Irving Berlin

Early jobs

Having left school around the age of thirteen, Berlin had few survival skills and realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only ability was acquired from his father's vocation as a singer, and he joined with several other youngsters who went to saloons on the Bowery and sang to customers. Itinerant young singers like them were common on the Lower East Side. Berlin would sing a few of the popular ballads he heard on the street, hoping people would pitch him a few pennies. From these seamy surroundings, he became streetwise, with real and lasting education. Music was his only source of income, and he picked up the language and culture of the ghetto lifestyle.

Berlin learned what kind of songs appealed to audiences, writes Bergreen: "well-known tunes expressing simple sentiments were the most reliable." He soon began plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in Union Square and, in 1906, when he was 18, got a job as a singing waiter at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown. Besides serving drinks, he sang made-up "blue" parodies of hit songs to the delight of customers.

Biographer Charles Hamm writes that in Berlin's free time after hours, he taught himself to play the piano. Never having had lessons, after the bar closed for the night, young Berlin would sit at a piano in the back and begin improvising tunes. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", written in collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist Mike Nicholson, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights. The sheet music to the published song presented his name as "I. Berlin".

Berlin continued writing and playing music at Pelham Cafe and developing an early style. He liked the words to other people's songs but sometimes the rhythms were "kind of boggy", and he might change them. One night he delivered some hits composed by his friend George M. Cohan, another kid who was getting known on Broadway with his own songs. When Berlin ended with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy", notes Whitcomb, "everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little fellow."

Recognition as songwriter

Max Winslow (c. 1883–1942), a staff member at music publisher Harry Von Tilzer Company, noticed Berlin's singing on many occasions and became so taken with his talent that he tried to get him a job with his firm. Von Tilzer said that Max claimed to have "discovered a great kid", and raved about him so much that Von Tilzer hired Berlin.

In 1908, when he was 20, Berlin took a new job at a saloon named Jimmy Kelly's in the Union Square neighborhood. There, he was able to collaborate with other young songwriters, such as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi, and George A. Whiting. In 1909, the year of the premiere of Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot, he got another big break as a staff lyricist with the Ted Snyder Company.

Installed as a staff lyricist with a leading Tin Pan Alley music publishing house, Berlin quickly established himself as one of that frantic industry's top writers of words to other composer's melodies. By 1910 he was already in demand and even appeared in a Shubert Broadway revue performing his own songs. It was purely by chance that Berlin started composing music to the words of his songs. A lyric he had submitted to a publisher was thought to be complete with music. Not wishing to lose the sale, Berlin quickly wrote a melody. It was accepted and published. The success of this first effort opened the door to his career as a composer of music as well as lyrics. In 1910, Berlin wrote a hit that solidly established him as one of Tin Pan Alley's leading composers. Alexander's Ragtime Band not only popularized the vogue for "ragtime", but later inspired a major motion picture.

Sparking an international dance craze

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." 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.

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.

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."

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'".

Simple and romantic ballads

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.

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. In 1915 he wrote the hit "I Love a Piano", a comical and erotic ragtime love song.

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."

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. 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".

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".

Yip Yip Yaphank

In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the United States Army, and his induction became headline news, with one paper headline reading, "Army Takes Berlin!" But the Army wanted Berlin, now aged 30, to do what he knew best: write songs. While stationed with the 152nd Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, he then composed an all-soldier musical revue titled Yip Yip Yaphank, written as a patriotic tribute to the United States Army. 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 Berlin performed himself.

The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, he would introduce 20 years later: "God Bless America".

1920 to 1940

Berlin returned to Tin Pan Alley after the war and in 1921 created a partnership with Sam Harris to build the Music Box Theater. He 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 Berlin. As theater owner, producer and composer, he looked after every detail of his shows, from the costumes and sets to the casting and musical arrangements.

According to 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 Berlin's Music Box Revue from 1921 to 1925 and As Thousands Cheer in 1933 and today includes an exhibition devoted to Berlin in the lobby.

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". 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'".

"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.

"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. Leonard Cohen included a cover of this song on his 1992 release The Future.

"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." The American public often associated Irving Berlin's music with Jewish cultural sensibility, when Berlin composed "Blue Skies", the question of how a piece that resonated strongly with Jewish culture, became a strong representation of American musical culture came into light. Studying the early performances and its sheet music can help us understand how Jewish culture helped influence the pieces’ composition and popular reaction. Later interpretations transformed the songs’ ethnic and cultural connections. The song was introduced by Belle Baker in Betsy, a Ziegfeld production. 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.

"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 1982, when its composer was 95. In 2012 it was used for a flash mob wedding event in Moscow.

"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.

"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. 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.

"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.

"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. 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.

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. "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." 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."

It quickly became a second national anthem 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. In 1954, Berlin received a special Congressional Gold Medal from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song.

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.

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."

1941 to 1962

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

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?" 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", again to Treasury.

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.

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. The shows and movie combined raised more than $10 million for the Army, and in recognition of his contributions to troop morale, Berlin was awarded the Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman. Berlin's 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".

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. 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.

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 brothe

Lifestyle

In 1916, in the earlier phase of Berlin's career, producer and composer George M. Cohan, during a toast to the young Berlin at a Friar's Club dinner in his honor, said, "The thing I like about Irvie is that although he has moved up-town and made lots of money, it hasn't turned his head. He hasn't forgotten his friends, he doesn't wear funny clothes, and you will find his watch and his handkerchief in his pockets, where they belong."

Furia says that throughout Berlin's life he often returned on foot to his old neighborhoods in Union Square, Chinatown, and the Bowery. He never forgot those childhood years when he "slept under tenement steps, ate scraps, and wore secondhand clothes," and described those years as hard but good. "Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life," he said. He used to visit The Music Box Theater, which he founded and which still stands at 239 West 45th St. From 1947 to 1989, Berlin's home in New York City was 17 Beekman Place.

George Frazier of Life magazine found 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, "he 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", wrote Frazier, "Berlin has somehow managed to retain the enthusiasm of a novice."

Berlin's daughter wrote in her memoir that her father was a loving, if workaholic, family man who was "basically an upbeat person, with down periods". In his final decades, he retreated from public life. He did not attend the televised Carnegie Hall celebration of his 100th birthday. Her parents liked to celebrate every single holiday with their children, and "[t]hey 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." Although he did comment to his daughter about her mother's lavish Christmas spending, he remarked, "I gave up trying to get your mother to economize. It was easier just to make more money."

Berlin voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. He supported the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower, and his song "I Like Ike" featured prominently in the Eisenhower campaign. In his later years, he also became more conservative in his views on music. According to his daughter, "He was consumed by patriotism." He often said, "I owe all my success to my adopted country," and once rejected his lawyers' advice of investing in tax shelters, insisting, "I want to pay taxes. I love this country."

Berlin was a Freemason, and was a member of Munn Lodge no. 190, New York City, the Scottish Rite Valley of New York City, and Mecca Shrine Temple.

Berlin was a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Berlin was a staunch advocate of civil rights. He was honored in 1944 by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for "advancing the aims of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict". His 1943 production This Is The Army featured the first integrated division army unit in the United States. In 1949, the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) honored him as one of the twelve "most outstanding Americans of Jewish faith". While he was ethnically and culturally Jewish, he was religiously agnostic. Berlin's Civil Rights Movement support also made him a target of the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who continuously investigated him for years.