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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, May 26, 1988-Page 9
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Tremendom range of hh music amazes singers and co^
Irving Berfoi^^e^^
■ ' By/- ■■■■ GERRY MORRIS
Gerry Morris isTlu'.CJN's New York thcaire critic. He is a member of Outer Critics Circle... Drama Desk ami American Vieaire Critics As--sociation... ■:
NEW YORK -
Irving Berlin joked with friends about his long-awaited (but: unattended) centennial celebration at handsomely restored Carnegie Hall. "You know,"' he said. "I might screw up all your plans, I might die before my 100th birthday^." .
Happily, Berlin lives on and so does the simple elegance of his nuisic. It vvas one minute after midnight, May 12, 1988. the start of the composer's.second century, and dozens of devo-• tees were still floating melodically along West 57th Street past the Russian Tea Rooni. They were touched. They were excited. And they were thrilled by the lovingly treated renditions of Irving Berlin classics by such great saloon singers as Frank Sinatra; Tony Bennett. Joe Williams. Rosernary Clooney. Ray Charles, and. a host of other talented people, including appearances by Leonard Bernstein, Isaac iStern and Mairilyn Home.
The show was taped by CBS for broadcast Friday, May 27. /
The perennially elegant Walter Cro.nkite paid homage to the master songsmith:" In his sipngs we find our history, our holidays, our homes and bur hearts.'' The big show-stoppers were multi-talented Tommy Tune, with eight dancers in white-lie-and-tails doing an exciting song and tap treatment of Puttin' On The Ritz. Nell Carter-wowed the glittering; audience with a swinging version of Alexander's Ragtime Band. Also featured were group medleys, instrumental pieces, classical and jazz interpretations, and humorous and nostalgic recollections. . v
Morton Gould, noted conductor and president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, told of how he approached the composer with the idea of a cenlennialcelebra-lion. '/You know,'' he saidto Mr. Berlin, '-nexf year you will be 100 years old. A;S.C.A.P. would like to present a tribute. Hpvy-about it?" Without skipping a beat. Berlin said dryly, •'What's the hurry?"' -
Berlin's early days were not always so merry, and bright. His Jewish family fled Russian pogroms and settled into the poverty of New York V Lower East Side. At 12. little IzzyBalirie was singing in the Bowery jdiiits to help support his mother.and five brothers and sisters. (His-father. Cantor Moses Baline, had died when Irving was 8). It was here that his ear absorbed the many different voices and rhythms from America's Melting Pot. :
At 19, he sold his first tune for the then gargantuan sum of 37 centSi The name of the masterpiece: Marie From Sunny Italy. His rise to fame was dazzling. Ultimately, he was to be the man of niusic who most epitomized the Horatio Alger tradition and the American dreani come true,working his way up from street singer to song plugger to composer of the best known patriotic song since The Star Spangled Bannier (God Bless America), the most populate Ghristmas song since Silent Night (White Christmas), and the only univer- -sally known Eajjter .song (Easter Parade), as^ well as the song that most expre.sses theatrical niytholdgy (There's No Business Like Show Business). These Berlin tunes have come close > to being anthems, as permanently engraved in the American ear as School Days and Happy Birthday To You.
Singers and songw'riters alike express amazement at the tremendous range of his musicV Un- . derstandabie when you consider that the, man who
Irving Berlin at his prime.
wrote the ragtime/jazz anthem Alexander's Ragtime Band also composed the sophisticated Change Partners, and Uiat the man who wrote the witty patter song Anything You Can Do also wrote the plaintive What'lll Do?. It was Cole Porter's contention that "ho one sits down to write a hit except Berlin, who can't help it."
In 1^26, he married Ellin Mackay, whose • father headed AT (&T. Opposing the love affair, .Mackay booked his daughter on a grand tour of Europe, but wherever they vvent Irving sent a new composition. As Ellin lovingly put it: "It was his songs that won me." One of the songs that won her heart eternailly was the ballad Always, the ■ niusic of which was wrapped in a bow and presented to her as a wedding gift. A magnanimous gesture not only towards the new Mrs.Ber-lin but also.toward the American populace, who cranked itup on the parlor phonograph as the fa-^ . mily sang, hummed and danced the song's way to interminable popularity. Always has virtually become the wedding theme of America, in much the same way as Jerry Bock's Sunrise. Sunset is the theme of bar and bat mitzvahs.
On intellectuals who called hirn corny, the self-taught composer answered strongly and effectively: "I'm tired of smart alecks who knock honest emotion. The hell with them. 1 feel deeply about "this country and its people and I want everyone to know it." :
About 1,500 songs have justified his remark that if he had more hits than anybody he also had more fiops, and astonishingly enough, he accomplished all this without being able to read or write music or play the piano properly.
His rich body of work includes the scores of 19 Broadway shows as well as 18 musical films. His pensonaLfavorites are Top Hat. Cheek To Cheek. Lsn't It A Lovely Day, White Tie and Tails and The Piccolino, written for a couple of promising hoofers named Fred and Ginger.' When Astaire died, according to author Stanley Green, a member of Berlin's inner circle, "Berlin called me. He was very upset. He was very close to Astaire and considered him the most professional performer in movies." ■ Since .1931. Berl+ft^has been half-owner of Broadway's Music Box Theatre, with the Shubert organization owning the other half. It is reported he still;calls the theatre box office nightly to find out his grosses.
He is also the only composer who owned outright every note of music he ever wrote (Irving Berlin Music Corp.). Composer Harry Ruby saidv. "Oh; sure? Irving can be tough. A very tough businessman, but underneath he is a warm human being." . ■ ; ; ' ^',
He keeps his wealth a secret, but just one of his songs, the flagwaverGod Bless America (for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor), has earned nearly a million dollars in royalties for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, to whom he granted rights. Another musical and patriotic achievement was the 1943 show This Is The Arhiy^ which raised $15 mil-
■ lion for the Army Emergency Relief. Composer Harry Warren, who wrote 42nd Street, is quot-
,ed as having said, "the trouble with World War II was they bonibed the wrong Berlin." In 1932, Irving's creative oil well began to
: gush: a dire year for Ainerica but a vintage year for Berlin. In that year he wrote Say It Isn't So and How Deep Is The Ocean, two of his most effective torch songs, followed by Soft Lights And Sweet Music, as well as his attempt to cheer up a Depression-crippled America with Let's Have Another Clip Of Coffee. He concluded the year with A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody, written to accompany the sedate parade of Flo Zieg-fekLs long-stemmed American beauties. .
Famed lyricist Irving CaesaiTaid of his con-__lemporary, "Berlin was^he greatest writer of "popular songs.. His challenge was double-barrelled —: he wrote~WDrds and music. He knew what the common man wanted to hear because he was the common man — but with talent."
When the Friars Club recently requested permission to do a certain song to celebrate his birthday, his longtime (67 years) feisty secretary, . Hilda Schneider (sometimes called "The Berlin Wair.'), came back with the following answer: "He doesn't mind anyone singing his songs — the only one they can't do is Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The; Morning — only Mr. Berlin does that."
He went through two world vyars as a powerful one-man entertainrnerit force; Old timers will recollect his sad-sack look, decked out in doughboy breeches and khaki leggings, singing ''this serviceman's lament for more preferential sleeping habit.s."
. Berlin wa.s a drop-of-a-hal singer with a thin voice, who burst into song without embarrass-ment.anytime, anywhere. "'You know, when Irving sings a .song in that tiny voice you have to hug him to hear him." said the legendary Broadway comic Joe Frisco.
At 75. he wrote the Broadway score fOr Mr. President, which established him as the oldest compo.ser to sire a musical hit show since Giu.seppe Verdi.
What about Berlin in 1988? "He doesn't see very well and things have to be readlo him," according to Stanley Green, a historian of popular music. "He always says, - My health is wonderful from the neck up.' But his memory — it endures like his songs. I haven't seen him in .some time, but we chatted about a year ago and recollected details of a musical he'd written in his teens."
His different-worlds marriage has worked for; 62 years, producing three daughters and nine, grandchildren whoare frequent visitors to the oversized townhouse in Beekrtian Place in New York. Of their marriage today, an insider said, "He gets very jealous if his wife is close to anyone but him. Sometimes she'll be talking with one of the maids and he gets angry;. Ellin, is very bound to'Irving; Everything .she does is for hirn. For example, every night.at dinner, which is usually served at5 p.m., she gets dressed up for ' Irving." ■ ■■
For years, a "constitutional" ardund his fashionable East Side neighborhood was a daily routine. The walks have grown briefer and less regular, "according to his dwindling circle of friends. Next to Greta Garbo, Berlin is considered the most famous recluse in show business. Declining any intrusion into his private life, he keeps to his family, aiid paints industriousiy. He also declines requests for interviews.
There's a story about Irving Berlin that I think is "a gem," attributed to Robert Russell Bennett. "You know, Irving has a granddaughter who's in school and the little girl had to write a paper. She wrole An Afternoon With My Grandfather. The under-30 teacher asked her, 'Who is your grandfather'?' And she, drawing herself Up to her full height, which wasn't much, said: 'Irving Berlin is my grandfather.' And he asked "Irving Berlin? Berlin? What does he do?' And Irving's granddaughter said: 'He paints.' " Copyright 1988, Gerry Morris
ISRAEL AS IT WAS
Allenby Road, one of Tel Aviv's major thoroughfares, looks pretty much the same today as when this photograph was taken several decades ago.