Life in Russia

Berlin was born Israel Beilin^[10] on May 11, 1888, in the Russian Empire.^[11] Although his family came from the shtetl of Tolochin (Yiddish: טאָלאָטשין; today Talachyn, Талачын, in Belarus), Berlin later learned that he was probably born in Tyumen, Siberia, where his father, an itinerant cantor, had taken his family.^[11] He was one of eight children of Moses (1848–1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).

From Tyumen, the family returned to Tolochin, and from there, they travelled to Antwerp and left the old continent aboard the SS Rhynland from the Red Star Line.^[12] On September 14, 1893,^[13] the family arrived at Ellis Island in New York City. When they arrived, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and five sisters until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into the city.^[14] After the family's naturalization, the name "Beilin" was changed to "Baline".

According to biographer Laurence Bergreen, as an adult Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years in Russia except for one: "he 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."^[15]: 10 As an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he knew no other life.^[16]: 19

The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, escaping discrimination, poverty and brutal pogroms. Other such families included those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Jack Yellen, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM), and the Warner brothers.^[16]: 14

Settling in New York City

Lower East Side in 1910

After their arrival in New York City, the Baline family lived briefly in a basement flat on Monroe Street, and then moved to a three-room tenement at 330 Cherry Street.^[1] 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 to support his family. He died a few years later when Irving was thirteen years old.^[16]

With only a few years of schooling, eight-year-old Irving began helping to support his family.^[6] He became a newspaper boy, hawking The Evening Journal. One day while delivering newspapers, according to Berlin's biographer and friend, Alexander Woollcott, he stopped to look at a ship departing for China and became so entranced that he did not see a swinging crane, which knocked him into the river. When he was fished out after going down for the third time, he was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies he earned that day.^[6][17]

His mother took a job 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."^{[15] : 11}

Music historian Philip Furia writes that when "Izzy" began to sell newspapers in the Bowery, he was exposed to the music and sounds coming from saloons and restaurants that lined the crowded streets. Young Berlin sang some of the songs he heard while selling papers, and people would toss him some coins. He confessed to his mother one evening that his newest ambition in life was to become a singing waiter in a saloon.^[18]: 48 From this he stepped up to work as a song plugger and singing waiter in cafes and restaurants in the downtown areas of New York City. His first lyric, written with a café pianist, earned him a royalty of thirty-seven cents.^[19]

However, before Berlin was fourteen his meager income was still adding less than his sisters' to the family's budget, which made him feel worthless.^[17] He then decided to leave home and join the city's ragged army of other young immigrants.^[15]: 15 He lived in the Bowery, taking up residence in one of the lodging houses that sheltered the thousands of other homeless boys in the Lower East Side. Bergreen describes them as being uncharitable living quarters, "Dickensian in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to ordinary human beings."^[15]: 15

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911)

Berlin rose as a songwriter in Tin Pan Alley and on Broadway. In 1911, Emma Carus introduced his first world-famous hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", followed by a performance from Berlin himself at the Friars' Frolic of 1911.^[1] He became an instant celebrity, and the featured performer later that year at Oscar Hammerstein's vaudeville house, where he introduced dozens of other songs. The New York Telegraph described how two hundred of his street friends came to see "their boy" onstage: "All the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his coat while tears ran down his cheeks—in a vaudeville house!"^[21]: ix

Berlin with film stars Alice Faye, Tyrone Power and Don Ameche singing chorus from Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Richard Corliss, in a Time profile of Berlin, described "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as a march, not a rag, "its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and "Swanee River". The tune revived the ragtime fervor that Scott Joplin had begun a decade earlier, and made Berlin a songwriting star.^[25] From its first and subsequent releases, the song was near the top of the charts as others sang it: Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937; no. 1 by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; Johnny Mercer in 1945; Al Jolson, in 1947 and Nellie Lutcher in 1948. Add Ray Charles's big-band version in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in just under a half century.^[25]

Initially the song was not recognized as a hit, however; Broadway producer Jesse Lasky was uncertain about using it, although he did include it in his "Follies" show. It was performed as an instrumental but did not impress audiences, and was soon dropped from the show's score. Berlin regarded it as a failure. He then wrote lyrics to the score, played it again in another Broadway Review, and this time Variety news weekly called it "the musical sensation of the decade".^[15]: 68 Composer George Gershwin, foreseeing its influence, said it was "the first real American musical work," adding, "Berlin had shown us the way; it was now easier to attain our ideal."^[8]: 117

Sparking a national dance craze

Enjoying early success in New York, c. 1911

Berlin was "flabbergasted" by the sudden international popularity of the song, and wondered why it became a sudden hit. He decided it was partly because the lyrics, "silly though it was, was fundamentally right...[and] the melody... started the heels and shoulders of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking."^[15]: 69 In 1913, Berlin was featured in the London revue Hello Ragtime, where he introduced "That International Rag", a song he had written for the occasion.^[1]

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 Vernon and Irene Castle. In 1914, Berlin wrote a ragtime revue, Watch Your Step, which starred the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical revue became Berlin's first complete score with songs that "radiated musical and lyrical sophistication". Berlin's songs signified modernism, and they signified the cultural struggle between Victorian gentility and the "purveyors of liberation, indulgence, and leisure," says Furia. The song "Play a Simple Melody" became the first of his famous "double" songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed against one another.^[18][26]

Variety called Watch Your Step the "first syncopated musical", where the "sets and the girls were gorgeous". Berlin was then 26, and the success of the show was riding on his name alone. Variety said the show was a "terrific hit" from its opening night. It compared Berlin's newfound status as a composer with that of the Times building: "That youthful marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in Watch Your Step, firstly that he is not alone a rag composer, and that he is one of the greatest lyric writers America has ever produced."^[16]: 173

Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Berlin's family was forced to leave, flung itself into "the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania". For example, Prince Felix Yusupov, a recent Oxford undergraduate of Russian noble lineage and heir to the largest estate in Russia, was described by his dance partner as "wriggling around the ballroom like a demented worm, screaming for 'more ragtime and more champagne'".^[16]: 183

Simple and romantic ballads

With Al Jolson (r), star of The Jazz Singer, c. 1927

Some of the songs Berlin created came out of his own sadness. For instance, in 1912 he 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 he 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.^[6]

He began to realize that ragtime was not a good musical style for serious romantic expression, and over the next few years adapted his style by writing more love songs.^[18] In 1915 he wrote the hit "I Love a Piano", a comical and erotic ragtime love song.^[27]

By 1918 he 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 foxtrot. After a Hawaiian dance craze began, he 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, he was creating a few new songs every week, including songs aimed at the various immigrant cultures arriving from Europe. On one occasion, Berlin, whose face was still not known, was on a train trip and decided to entertain the fellow passengers with some music. They asked him how he knew so many hit songs, and Berlin modestly replied, "I wrote them."^[18]: 53

An important song that Berlin wrote during his transition from writing ragtime to lyrical ballads was "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", which became one of Berlin's "first big guns", says historian Alec Wilder. The song was written for Ziegfeld's Follies of 1919 and became the musical's lead song. Its popularity was so great that it later became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and the theme song in the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.^[28] Wilder puts it on the same level as Jerome Kern's "pure melodies", and in comparison with Berlin's earlier music, says it is "extraordinary that such a development in style and sophistication should have taken place in a single year".^[18]: 53

World War I

On April 1, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would enter World War I, Berlin felt that Tin Pan Alley should do its duty and support the war with inspirational songs. Berlin wrote the song "For Your Country and My Country", stating that "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." He also co-wrote a song aimed at ending ethnic conflict, "Let's All Be Americans Now".^[16]: 197

Various hit songs by Berlin

By 1926, Berlin had written the scores to two editions of the Ziegfeld Follies and four annual editions of his Music Box Revue. These shows spanned the years of 1921–1926, premiering songs such as "Say It With Music", "Everybody Step", and "Pack Up Your Things and Go to the Devil".^[1] Life magazine called Berlin the "Lullaby Kid", noting that "couples at country-club dances grew misty-eyed when the band went into 'Always', because they were positive that Berlin had written it just for them. When they quarreled and parted in the bitter-sweetness of the 1920s, it was Berlin who gave eloquence to their heartbreak by way of 'What'll I Do' and 'Remember' and 'All Alone'".^[33]

"What'll I Do?" (1924)

This ballad of love and longing was a hit record for Paul Whiteman and had several other successful recordings in 1924. Twenty-four years later, the song went to no. 22 for Nat King Cole and no. 23 for Frank Sinatra.^[25]

"Always" (1925)

Written when he fell in love with Ellin Mackay, who later became his wife. The song became a hit 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 no. 2 on the R&B chart. It became Patsy Cline's postmortem anthem and hit no. 18 on the country chart in 1980, 17 years after her death, and a tribute musical called "Always... Patsy Cline", played a two-year Nashville run that ended in 1995.^[25] Leonard Cohen included a cover of this song on his 1992 release The Future (Leonard Cohen album).

"Blue Skies" (1926)

Written after his first daughter's birth, he 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."^[34] The song was introduced by Belle Baker in Betsy, a Ziegfeld production.^[1] It became a hit recording for Ben Selvin and one of several Berlin hits in 1927. It was 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 no. 1 country hit, 52 years after it was written.^[25]

"Puttin' On the Ritz" (1928)

An instant standard with one of Berlin's most "intricately syncopated choruses", this song is associated with Fred Astaire, who sang and danced to it in the 1946 film Blue Skies. The song was written in 1928 with a separate set of lyrics and was introduced by Harry Richman in a 1930 film of the same name. In 1939, Clark Gable sang it in the movie Idiot's Delight. In 1974 it was featured in the movie Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks, and was a no. 4 hit for synth-pop artist Taco in 1983.^[35] In 2012 it was used for a flash mob wedding event in Moscow.^[36]

"Marie" (1929)

This waltz-time song was a hit for Rudy Vallée in 1929, and in 1937, updated to a four-quarter-time swing arrangement, was a top hit for Tommy Dorsey. It was on the charts at no. 13 in 1953 for The Four Tunes and at no. 15 for the Bachelors in 1965, 36 years after its first appearance.^[25]

"Say It Isn't So" (1932)

Rudy Vallée performed it on his radio show, and the song was a hit for George Olsen, Connee Boswell (she was still known as Connie), and Ozzie Nelson's band. Aretha Franklin produced a single of the song in 1963, 31 years later.^[25] Furia notes that when Vallée first introduced the song on his radio show, the "song not only became an overnight hit, it saved Vallée's marriage: The Vallées had planned to get a divorce, but after Vallée sang Berlin's romantic lyrics on the air, "both he and his wife dissolved in tears" and decided to stay together.^[18]

"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 no. 1.^[25]

"God Bless America" (1938)

The song was written by Berlin twenty years earlier, but he filed it away until 1938 when Kate Smith needed a patriotic song to mark the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day, celebrating the end of World War I.^[25] Its release near the end of the Depression, which had by then gone on for nine years, enshrined a "strain of official patriotism intertwined with a religious faith that runs deep in the American psyche," stated The New York Times.^[9]

Berlin's daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, states that the song was actually "very personal" for her father, and was intended as an expression of his deep gratitude to the nation for merely "allowing" him, an immigrant raised in poverty, to become a successful songwriter.^[37] "To me," said Berlin, "'God Bless America' was not just a song but an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am."^[38] The Economist magazine writes that "Berlin was producing a deep-felt paean to the country that had given him what he would have said was everything."^[39]

Singing "God Bless America" at the Pentagon memorial dedication, September 11, 2008

It quickly became a second national anthem^[1] after America entered World War II a few years later. Over the decades it has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties.^[25][30] In 1954, Berlin received a special Congressional Gold Medal from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song.^[40]

The song was heard after September 11, 2001, as U.S. senators and congressmen stood on the capitol steps and sang it after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It is often played by sports teams such as major league baseball. The Philadelphia Flyers hockey team started playing it before crucial contests. 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 sang it as Americans were overcome by patriotism.^[41][42]

Other songs

Though most of his works for the Broadway stage took the form of revues—collections of songs with no unifying plot—he 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 Clifton Webb, "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather forecast), "Harlem on My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about racial violence inspired by a newspaper headline about a lynching, sung by Ethel Waters. She once said about the song, "If one song can tell the whole tragic history of a race, 'Supper Time' was that song. In singing it I was telling my comfortable, well-fed, well-dressed listeners about my people...those who had been slaves and those who were now downtrodden and oppressed."^[43]

World War II patriotism—"This is the Army" (1943)

Irving Berlin singing and conducting aboard USS Arkansas, 1944

Berlin loved his country, and wrote many songs reflecting his patriotism. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau requested a song to inspire Americans to buy war bonds, for which he wrote "Any Bonds Today?"^[1] He assigned all royalties to the United States Treasury Department. He 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 U.S. Army Ordnance Department; and "I Paid My Income Tax Today",^[44] again to Treasury.^[25]

When the United States joined World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Berlin immediately began composing a number of patriotic songs. His most notable and valuable contribution to the war effort was a stage show he 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. Berlin wrote nearly three dozen songs for the show which contained a cast of 300 men. He 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 he took neither salary nor expenses, and turned over all profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.^[45]: 81

The play was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1943, directed by Michael Curtiz, co-starring 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.^[46] The shows and movie combined raised more than $10 million for the Army,^[25] and in recognition of his contributions to troop morale, Berlin was awarded the Medal for 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", he was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted 10 minutes. She adds that he was in his mid-50s at the time, and later declared those years with the show were the "most thrilling time of his life".^[46]

Annie Get Your Gun (1946)

The grueling tours Berlin did performing "This Is The Army" left him exhausted, but when his longtime close friend Jerome Kern, who was the composer for Annie Get Your Gun, died suddenly, producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II persuaded Berlin to take over composing the score.

Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music and lyrics were written by Berlin, with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields, and directed by Joshua Logan. At first Berlin refused to take on the job, claiming that he knew nothing about "hillbilly music", but the show ran for 1,147 performances and became his most successful score and biggest box office success.^[19] It is said that the showstopper song "There's No Business Like Show Business" was almost left out of the show altogether because Berlin mistakenly thought that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't like it. However, it became the "ultimate uptempo show tune".

On the origin of another of the play's leading songs, Logan described how he and Hammerstein privately discussed wanting another duet between Annie and Frank. Berlin overheard their conversation, and although the show was to go into rehearsal within days, he wrote the song "Anything You Can Do" a few hours later.^[49]

One reviewer commented about the play's score, 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."^[9] Singer and musicologist Susannah McCorkle writes that the score "meant more to me than ever, now that I knew that he wrote it after a grueling world tour and years of separation from his wife and daughters."^[45]: 81 Historian and composer Alec Wilder says that the perfection of the score, when compared to his earlier works, was "a profound shock".^[50]: 94

Apparently the "creative spurt" in which Berlin turned out several songs for the score in a single weekend was an anomaly. According to his daughter, he usually "sweated blood" to write his songs.^[46] Annie Get Your Gun is considered to be 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".^[9]

Final shows

Berlin's next show, Miss Liberty (1949), was disappointing, but Call Me Madam (1950), starring Ethel Merman as Sally Adams, a Washington, D.C., socialite, loosely based on the famous Washington hostess Perle Mesta, fared better, giving him his second-greatest success. Berlin made two attempts to write a musical about his friend, the colorful Addison Mizner, and Addison's con-man brother Wilson. The first was the uncompleted The Last Resorts (1952); a manuscript of Act I is in the Library of Congress. Wise Guy (1956) was completed but never produced, although songs have been published and recorded on The Unsung Irving Berlin (1995). After a failed attempt at retirement, in 1962, at the age of 74, he returned to Broadway with Mr. President. Although it ran for eight months, (with the premiere attended by President John F. Kennedy), it was not one of his successful plays.^[25]

Afterwards, Berlin officially announced his retirement and spent his remaining years in New York. He did, however, write one new song, "An Old-Fashioned Wedding", for the 1966 Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman. Though he lived 23 more years, this would be one of Berlin's final published compositions.

Berlin maintained a low profile through the last decades of his life, almost never appearing in public after the late 1960s, even for events held in his honor. However, he continued to maintain control of his songs through his own music publishing company, which remained in operation for the rest of his life.

"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 (along with Marjorie Reynolds, whose voice was dubbed by Martha Mears^[51]), it has sold over 50 million records and stayed no. 1 on the pop and R&B charts for 10 weeks. Crosby's version is the best-selling single of all time. 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."^[9]

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...."^[25] Poet Carl Sandburg wrote, "We have learned to be a little sad and a little lonesome without being sickly about it. This feeling is caught in the song of a thousand jukeboxes and tune whistled in streets and homes. "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. When we sing that we don't hate anybody. And there are things we love that we're going to have sometimes if the breaks are not too bad against us. Way down under this latest hit of his, Irving Berlin catches us where we love peace."^[25][1]

"White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original Song, one of seven Oscar nominations he 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 Berlin song went to no. 1 upon its release.

Berlin is the only Academy Award presenter and Academy Award winner to open the "envelope" and read his or her own name (for "White Christmas"). This result was so awkward for Berlin (since he had to present the Oscar to himself) that the academy changed the rules of protocol the following year to prevent this situation from arising again.

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 simple. Considering the fact that "White Christmas" has only eight sentences in the entire song, lyrically Mr. 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.^[52]