Born in a village in Russia, Irving Berlin became one of
America’s most popular and patriotic songwriters.
A cantor’s son, Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline on May 11, 1888 in the Russian village of Monilev. When Berlin was four, his family fled the religious oppression of czarist Russia and settled with other Jewish immigrants in New York’s Lower East Side.
Following his father’s death, 13-year-old “Izzy” left school and left home. He lived in filthy lodgings and eked out a living hawking newspapers on the street, where he augmented his income singing to passers-by in a raspy tenor. At the age of 16, he landed a job as a singing waiter in a Chinatown restaurant and taught himself piano, playing only in the key of D flat. (In later life, Berlin used a piano that had a special mechanism which, by flipping a lever under the keyboard, allowed him to change to any other key, but to continue fingering the notes of D flat.) One of his first tunes—released under the authorship of I. Berlin—”Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), set off a national craze for ragtime music. In the early 1920s, he fell in love with socialite Ellin Mackay. Ellin’s industrialist father packed her off to Europe, and Berlin courted her with romantic ballads (“Remember” and “All Alone”). When they married in 1926, his wedding gift was the royalties to his love song, “Always.”
Born in a village in Russia, Irving Berlin became one of
America’s most popular and patriotic songwriters.
After losing his entire fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929, Berlin conquered his fear that his hit-making days were over and produced some of his best songs yet: “How Deep Is the Ocean?,” “Heat Wave,” and “Top Hat”—the title song of the Astaire-Rogers movie. Berlin stepped in after the sudden death of Jerome KERN and and wrote the score for the 1946 masterpiece Annie Get Your Gun in only a few weeks. He proved more than an able replacement, turning out hits such as “They Say It’s Wonderful,” “Doin’ What Comes Naturally,” as well as musical theatre’s unofficial anthem, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” In 1954, U.S. President Eisenhower presented the composer with a special gold medal “in recognition of his services in composing many popular songs.”
During his legendary rags-to-riches career, Berlin composed his adopted land’s second national anthem, “God Bless America,” commemorated its holidays with “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade,” and crafted words and music to over 1500 popular songs, plus the music for 17 Broadway musicals and several Hollywood classics. What makes this feat most remarkable is that Berlin never learned to read or write music. Irving Berlin died on September 22, 1989, at the age of 101.
Michael R. Ross
SEE ALSO:
Bergreen, Laurence. As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1996);
Hamm, Charles. Irving Berlin: Songs from the Melting Pot
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Blues Skies: The Irving Berlin Songbook;
Forever Irving Berlin.