Irving Berlin

At 101 years old, Irving Berlin has this physical status:

Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; Yiddish: — May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter, and lyricist. His music is a large part of the Great American Songbook.

Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin immigrated to the United States at the age of five. In 1907, he released "Marie from Sunny Italy" as his first book, earning 33% for the publishing rights, and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" became his first major international hit, in 1911. He was also a director of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. Berlin was unable to read sheet music for a large part of his career, and he couldn't play in F-sharp's key; he used his custom piano with a transposing lever when he wanted to play in keys other than F-sharp;

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" caused a worldwide dance craze in places far away from Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandonment of borders bordering on mania." He was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular, simple and straightforward, with the aim being to "reach the center of the average American," who he described as the country's "true soul." At Berlin's 100th birthday celebration, Walter Cronkite said he "helped write the story of this world," capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that inspire our lives."

Hundreds of songs were written, some of which became big hits, making him well-known before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career, he wrote 1,500 songs, including the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Easter Parade," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" and "There Is No Business Like Show Business" became a hit among many artists and anthems, including "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Greetings to Cheek," "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" and "There's No Business Like Show Business" were among the new hits "There's Kate Smith's "God Bless America" was first performed in 1938 by his Broadway musical and 1943 film This Is the Army, with Ronald Reagan.

Many musicians, including The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Fanny Johnson, Douglas Watson, Ethel Merman, Edmund Hartley, Ludwig Brice, Herbert Smith, Steven McGovern, Margaret Brice, Kevin Hart, Barbara Bennett, Barbara Jones, Elie Bennett, Barbara Bennett, Linda Bennett, Bing Crosby, Linda Bennett, David Warner, Ellen Bennett, Rafael Bennett, Robert Cohen, Suzanne Watson, Barbara Bennett, Jeffrey Jackson,

Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 102. Douglas Moore sets Berlin apart from other contemporary songwriters, including 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. George Gershwin, a composer, said, "Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music."

Early life

On May 11, 1888, in the Russian Empire, Berlin was born Israel Beilin. Although his family was from Tolochin, Belarus, Berlin later learned that he was born in Tyumen, Siberia, where his father, an itinerant cantor, had taken his children. He was one of eight children of Moses (1848–1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).

The family travelled to Tolochin after which they returned to Tolochin and then boarded the SS Rhynland of the Red Star Line from Tyumen. The family arrived on Ellis Island, New York City, on September 14, 1893. Israel was handed a pen with his brother and five sisters when immigration authorities announced their admission into the area. The name "Beilin" was changed to "Baline" upon their arrival.

As an adult in Berlin, Laurence Berenbaum said he had 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." The house was ashes by daylight. ten "Absoloute poverty" was the only explanation as an adult, and Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he had no other life.

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The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families immigrate to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, escaping discrimination, hunger, and brutal pogroms. George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM), and the Warner brothers were among those living in this situation.

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The Baline family lived briefly in a basement apartment on Monroe Street and then escorted to a three-bedroom tenement at 330 Cherry Street after arriving in New York City. His father, who was unable to find suitable work as a cantor in New York, worked at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons to help his family. Irving died a few years ago when he was 13 years old.

Irving, an eight-year-old boy who was still attending his family, began helping his family. He had only been going to school for a few years. He became a newspaper boy, hawking The Evening Journal. According to Berlin's biographer and friend, Alexander Woollcott, he stopped to look at a ship heading for China and was so captivated that he didn't see a swinging crane, which carried him into the river. He was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies he earned that day when he was fished out after going down for the third time.

His mother worked as a midwife, and three of his sisters worked wrapping cigarettes, which is common among immigrant girls. His older brother used to work in a sweatshop sewing shirts. "They'd deposit the money they had earned the day into Lena's outspread apron" each evening after the family came home from their day's work, Ber Beren writes.

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When "Izzy" began to sell newspapers in the Bowery, music and sounds from saloons and restaurants lined the crowded streets, music historian Philip Furia writes. While selling newspapers, young Berlin performed some of the songs he heard, and he'd be paid some money to him. He told his mother one evening that his new ambition in life was to be a singing waiter in a saloon.

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However, before Berlin was fourteen, his modest income was still adding less to the family's budget than his sisters, which made him feel worthless. He then decided to leave home and join the city's ragged army of young immigrants. 15 He lived in the Bowery, taking up residence in one of the thousands of homeless boys in Lower East Side's waiting house. Berk cites them as uncharitable living quarters, "Dickensian in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to human beings."

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Berlin had no life skills and knew that formal education was out of the question. His only talent came from his father's work as a guitarist, and he joined several other young boys who went to saloons on the Bowery and sang to customers. On the Lower East Side, itinerant young singers like them were common. On the streets, Berlin would perform a few of the popular ballads in the hopes that people would offer him a few pennies. He came from these gritty surroundings, and with real and lasting education. He learned the language and lifestyle of the ghetto lifestyle, which was his only source of income, and he learned the language and culture of the ghetto lifestyle.

According to Berman, Berlin discovered what kind of songs attracted audiences: "Well-known songs expressing simple sentiments were the most reliable." "17 He began plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in Union Square and, in 1906, when he was 18, began performing as a singer at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown. He performed "blue" parodies of hit songs to the delight of customers, rather than serving alcohol.

Charles Hamm teaches himself to play the piano in Berlin's free time after hours. After the bar had closed for the night, young Berlin would sit at a piano in the back and begin toimprovise tunes. In 1907, he released his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy," written in collaboration with Pelham's resident pianist Mike Nicholson, who received 33 cents for the publishing rights. The spelling of his name in the sheet music to the published song was "I. Berlin."

At Pelham Cafe, Berlin continued writing and performing music and developing an early style. He liked the terms to other people's songs, but the rhythms were "kind of stale," and he'd like to change them. He performed some hits composed by George M. Cohan, another boy who was making it on Broadway with his own songs. "Everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little fellow" as Berlin came to an end with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy," Whitcomb writes.

Max Winslow (c. 1883-1942), a Berlin staff member of music publisher Harry Von Tilzer Company, was so taken with his talent that he offered him a job with his company that he attempted to get him to work with him. Max claimed to have "discovered a wonderful boy" and that he was so excited that Von Tilzer hired Berlin that he was able to.

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

Personal life

Dorothy Goetz, 20, of Buffalo, New York, the sister of one of Berlin's collaborators E. Ray Goetz, married him in February 1912 after a brief whirlwind courtship. She contracted typhoid fever while on her honeymoon in Havana, and doctors were unable to handle her condition when she returned to New York. She died on July 17th of this year. After Goetz's death, he wrote his first ballad, "When I Lost You," to express his sadness.

Ellin Mackay, the socially influential chief of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company and an author in her own right, fell in love with him years later in the 1920s. The romance of an immigrant from the Lower East Side and a young heiress were fascinating, because Berlin was Jewish and she was of Irish descent.

They met in 1924, and her father, who was against the match from the start, protested it from the start. He went so far as to send her off to Europe to find other suitors and forget Berlin. However, Berlin courted her with letters and songs over the airwaves, such as "Remember" and "All Alone," and she wrote her daily. Newspapers rumored to be engaged before she returned from Europe, and several Broadway shows even performed skits of the "lovelorn songwriter." Following her return, she and Berlin were surrounded by the media, which followed them everywhere. According to Variety, her father promised that their marriage "would only take place "over my dead body." As a result, they eloped and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the Municipal Building that was otherwise out of sight of national television coverage.

The wedding news appeared on The New York Times' front page. The marriage took her father by surprise, and she was ecstatic when hearing about it. However, the bride's mother, who was divorced from Mackay at the time, wanted her daughter to follow the rules of her own heart. Before the wedding, Berlin had gone to her mother's house and had received her blessing.

Following rumors that the bride's father disowned his daughter as a result of the marriage, there have been rumors that the bride's father disowned his daughter due to the union. In response, Berlin gave "Always," a song that is still played at weddings, to her as a wedding presenter. Ellin was therefore guaranteed a steady income regardless of what might have happened with the marriage. Mackay refused to speak to the Berlins for almost three years, but they reconciled after Irving Berlin Jr.'s death on Christmas Day in 1928, less than a month after he was born.

Their marriage remained a passion affair, and they were inseparable until she died in July 1988 at the age of 85. During their 63 years of marriage, they had four children: Mary Ellin Barrett in 1926, Irving Berlin Jr., who died in infancy in 1928; Margaret Louise Emmet in 1936; and Elizabeth Irving Peters in 1936.

"The thing I love about Irvie is that although he has risen to the top of Berlin's career and made a lot of money," the designer and composer George M. Cohan said at a Friar's Club dinner in his honour. He hasn't forgotten his families, he doesn't wear funny clothes, and you'll find his watch and his handkerchief in his pockets, where they belong."

Furia says he often returned on foot to his old neighborhood in Union Square, Chinatown, and the Bowery. He never forgot those childhood years when he "slept under tenement steps, ate scraps, and wore secondhand clothing," and described those years as difficult 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 now stands at 239 West 45th Street. 17 Beekman Place was on display in New York City from 1947 to 1989.

Berliner is described as "intensely tense," with a habit of tapping his listener's index finger to emphasize a point, and repeatedly pressing his hair down in back" and "picking up any stray crumbs left on a table after a meal," according to Life magazine's George Frazier. "He leans forward tensely, with his hands clasped below his knees like a champion wrestler clutching his arms as he waits for the call," Frazier writes. "Berlin has somehow managed to reclaim the ferocious enthusiasm of a novice."

In her memoir, Berlin's daughter narrated that her father was "basically an upbeat guy with down periods." He retreated from public life in his last decades. He did not attend Carnegie Hall's televised 100th birthday celebration. "She enjoyed every single holiday with their children, and they seemed to have understood the significance, especially in childhood, of the special day, the same every year, the special books, foods, and decorations, as well as the special feeling of calm that accompanys a holiday." "80": "I did not tell my daughter about her mother's lavish Christmas spending, but "I did give up trying to convince your mother to save money." It was quicker to make more money than ever before.

Berlin voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, but he favoured the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower's campaign and his album "I Like It" was featured prominently in the Eisenhower campaign. He also became more conservative in his music choices in his later years. "He was nourished by patriotism," his daughter reports. He often said, "I owe all my happiness to my adopted country" and once rebuffed his attorneys' recommendation to invest in tax shelters, insisting, "I want to pay taxes." I adore this world.

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

Berlin was a key member of The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Berlin was a ardent promoter of civil rights. In 1944, the National Conference of Christians and Jews lauded Berlin for "advancing the conference's goals to eliminate religious and racial conflict." The first integrated division army unit in the United States, which was produced in 1943, "This Is The Army." The Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) in 1949 honoured him as one of the 12 "most outstanding Americans of Jewish faith" in the United States. Although he was ethnically and culturally Jewish, he was religiously agnostic. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of Berlin's Civil Rights Movement, was also deemed a victim of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who has routinely prosecuted him for years.

Source

Songwriting career

Berlin rose as a songwriter in Tin Pan Alley and Broadway. Emma Carus introduced "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911, the first world-famous hit, followed by a visit to Berlin itself at the Friars' Frolic in 1911. He became a hit performer and the featured performer at Oscar Hammerstein's vaudeville home later this year, where he performed hundreds of other songs. "All the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his jacket, while tears welled up his cheeks," the New York Times reported on how two hundred of his street friends appeared to see "their boy" on stage: "in a vain deville house."

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"Alexander's Ragtime Band" was described as a march, not a rag, by Richard Corliss in a Time profile of Berlin, "its savviest musicality contained excerpts from a bugle call and "Swanee River." Scott Joplin's ragtime passion reignited and made Berlin a songwriting sensation. The song appeared on the charts in its first and subsequent years, as others performed it: Bessie Smith, 1927, and Louis Armstrong, 1937; no. Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell, and Johnny Mercer in 1945; Al Jolson, 1947; and Nellie Lutcher in 1948. Add Ray Charles' big-band version in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in less than half.

The song wasn't known as a success initially, but Broadway producer Jesse Lasky was unsure about using it, though he did include it in his "Follies" video. It was an instrumental performance but it did not please audiences and was quickly dropped from the show's score. It was regarded as a failure by Berlin. In another Broadway Review, he wrote lyrics to the score and performed it again, this time in another Broadway Review, and Variety News weekly called it "the musical sensation of the decade." George Gershwin, a 68-year-old composer, said it was "the first true American musical work" after he remembered it.

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Berlin was "flabbergasted" by the song's sudden international success, and wondered why it became such a big hit. It was partly because the songs, "silly though it was," the tune, "a good portion of Europe," he explained. 69 Berlin was featured in the London revue Hello Ragtime in 1913, where he performed "That International Rag," a song he had written for the occasion.

Furia writes that "Alexander's Ragtime Band" gave ragtime "new life and sparked a national dance revivalist craze. Vernon and Irene Castle were two dancers who expressed this craze. Berlin produced "Watch Your Step," a ragtime revue that starred the couple and showcased their talent on stage in 1914. That musical revue became Berlin's first complete score, with songs that "radiated musical and lyrical sophistication." According to Furia, Berlin's songs represented modernism and represented a cultural conflict between Victorian gentility and the "purveyors of liberty, indulgence, and leisure." In which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed against one another, the song "Play a Simple Melody" became his first of his well-known "double" songs.

The "first syncopated musical" on Variety, where the "sets and the girls were stunning." The show's success was purely based on his name alone, and Berlin's success was then twenty-six. Variety said the performance was a "terrific hit" from its first night. In "Watch Your Step," Berlin's latest fame as a composer is compared to that of the Times Building's: "This youthful wonder of syncopated melody is proving things," it says, first and foremost that he is not alone a rag composer and that he is one of America's best lyric writers ever produced."

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Whitcomb also points out the fact that Russia, the country's family, was compelled to leave "the ragtime war with an abandon bordering on mania." Prince Felix Yusupov, a new Oxford undergraduate of Russian noble lineage and heir to Russia's largest estate, was described by his dance partner as "wriggling around the ballroom like a worm," with yelling for "more ragtime and more champagne."

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Some of Berlin's songs came out of his own sadness. For example, he married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz, in 1912. On their honeymoon in Havana, she died six months later of typhoid fever. "When I Lost You," he wrote to express his sadness, was his first ballad. It was a huge success and it had sold more than a million copies.

He began to see that ragtime was not a good musical style for serious romantic expression, and over the next two years he refined his style by writing more love songs. He wrote "I Love a Piano," a comedic and erotic ragtime love song written in 1915.

He had written hundreds of songs by 1918, many of which were topical, which had brief success. Many of the songs were intended for the first dances that followed, such as the grizzly bear, chicken walk, or foxtrot. He wrote "That Hula Hula" shortly after the Hawaiian dance craze began, and later performed a string of Southern songs, including "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam." He was recording a few new songs a week, including ones aimed at Europe's diverse immigrant cultures. Berlin, whose identity was still unknown, was on a train ride and decided to entertain the fellow passengers with some music on one occasion. They asked him how they knew so many hit songs, and Berlin modestly replied, "I wrote them."

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"A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," Berliner wrote during his transition from writing ragtime to lyrical ballads, became one of 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 lead song. Its popularity was so high that it became the subject of all of Ziegfeld's revues, as well as the theme song in 1936's The Great Ziegfeld. Wilder puts it on the same level as Jerome Kern's "pure melodies," and if you're wondering that such a change in style and sophistication could have occurred in a single year as in Berlin's earlier music.

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On April 1, 1917, Berlin felt that Tin Pan Alley should do its duty and support the war by inspiring songs after President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would enter World War I. "We must speak with the sword not the pen to show our appreciation to America for opening her heart and welcoming every immigrant group," Berlin wrote the song "For Your Country and My Country." "Let's All Be Americans Now" was also co-wrote a song aimed at resolving ethnic conflict.

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Berlin was recruited into the United States Army in 1917, and his induction became mainstream news, with one newspaper headline reporting, "Army Takes Berlin!" However, the Army wanted Berlin, now 30 years old, to do what he knew best: write songs. While stationed at Camp Upton with the 152nd Depot Brigade, he produced "Yip Yip Yaphank," an all-soldier musical revue dedicated to the United States Army. The show had already been touring Broadway by the following summer, with "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" by the man himself.

The shows received $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, "God Bless America" would be released twenty years later.

After the war, Berlin returned to Tin Pan Alley and in 1921, Sam Harris founded a Music Box Theater in 1921. He maintained an interest in the theater throughout his life, and even in his last years was known to call the Shubert Company, his partner, to verify the receipts. The theater was a showcase for revues in Berlin in the early years. From the costumes and sets to the casting and musical arrangements, he scrutinized every detail of his shows as theater owner, producer, and composer.

According to Berlin biographer David Leopold, the theater, located at 239 West 45th St., was the first Broadway house built to accommodate the work 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 there is an exhibit dedicated to Berlin in the lobby.

By 1926, Berlin had written the scores to two Ziegfeld Follies and four "Music Box Revues." "Music Box Revues" in Berlin spanned 1921 to 1926, with hits including "Live It With Music," "Everybody Step," and "Pack Up Your Things and Go to the Devil" among other topics. "Lullaby Kid" in the Life magazine said, "couples at country-club dances became dissatisfied when the band went into "Always" because they were assured that Berlin had written it specifically for them. It was Berlin that brought eloquence to their heartbreak by way of "What Should I Do" and "Remember" and "All Alone" when they clashed and parted in the bittersweetness of the 1920s.

Paul Whiteman's hit song and longing was also a hit record, and he had many other commercial hits in 1924. The song came to a halt twenty-four years ago. Nat King Cole and No. 2 are among Nat King Cole's 220-noels. Frank Sinatra's number 23 is out of the 23.

Ellin Mackay, who later became his wife, was written when he fell in love with her. In its first iteration, the song became a hit twice (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen). In 1944–45, there were four more hit versions. Sammy Turner dropped the song to no. R&B chart No. 2 on the R&B's charts. It was Patsy Cline's postmortem anthem and it came to a close. In 1980, 17 years since her death, 18 on the country chart, as well as "Always" a tribute musical. Patsy Cline," played for two years in Nashville and ended in 1995. Leonard Cohen's biography on this album titled Future (Leonard Cohen album).

"Blue days, all of them gone; nothing but blue skies from now on," he wrote after his first daughter's birth. Belle Baker of Betsy, a Ziegfeld product, performed the song. It became a hit recording for Ben Selvin and one of many Berlin hits in 1927. It was directed by Al Jolson in the first feature sound film, The Jazz Singer, the same year. With Count Basie and Benny Goodman, it returned to the top 10 on the charts in 1946. Willie Nelson made the song a no. in 1978. It was written in 1952 and it was the first nation to be a member of the United Nations.

This song is attributed to Fred Astaire, who sang and danced to it in the 1946 film Blue Skies, setting an instant standard for one of Berlin's most "intricately syncopated choruses." The song was written in 1928 with a distinct set of lyrics and was introduced by Harry Richman in a 1930 film of the same name. Clark Gable performed it in the film Idiot's Delight in 1939. It was a no. 1 in 1974, when it was seen in Mel Brooks' film Young Frankenstein. Taco's 1983 debut was a hit. In 2012, it was used for a flash mob wedding in Moscow.

Rudy Vallée's hit in 1929 was a top hit for Tommy Dorsey, who changed to a four-quarter-time swing version in 1937. At no. 1, it was on the charts. The Four Tunes were the first to be born in 1953, and at no. In 1965, the Bachelors were ranked 15th in the nation's 36th year, just 36 years since its first appearance.

Rudy Vallée performed it on his radio show, and George Olsen, Connee Boswell (she was still known as Connie), and Ozzie Nelson's band were a hit. Aretha Franklin produced a single of the song in 1963, 31 years later. When Vallée first performed the song on his radio show, it saved Vallée's marriage: The Vallées had intended to divorce, but "both he and his wife wept in tears" after Vallée sang Berlin's romantic songs on the radio, but "both he and his wife wept" and decided to remain together.

Dick Powell appeared in the 1937 film On the Avenue. Billie Holiday and Les Brown, who dropped it to no, were among the top-12 versions released. 1.

The song was written by Berlin twenty years ago, but Kate Smith didn't finish it until 1938 when she needed a patriotic song to commemorate Armistice Day, which was commemorating the end of World War I. The publication, which had been out for nine years, had enshrined a "strain of official patriotism embedded in a deep psyche," according to The New York Times.

Mary Ellin Barrett of Berlin says the album was really "very personal" for her father, and was meant as an expression of his profound gratitude to the nation for just "allowing" him, an immigrant raised in poverty, to become a successful songwriter. "God Bless America" was not just a song, but an extension of my feeling towards the world, to which I owe what I have and what I am." "Berlin was delivering a profound paean to the world that should have given him what he would have said was everything," the Economist magazine claims.

After America entered World War II a few years later, it became a second National Anthem. It has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin has given all royalties over the decades. President Dwight D. Eisenhower praised Berlin for bringing the song in 1954.

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the song was performed on the Capitol steps and performed it after September 11, 2001. Major league baseball has a tradition of playing it. The Philadelphia Flyers' hockey team got to play it before major games. The players spontaneously sang it as Americans were overcome by patriotism as the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team pulled off the "greatest upset in sports history," referred to as the "Miracle on Ice."

Though the bulk of his Broadway shows were revues—collections of songs with no unifying plot—he did produce a number of book shows. The Cocoanuts (1929) was a light comedy with a cast including the Marx Brothers among others. Face the Music (1932) was a political satire based on Moss Hart's book, and Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician clearly based on Huey Long's exploits. Thousands Cheer (1933), a Moss Hart book with a theme, was on display in a newspaper, with some of them focusing on current events. The show featured a number of hit songs, including "Easter Parade" by Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb, "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather forecast), "Harlem on My Mind," and "Supper Time," a song about racial unrest inspired by a newspaper headline featuring a lynching performed by Ethel Waters. "If one song can tell the entire tragic past of a race," she once said of the album. 'Supper Time' was the title. "I was educating my well-fed, well-dressed listeners about my people, those who had been slaves and those who had been slaves and those who had been impoverished and oppressed."

Berlin adored his country and wrote many songs expressing his patriotism. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau ordered a song to encourage Americans to buy war bonds, and he wrote "Any Bonds Today?" He entrusted all royalties to the US Treasury Department, according to him. "Angels of Mercy" for the American Red Cross; "Arms for the Love of America" for the United States Army Ordnance Department; and "I Paid My Income Tax Today" for Treasury; he later wrote songs for various government departments and attributed all income to them.

Berlin began writing a number of patriotic songs immediately after the United States entered World War II after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. A stage show named "This Is The Army" was his most notable and valuable contribution to the war effort. It was taken to Broadway and then to Washington, D.C. (where President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended). It was eventually displayed at military bases around the world, including London, North Africa, Italy, Middle East, and Pacific countries, many of whom are in close proximity to combat zones. For the performance, which featured a cast of 300 guys, Berlin wrote nearly three dozen songs. He oversaw the production and travelled with it, always singing "Oh! How I Hate to Wake Up in the Morning. During those years he took neither salary nor expenses, he owed all funds to the Army Emergency Relief Fund, which kept him away from his family for three and a half years.

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In 1943, the play was turned into a film of the same name, directed by Michael Curtiz, co-starring Joan Leslie and Ronald Reagan, who was then an army lieutenant. In the film, Kate Smith sang "God Bless America" with a backdrop of families fearing the coming war. The presentation, which culminated in a hit movie and a morale-boosting road show that toured Europe's battlefronts, culminated in a hit film and a morale-boosting road show. The Army's total income of the show and film surpassed $10 million, and Berlin was awarded the Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman in appreciation of his contributions to troop morale. Mary Ellin Barrett, a 15-year-old girl who appeared on Broadway for the second time in the Army's garb, was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted ten minutes when her father, who normally shunned the spotlight, sang "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." She adds that he was in his mid-50s at the time, and later announced that those years with the show were the "most exciting time of his life."

"This Is The Army" in Berlin left him exhausted, but producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who was the composer of Annie Get Your Gun, advised Berlin not to hand over the score.

The music and lyrics were written by Berlin, based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and directed by Joshua Logan. At first, Berlin refused to work as a result of his absence, alleging that he was unaware of "hillbilly music," but the performance went for 1,147 performances and became his most popular score. According to reports, the show's top song, "There's No Business Like Show Business," was almost left out of the competition entirely because Berlin mistakenly thought that Rodgers and Hammerstein did not like it. However, it became the "absolute uptempo show tune."

Logan recalled how he and Hammerstein secretly discussed another duet between Annie and Frank. Berlin overheard their talk, and although the show was set to begin within days, he wrote the song "Anything You Can Do" a few hours later.

One reviewer wrote about the play's verdict, saying that "its tough wisecracking lyrics are as tersely all-knowing as its melody," the song's theme, which has been nailed down in brassy syncopated lines that have been imitated—but never equaled in pure melodic memorability—by hundreds of theater composers ever since." Susannah McCorkle, a singer and musicologist, says that the score "meant more to me than ever" after a grueling world tour and years of separation from his wife and children. "The score's perfection," says historian and composer Alec Wilder, was "a profound surprise" compared to his earlier works.

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The "creative sparkt" in which Berlin performed several songs for the score in a single weekend was an anomaly. He often "sweated blood" to write his songs, according to his daughter. Annie Get Your Gun is Berlin's best musical theatre score, not simply because of the number of hits it contains, but also because its songs successfully blend character and plot development. The song "There's No Business Like Show Business" became "Ethel Merman's trademark."

Miss Liberty (1949), Berlin's new show, was disappointing, but Call Me Madam (1950), starring Ethel Merman as Sally Adams, a Washington, D.C., socialite, based on the well-known Washington hostess Perle Mesta, fared better, earning him his second-greatest popularity. Two attempts by Berlin to write a musical about his sister, Addison Mizner, and Addison's con-man brother Wilson. The first was incomplete; the Last Resorts (1952) was the only complete one; a copy of Act I is in the Library of Congress. Although Wise Guy (1956) was finished but never released, songs have been released and recorded on The Unsung Irving Berlin (1995). After a failed attempt at retirement in 1962, Mr. President Robert Kennedy returned to Broadway with Mr. President John Kennedy at the age of 74. Despite the fact that it lasted eight months (with President John F. Kennedy attending the premiere), it was not one of his most popular performances.

Following him, Berlin officially announced his resignation and spent his remaining years in New York. He did, however, write one new song, "An Old-Fashioned Wedding," for Annie Get Your Gun's 1966 Broadway revival starring Ethel Merman. Despite the fact that he lived for 23 years, this will be one of Berlin's last published compositions.

Berlin maintained a low profile during the last decade of his life, almost never appearing in public after the late 1960s, even for events held in his honor. However, he retained influence of his music through his own music publishing firm, which remained in existence for the remainder of his life.

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Awards and honors

• Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1943 for "White Christmas" in Holiday Inn.
• US Army Medal of Merit from General George Marshall at the direction of President Harry S. Truman.
• Tony Award in 1951 for Best Score for the musical Call Me Madam.
• Congressional Gold Medal in 1954 from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing many patriotic songs, including "God Bless America".
• Special Tony Award in 1963.
• Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1968.
• Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, which "celebrated its First annual Induction and Awards Ceremony in New York City".
• Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 by President Gerald Ford. The citation reads, in part: "Musician, Composer, Humanitarian, And Patriot, Irving Berlin Has Captured The Fondest Dreams And Deepest Emotions Of The American People In The Form Of Popular Music."
• Lawrence Langner Tony Award in 1978.
• Medal of Liberty during centennial celebrations for the Statue of Liberty in 1986.
• 100th-birthday celebration concert was for the benefit of Carnegie Hall and ASCAP on May 11, 1988.
• Jewish-American Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 1, 1994.
• American Theater Hall of Fame.