Irving Berlin " Presentation by James Rocco, V.P. Performing
Arts, 8 min.
Kaye Ballard Tribute 8 min.
1982 Oscars Tribute part 2 videos 7 min.
"God Bless America"—sung by Kate Smith; sung by Celine Dion; with
Irving Berlin
"Always" Frank Sinatra at
Irving Berlin 's 100th birthday celebration
"Easter Parade" movie trailer
"Annie Get Your Gun" "Anything You Can Do"; "Col. Buffalo Bill"
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" movie trailer
"Follow the Fleet", Fred Astaire on piano
"A Cheer for the Navy"; Finale scene from "This is the Army"
"Let's Face The Music And Dance" with Nat King Cole; version by
Diana Krall
"Blue Skies" Willie Nelson; Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer" 1927
"Top Hat" movie trailer
"Cheek to Cheek" with Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
"There's No Business Like Show Business" movie trailer (1954); Song
clip
"Shakin' the Blues Away" with—Doris Day
"White Christmas" movie trailer—"White Christmas" Broadway promo
"Play a Simple Melody" by Greater Boston Intergenerational Chorus
"I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" with Dick Powell & Alice Faye;
version with Frank Sinatra
"A Couple of Swells" with Judy Garland & Fred Astaire
"Always" with Frank Sinatra slide show
"Russian Lullaby" (written 1927) with Jacques Gauthe & jazz group
"Puttin' on the Ritz" with Fred Astaire; played by Cory Hall; piano
solo with Jim Hession
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