Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is
Speaker 1: part two of our episode on Irving Berlin, which I
Speaker 1: did not intend to have as a two partner, but
Speaker 1: that's what happened. If you start with this episode and
Speaker 1: you skip the first one, you're gonna be missing more
Speaker 1: than three decades of his life, plus just a lot
Speaker 1: of context about the music industry in the United States
Speaker 1: in the first half of the twentieth century. Also, Irving
Speaker 1: Berlin was really prolific, and so we cannot possibly mention
Speaker 1: every single song or even every single show that he
Speaker 1: worked on. So if you have a favorite that just
Speaker 1: doesn't come up, we're sorry, just not possible to do
Speaker 1: all of it. Also, as a heads up, we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about the death of an infant in
Speaker 1: this episode in more than just a passing reference to
Speaker 1: a baby who died in Irving Berlin met Ellen Mackie.
Speaker 1: He was thirty six and she was the twenty one
Speaker 1: year old daughter of financier Clarence Mackie. Clarence did not
Speaker 1: approve of this relationship. In addition to the gap in
Speaker 1: their ages, Irving was Jewish and the Mackis were Catholic.
Speaker 1: When Irving sought their blessing to propose, Ellen's mother gave it,
Speaker 1: but her father arranged for Ellen to take a prolonged
Speaker 1: trip in an effort to separate them. Berlin was famous
Speaker 1: and the Mackies were rich, so all of this was
Speaker 1: kind of big news, with reporters focused on their seemingly
Speaker 1: star cross relationship and Clarence's objection to it. As all
Speaker 1: of this was going on, Berlin wrote a musical for
Speaker 1: the Marx brothers that was The Coconuts. Berlin wrote the
Speaker 1: music and the lyrics, while George S. Kaufman wrote the book.
Speaker 1: This show was set in a hotel in Florida during
Speaker 1: its nineteen twenties land boom. Groucho Marx played the role
Speaker 1: of the hotel proprietor with Zeppo, his assistant, Chico, and
Speaker 1: Harpoh were conmen trying to rob the place. There were
Speaker 1: also other characters, including another con man. Although this show
Speaker 1: was really a lot more about the comedic sort of
Speaker 1: chaos that the Marx brothers were known for more than
Speaker 1: for the actual plot. It's kind of any Marks Brothers property. Right,
Speaker 1: this is a movie, but really it's about poking each
Speaker 1: other in the eyes, that's correct. The Coconuts ran for
Speaker 1: two years on Broadway, followed by a tour and then
Speaker 1: a film. Although the Marx Brothers hated the film so
Speaker 1: much when they saw it that they tried to buy
Speaker 1: it back and keep it from being released, it was
Speaker 1: released over their objections and was generally well reviewed, and
Speaker 1: it was a big financial success. On January four, Irving
Speaker 1: Berlin and Ellen mack he got married at City Hall
Speaker 1: in New York. Ellen's family did not know this was happening.
Speaker 1: The witnesses for the couple were Irving's longtime friend and colleague,
Speaker 1: Max Winslow and his wife, as well as Irving's publicity manager.
Speaker 1: When Ellen's father found out about this, he was furious.
Speaker 1: He cut her out of her inheritance except for a
Speaker 1: trust that he could not legally touch. Ellen and her
Speaker 1: father did not speak to one another for the next
Speaker 1: three years. Irving and Ellen's first child was born on November.
Speaker 1: They named her Mary Ellen, and how to raise her
Speaker 1: and any other children they might have was the first
Speaker 1: big fight of Irving and Ellen's marriage. Specifically, they argued
Speaker 1: about whether to raise the children Jewish or Catholic. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: they decided on raising them as Jewish, but teaching them
Speaker 1: about Catholicism when they got a little older, and then
Speaker 1: allowing them to decide for themselves how they wanted to.
Speaker 1: Of various accounts of their home life, describing corporating elements
Speaker 1: from both traditions, like having both a Hanakah manora and
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree around those holidays. Yeah, Mary Ellen, I
Speaker 1: think is the one who wrote a memoir later on
Speaker 1: uh and described all of the holidays as being very
Speaker 1: important in their household. Christmas, though, quickly became a sad
Speaker 1: holiday for the family. Irving and Ellen had a son,
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin Jr. But he died at the age of
Speaker 1: only four weeks. He was found dead in his crib
Speaker 1: on Christmas morning. The term sudden infant death syndrome was
Speaker 1: not coined until nineteen sixte but it really describes what
Speaker 1: happened to Irving Junior. He died unexpectedly with no other
Speaker 1: explanation for what happened. The tragic loss of Irving Jr.
Speaker 1: Is what finally led Clarence Mackie to reconcile with his daughter.
Speaker 1: Aside from their grief over the loss of their son,
Speaker 1: Irving and Ellen's struggled in some other ways as well.
Speaker 1: It's very very clear that they loved each other deeply,
Speaker 1: but Irving had trouble writing music with newborns and toddlers
Speaker 1: in the house, and his nighttime hours did not line
Speaker 1: up with his family's needs. And also, while he considered
Speaker 1: himself to be pretty active, he quickly got a sense
Speaker 1: that becoming a parent at forty was a lot different
Speaker 1: from becoming a parent at twenty or even thirty would
Speaker 1: have been. The film The Jazz Singer debuted in which
Speaker 1: marked the start of the shift in the film industry
Speaker 1: from silent films to talkies, and Irving started doing more
Speaker 1: work for movies. That meant that he often needed to
Speaker 1: be in Hollywood, and he and Ellen had to figure
Speaker 1: out whether to move the family back and forth, or
Speaker 1: whether to keep the children in New York, where, in
Speaker 1: the Berlin's opinion, they had better schools and a stronger community.
Speaker 1: They made it work, though, and over the years they
Speaker 1: had two more children, Linda Louis in nineteen thirty two
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Irving in nineteen thirty six. Of course, this
Speaker 1: also means that their family was growing during the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: which was at its worst from ninety nine to nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, but it continued to have economic effects for
Speaker 1: years afterwards. By starting his own publishing house and owning
Speaker 1: the rights to a lot of the music he'd written,
Speaker 1: Berlin's income was protected in the long term, but in
Speaker 1: the short term he lost a lot of his savings
Speaker 1: and investments. Ellen's trust was not invested in the stock
Speaker 1: market and was mostly protected, so the family still had
Speaker 1: enough money to live on, but Irving really hated the
Speaker 1: fact that they were having to rely almost entirely on
Speaker 1: his wife's money. Ellen's father also lost most of his
Speaker 1: fortune in the stock market collapse. The depression also affected
Speaker 1: all the industries that he was trying to work in. Waterson, Berlin,
Speaker 1: and Snyder went bankrupt in nineteen nine. In nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: Berlin wrote a score for a film called Reaching for
Speaker 1: the Moon, but in the face of spiraling financial costs
Speaker 1: and personality conflicts and the financial impact of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: United Artists made big changes to this movie that included
Speaker 1: cutting out most of Berlin's work. Berlin tended to take
Speaker 1: criticism and rejection pretty personally for his whole career, and
Speaker 1: that was the case here. Even though these cuts really
Speaker 1: do seem to have been more about money, maybe a
Speaker 1: little more about personality conflicts, not about the quality of
Speaker 1: the work that he had written. He became really depressed
Speaker 1: and he struggled to regain his confidence afterward. Although times
Speaker 1: were tight, Berlin did have some success during the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: In three he wrote a review called as Thousands Cheer.
Speaker 1: Two of his better known songs were written for this show,
Speaker 1: Easter Parade and heat Wave. There were also satirical sketches
Speaker 1: based on real world figures, many of whom have been
Speaker 1: covered on our podcast, including Amy Simple, McPherson, John d. Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: and Josephine Baker. Act two of this show began with
Speaker 1: an anti lynching song called supper Time, sung by Ethel Waters,
Speaker 1: who also sang three other songs in the show. This
Speaker 1: was the first time on Broadway that a black performer
Speaker 1: was given equal billing with white co stars, and there
Speaker 1: were people who saw this as a problem, both the
Speaker 1: content of the song supper Time and the expectations that
Speaker 1: white performers treat Waters as their equal. Three of her
Speaker 1: white co stars refused to take a bow with her
Speaker 1: at the end of the show, and Irving Berlin's response
Speaker 1: to that was, in that case, there need be no
Speaker 1: bows at all. They did have bows. He basically forced
Speaker 1: her colleagues to treat her as equal to them. I
Speaker 1: would love it if she got the only one, but
Speaker 1: that's just me. That also sure would have been great.
Speaker 1: This show wasn't a normal success, Running for four hundred
Speaker 1: performances at Berlin's Music Box Theater, followed by a tour
Speaker 1: and Easter Parade, was a big seller as sheet music.
Speaker 1: This really helped Irving Berlin start to recover financially in
Speaker 1: the later years of the depression. On thirty four, Irving
Speaker 1: Berlin was on the cover of Time magazine with the
Speaker 1: descriptor quote, Jerome Kern was reminded of Wagner. So Jerome
Speaker 1: Kern was a composer and a songwriter whose work included
Speaker 1: Oldman River and The Way You Look Tonight and the
Speaker 1: music for the musical show Boat. Kern had made this
Speaker 1: comment about Irving Berlin reminding him of Wagner a decade prior,
Speaker 1: but by nine thirty four this had become a pretty
Speaker 1: jarring comparison. Wagner was deeply anti Semitic, and Wagner had
Speaker 1: earned vocal praise from Adolf Hitler, who by this point
Speaker 1: was ruling Germany as a dictator. We are coming up
Speaker 1: on one of Irving Berlin's most famou his songs, and
Speaker 1: eventually to World War Two, and we will get to
Speaker 1: all of that after a sponsor break. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: a lot of Irving Berlin's work was in film, including
Speaker 1: the movie Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
Speaker 1: in five. This was the start of a long friendship
Speaker 1: between Irving and a Stare, and in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: Irving was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song
Speaker 1: for the song Cheek to Cheek. This oscar wound up
Speaker 1: going to Lullaby of Broadway from the movie Gold Diggers,
Speaker 1: and Irving Berlin thought that was a pretty big insult.
Speaker 1: In ninety seven, the Berlin family planned a vacation to Alaska.
Speaker 1: This was a trip that involved a cruise. This trip
Speaker 1: was long enough that Berlin needed to be able to
Speaker 1: keep working, so he planned to take his transposing piano
Speaker 1: with him. This presented a problem when I turned out
Speaker 1: that his transposing piano would not fit on the ship.
Speaker 1: He was informed that any size grand piano would work
Speaker 1: as long as the legs were removed to get it
Speaker 1: on board, so he may do with that. I just
Speaker 1: find that story just delightful, like wild. The musical film
Speaker 1: Alexander's Ragtime Band came out in y eight and it
Speaker 1: was named after Berlin's hit song from nineteen eleven that
Speaker 1: we talked about in part one. Berlin wrote the script
Speaker 1: in collaboration with Catherine scola At, Lamar Trotty and Richard Sherman,
Speaker 1: and it included several of his most popular songs. In
Speaker 1: this film, Alexander is a band leader who wants to
Speaker 1: make people think of ragtime as a more legitimate style
Speaker 1: of music, and through his story, the music gives a
Speaker 1: general history of the musical styles of ragtime and jazz.
Speaker 1: This movie was pretty well reviewed, but this is also
Speaker 1: a movie was about the history of ragtime and jazz,
Speaker 1: which are two musical styles that were developed by black
Speaker 1: people that did not include any black people. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen this movie, but looking at castless like, I don't
Speaker 1: I think, not at all, like not even in like
Speaker 1: a background role. None. Yeah, I haven't seen it either.
Speaker 1: This film also faced allegations of plagiarism. Marie Cooper diyke
Speaker 1: House filed suit against both Berlin and twentieth Century Fox,
Speaker 1: alleging that the plot was the same as her unpublished
Speaker 1: novel Love Girl. She had submitted this novel to agents
Speaker 1: and filmmakers in Hollywood the year before the movie was made.
Speaker 1: This legal case went on for years, with a judge
Speaker 1: ruling that the movie's plot was the same as the
Speaker 1: book in but two years later this was overturned because
Speaker 1: there was no evidence that Berlin or any of the
Speaker 1: other screenwriters involved had ever seen the novel, and that
Speaker 1: none of them knew any of the literary agents that
Speaker 1: the book had been submitted to. While the earlier ruling
Speaker 1: had focused on similarities between the book and the movie,
Speaker 1: the ruling in the appeal noted some key differences. Quote
Speaker 1: the book is late in part in the same period
Speaker 1: as the picture, but it is about the loves of
Speaker 1: the love girl and her several lovers, and there is
Speaker 1: no note of music in it. The pictures real interest
Speaker 1: and value as to every scene and action in it,
Speaker 1: are in the music. Its presentation requires an hour and
Speaker 1: three quarters, and each minute is filled with action attuned
Speaker 1: to the music to return to. One of Irving Berlin's
Speaker 1: most famous songs made its debut that Armistice Day that year,
Speaker 1: that was November eleven, commemorating the armistice at the end
Speaker 1: of World War One. Of course, by this point parts
Speaker 1: of the world were at war again and tensions were
Speaker 1: escalating in others. The Second Sino Japanese War had started
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen seven, and Germany had annexed Austria
Speaker 1: in March of ninety eight. That September, Germany, Italy, Great Britain,
Speaker 1: and France had signed the Munich Agreement, forcing Czechoslovakia to
Speaker 1: see it it's predominantly German speaking border region to Germany.
Speaker 1: This was done under threat of war with Germany and
Speaker 1: without the involvement of Czechoslovakia. In the face of all
Speaker 1: of this, Kate Smith had asked Irving Berlin for a
Speaker 1: new song for her Armistice Day performance, one that wound
Speaker 1: up taking place the day after the November program also
Speaker 1: known as Crystal Knocked, which took place over November ninth
Speaker 1: and tenth of nineteen thirty eight. We covered this program
Speaker 1: on the podcast. In the song that Berlin gave her
Speaker 1: was God Bless America, which he had originally worked on
Speaker 1: to include in Yip Yip yap Haank, but had not
Speaker 1: been satisfied with at that time. One lyric that he
Speaker 1: changed as he was working on this for Kate Smith
Speaker 1: was stand beside her and guide her through the night
Speaker 1: with the light from above through the night. Was originally
Speaker 1: to the right meaning toward what was right, but he
Speaker 1: made the change out of concerns that people would interpret
Speaker 1: right as instead having a political meaning. This song was
Speaker 1: an immediate hit, becoming one of Kate Smith's signature songs.
Speaker 1: It got huge amounts of radio play, and its sheet
Speaker 1: music became a bestseller. People called for God Bless America
Speaker 1: to be made the national anthem and replaced the star
Speaker 1: spangled banner that had been adopted just seven years prior.
Speaker 1: Among other things. Like many of Berlin's songs, God Bless
Speaker 1: America was much easier to sing. But this song also
Speaker 1: faced an anti Semitic xenophobic backlash as people question how
Speaker 1: a Jewish immigrant had the right to call on God
Speaker 1: to bless the United States. The ku Klux Klan called
Speaker 1: for a boycott. Others disliked this song for different reasons,
Speaker 1: including folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie. Guthrie found the
Speaker 1: song to be too uncritically patriotic and too optimistic, especially
Speaker 1: given the state of the world and how many people
Speaker 1: were still financially really struggling in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. This is also one of those songs that
Speaker 1: was just on the radio constantly. I know we've all
Speaker 1: had that song to sign the radio constantly. We just
Speaker 1: are so sick of it. Guthrie felt like it was
Speaker 1: impossible to get away from God Bless America, so in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty he wrote a song of his own, and
Speaker 1: that song was This Land Is Your Land, which followed
Speaker 1: the same basic tune as two different Carter Family songs.
Speaker 1: Those songs were When the World's On Fire, which came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen thirty, and Little Darling Palamine, which came
Speaker 1: out in five Guthrie performed this song a lot, as
Speaker 1: did Pete Seeger, who has come up on the show recently.
Speaker 1: One of the ironies about all of this is that
Speaker 1: Guthrie's criticism of God Bless America included what he saw
Speaker 1: as its uncritical elevation of the United States, but he
Speaker 1: wound up cutting out the most critical verses of this
Speaker 1: land is Your Land. In most early recordings and sheet
Speaker 1: music printings, one verse that was usually cut was as
Speaker 1: I went walking, I saw a sign there, and on
Speaker 1: the sign that said no trespassing. But on the other
Speaker 1: side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for
Speaker 1: you and me. Another was in the squares of the city,
Speaker 1: in the shadow of the steeple by the relief office.
Speaker 1: I seen my people as they stood there, hungry. I
Speaker 1: stood there asking is this land made for you and me?
Speaker 1: The verses that were left meeting, the ones that people
Speaker 1: became most familiar with, were mostly the happier ones about
Speaker 1: endless skyways and golden valleys and diamond deserts and wheat
Speaker 1: fields waving not especially critical. Also, Woody Guthrie was a
Speaker 1: white man from Oklahoma writing a song about this land
Speaker 1: is My Land. So sure, Godless America can come across
Speaker 1: as a glorification of American optionalism. That's a fair point,
Speaker 1: Woody Guthrie. But also, this land is Your Land can
Speaker 1: really read like a tribute to settler colonialism. But your
Speaker 1: return to Irving Berlin towards the end of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: he bought a place in the cat skills that needed
Speaker 1: a lot of fixing up, and he had it renovated
Speaker 1: so the family could spend their summers there. In nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: he set up a trust to divert all of the
Speaker 1: royalties from God Bless America to the Girl Scouts and
Speaker 1: the Boy Scouts. In nineteen forty, Irving Berlin finished writing
Speaker 1: one of his biggest hits, and that was the song
Speaker 1: White Christmas. Soon he was also working on a movie
Speaker 1: to put it in. That movie was Holiday in When
Speaker 1: he talked to producers and executives about this movie in
Speaker 1: the works, he said he already had a big song
Speaker 1: for it, which needed to be included in the contract
Speaker 1: for the film. The first public radio broadcast of White
Speaker 1: Christmas was on Christmas Eve ninety one on Bing Crosby's
Speaker 1: weekly radio program, and us was just weeks after the
Speaker 1: attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. White Christmas can sound like
Speaker 1: a really wistful or even sad song, depending on how
Speaker 1: it's performed, and that's been interpreted as tracing back to
Speaker 1: the death of his infant son on Christmas of The
Speaker 1: movie Holiday m came out in nineteen two, starring Bing Crosby,
Speaker 1: Fred Astaire Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale, and Walter Abel. In
Speaker 1: addition to making sure White Christmas was included in plans
Speaker 1: for the film, Berlin had also worked to make sure
Speaker 1: Bing Crosby was cast in it. In ninety three, the
Speaker 1: song White Christmas won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Speaker 1: This movie came out in August, and Berlin had planned
Speaker 1: to start marketing the sheet music for White Christmas closer
Speaker 1: to Christmas, but it became an immediate bestseller, with six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies sold by November of that year. Holiday
Speaker 1: Inn also caused some controversy. One of its musical umbers
Speaker 1: is called Abraham and in the context of the movie,
Speaker 1: it's a song that's meant to be performed on Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln's birthday, and it is also a black faced menstrual number.
Speaker 1: Berlin was also criticized for some of this song's lyrics,
Speaker 1: specifically the use of one adjective that black audiences found offensive.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like we need to repeat with that
Speaker 1: adjective was in the show. A Baltimore newspaper called The
Speaker 1: African American called Berlin out on this, and in response,
Speaker 1: he changed the lyric in future printings of the sheet music,
Speaker 1: saying quote, no song is important enough to offend a
Speaker 1: whole race. I should never have released it had I
Speaker 1: known the epithet was objectionable. This was not Irving Berlin's
Speaker 1: last controversy about how he approached race in his work,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk more about that after we
Speaker 1: take a quick little sponsor break. In December of ninety one,
Speaker 1: the War Department asked Irving Berlin to work on a
Speaker 1: patriotic military musical along the same lines of Yip Hip
Speaker 1: Yap Hank during World War One that would be performed
Speaker 1: to raise funds and also to raise the morale of
Speaker 1: the troops. And the results of that request was This
Speaker 1: is the Army. That is an effort that was simultaneously
Speaker 1: progressive and regressive in terms of race. In terms of
Speaker 1: its progressiveness, Berlin insisted on casting black performers for this
Speaker 1: show at a time when the U. S. Army was
Speaker 1: racially segregated. The Army would continue to be racially segregated
Speaker 1: until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order one in nine.
Speaker 1: This was the only racially integrated uniformed Army unit in
Speaker 1: the Second World War, and that was because Irving Berlin
Speaker 1: had demanded it. Berlin also pressured theaters where the show
Speaker 1: was being performed to integrate. The same newspaper that had
Speaker 1: criticized his language and holiday In published a piece titled
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin cracks DC's Jim Crow Law after he forced
Speaker 1: a Washington, d c. Theater to admit a black woman
Speaker 1: who bought a ticket. However, he also had a huge
Speaker 1: argument with director Ezra Stone about the show's opener, which
Speaker 1: Berlin envisioned as involving the entire cast of a hundred
Speaker 1: and ten men in black face. Stone told him, quote,
Speaker 1: I know the heritage of the Menstrul show, those days
Speaker 1: are gone. People don't do that anymore, but Berlin continued
Speaker 1: to insist that this was how the show should start.
Speaker 1: Stone only got him to change his plans by pointing
Speaker 1: out the practical issue of getting a hundred and ten
Speaker 1: performers out of their black face makeup for the rest
Speaker 1: of the show, but Berlin still insisted on having a
Speaker 1: different number with a smaller group of performers in black face.
Speaker 1: Later on, Berlin's conflicts with Stone and others during this
Speaker 1: show did not end. There there was a lot of
Speaker 1: haggling over money, with Berlin's financial manager, Saul Bornstein, horrified
Speaker 1: at Berlin's plans to donate all of his proceeds from
Speaker 1: the music sales. There was some unfortunate back and forth
Speaker 1: between Berlin, Stone, and others about whether there were too
Speaker 1: many Jewish people in the cast, something that seems particularly
Speaker 1: jarring considering that Berlin himself was Jewish. But there were
Speaker 1: several overlapping factors here. Berlin was concerned about increasing anti
Speaker 1: Semitism in the US and abroad, and about whether having
Speaker 1: a predominantly Jewish cast would lead to rumors that they
Speaker 1: were in the show to try to get out of
Speaker 1: combat duty. One particular tour performance left Berlin feeling like
Speaker 1: Stone had intentionally insulted him. Normally, at the end of
Speaker 1: the show, Berlin would come out from the wings and
Speaker 1: Stone would order the cast to face left where Berlin
Speaker 1: was standing. But when they performed in Washington, d see,
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt was in a box to the right, so
Speaker 1: Stone ordered them to face that way. That meant that
Speaker 1: the entire cast turned their backs to Berlin in front
Speaker 1: of the President. It was very upset about this, but
Speaker 1: it also seems like if they had done the opposite
Speaker 1: that would have involved a whole bunch of military men
Speaker 1: and uniform simultaneously turning their backs on the president, and
Speaker 1: that seems like it would have caused a different problem.
Speaker 1: Like the only correct thing to do with the show
Speaker 1: would have been to realize what was going on and
Speaker 1: changed the blocking totally differently ahead of Diamond, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened, or either just say hey, we have to
Speaker 1: turn this way. Make it look like you're joining the
Speaker 1: cast to face the president their solutives here. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: This is the Army tour to the US as well
Speaker 1: as in Europe and North Africa, and it was eventually
Speaker 1: made into a movie. Berlin was with the touring cast
Speaker 1: whenever he could be. At various points he had to
Speaker 1: leave for both personal reasons and for other commitments. While
Speaker 1: they were in London, he met Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
Speaker 1: although there is an oft repeated story that this invitation
Speaker 1: was an error and that Churchill thought he would be
Speaker 1: meeting philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin. Irving Berlin rejoined the
Speaker 1: tour for its final performance in nineteen forty five. Gave
Speaker 1: a final stage performance of Oh How I Hate to
Speaker 1: Get Up in the morning and said that he hoped
Speaker 1: he'd never have to write another war song. This is
Speaker 1: the Army raised more than six million dollars for the
Speaker 1: Army Emergency Relief Fund. I saw some numbers that were
Speaker 1: even higher than that, and in ninety five President Harry
Speaker 1: Truman awarded Berlin the Medal of Merit for his efforts
Speaker 1: on it. In nineteen forty four, the National Conference of
Speaker 1: Christians and Jews honored Berlin for quote advancing the aims
Speaker 1: of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict. I
Speaker 1: feel like the idea of racial conflict here, it's like
Speaker 1: very He seems to have been all over the place
Speaker 1: on this issue and generally much better at how he
Speaker 1: worked with individual performers than like broad issues like not
Speaker 1: doing black base anymore. Yeah, it seems like some part
Speaker 1: of him wanted to do the correct thing, but he
Speaker 1: just kept stepping in it like problematic um. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of the war, Berlin ended his business relationship with
Speaker 1: Saul Bornstein. It wasn't just because of the conflict over
Speaker 1: Berlin wanting to donate his royalties, but also because they're
Speaker 1: working relationship had really been deteriorating for years and Berlin
Speaker 1: had evidence that Bornstein had been stealing from him. Berlin
Speaker 1: never discussed this publicly, and he never pressed any charges.
Speaker 1: It seems like he had clear evidence of wrongdoing, but
Speaker 1: since Bornstein's actions hadn't caused the business to fail or
Speaker 1: meaningfully harmed Berlin, he had still become wealthy through its songwriting.
Speaker 1: He just wanted this whole incident to be over with
Speaker 1: and quietly. During and after World War Two, there was
Speaker 1: a shift in the kind of shows that were popular
Speaker 1: on Oadway, moving from things like musical reviews and vaudeville
Speaker 1: shows that had at most a very thin suggestion of
Speaker 1: a plot, kind of holding a bunch of songs together,
Speaker 1: to instead a more narrative form of musical storytelling. These
Speaker 1: kinds of narrative musicals definitely existed before the war, but
Speaker 1: they became a lot popular afterward, and this was especially
Speaker 1: true following the success of Oklahoma, which was the first
Speaker 1: musical written by the duo of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.
Speaker 1: The second Berlin's first foray into rating for this kind
Speaker 1: of musical was Annie Get Your Gun In, which was
Speaker 1: about Annie Oakley. This was something Dorothy Fields had been
Speaker 1: working on with Rogerson Hammerstein as producers. The plan was
Speaker 1: for Fields to write the lyrics and for Jerome Kern
Speaker 1: to write the music, with the spectacular that's my interjection
Speaker 1: ethel Verman in the lead role. But then Kern unexpectedly
Speaker 1: died of a stroke. This was a personal and professional
Speaker 1: loss for many, including Irvan Berlin, who was also upset
Speaker 1: by the realization that Kern was only three years older
Speaker 1: than he was when he died. The team approached Berlin
Speaker 1: about taking Kern's place, which he was willing to do
Speaker 1: only if he also took fields place as lyricist. Fields
Speaker 1: seems to have felt like she had enough to do
Speaker 1: on the show without doing the lyrics. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like she felt she was being forced out in this change.
Speaker 1: But even after she had stepped aside, Berlin still really
Speaker 1: had to be convinced to take the job. He had
Speaker 1: some trepidation about joining the show that he hadn't been
Speaker 1: part of from the start. By this point, a lot
Speaker 1: of his other shows were basically marketed with his name
Speaker 1: at the beginning, like Irving Berlin's Whatever Uh. He also
Speaker 1: just wasn't sure how well he would do at writing
Speaker 1: this kind of material, As many creative ventures are. This
Speaker 1: seems to have been chaotic and stress full, but it
Speaker 1: was also another success. The show opened in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six and it ran for one thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundty seven performances, and it was later made into a film.
Speaker 1: Berlin would later say of writing for Ethel Merman quote,
Speaker 1: I love to write songs for Ethel. It's a little
Speaker 1: like a dress designer getting an extra kick when he
Speaker 1: dreams of a gown for a beautiful woman with a
Speaker 1: perfect figure. Irving Berlin continued to do both creative and
Speaker 1: philanthropic work from there. In ninety eight, during the Berlin Airlift,
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin traveled to West Berlin with past podcast subject
Speaker 1: Bob Hope to perform for the troops who were involved
Speaker 1: with that effort. In nineteen forty nine, he wrote the
Speaker 1: music and lyrics for a musical called Miss Liberty, which
Speaker 1: included setting Emma Lazarus's poem The New Colossus to music.
Speaker 1: Emma Lazarus and that poem also a past episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast. This musical was not a success, though it
Speaker 1: ran for three d and eight performances, but it was
Speaker 1: badly reviewed and a touring show lost money after this
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin became increasingly depressed. His oldest daughter got a
Speaker 1: divorce that year, something that was widely covered in the press,
Speaker 1: and she blamed herself for her father's mental illness, feeling
Speaker 1: like it was because she had let him down. He
Speaker 1: started to recover someone when he started working on another
Speaker 1: show for ethel Merman, this one called Call Me Madam,
Speaker 1: which opened in nineteen fifty, but he continued to experience
Speaker 1: periods of depression and anxiety, and at times he had
Speaker 1: to be hospitalized for treatment. In nineteen fifty four, President
Speaker 1: Dwight Eisenhower presented Irving Berlin with a Congressional Gold Medal
Speaker 1: for God Bless America and other patriotic songs he had written.
Speaker 1: That same year, White Christmas became a movie starring Bing Crosby,
Speaker 1: Danny Kay, Rosemary Clooney, and Barrett Ellen. White Christmas is
Speaker 1: often described as a spiritual successor to Holiday Inn, although
Speaker 1: unlike Holiday Inn, it does not include a black face number.
Speaker 1: It does, however, include a medley that sings about how
Speaker 1: much they love going to menstrual shows. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you gotta take the goodness the bed when you look
Speaker 1: at classic films, for sure, um, and I think critically
Speaker 1: about what they're saying. In nineteen sixty two, Berlin wrote
Speaker 1: his last full length musical, that was Mr President, about
Speaker 1: a fictional US president's personal and political life, and like
Speaker 1: Miss Liberty, it was not a success overall. It was
Speaker 1: poorly reviewed, and it closed after a little more than
Speaker 1: two performances. Yeah. I think they basically got through all
Speaker 1: of their advanced ticket sales and then that was the end.
Speaker 1: This was not the note that Irving Berlin wanted to
Speaker 1: end his career on. He kept wanting to just write
Speaker 1: one more successful musical, or put together one last review
Speaker 1: at the music box theater, or write one more hit song.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, he received a Tony Award for
Speaker 1: quote his distinguished contribution to the musical theater for these
Speaker 1: many years. But this did not really lift his spirits.
Speaker 1: He increasingly felt obsolete and out of touch with changing
Speaker 1: musical tastes and probably social morays. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life, he said, quote, it was as if I
Speaker 1: owned a store and people no longer wanted to buy
Speaker 1: what I had to sell. Music changed to the Beatles
Speaker 1: and other groups reached audiences I couldn't. It was time
Speaker 1: to close up shop, and since he was in his
Speaker 1: seventies with a career that had started at the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, many of his longtime friends, colleagues,
Speaker 1: and collaborators had died. He also outlived all of his siblings,
Speaker 1: the last of whom died in night. He had taken
Speaker 1: up painting, and he spent more of his time on
Speaker 1: that while becoming more reclusive and generally withdrawing from public life.
Speaker 1: In nine seventy r Ving Berlin was inducted into the
Speaker 1: Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and in nineteen seventy three he
Speaker 1: gave his last public formants. This was at the White House,
Speaker 1: singing God Bless America for more than five hundred American
Speaker 1: POWs from the Vietnam War. After retiring from writing and performing,
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin donated his transposing piano to the Smithsonian, and
Speaker 1: he donated his World War One military uniform to the
Speaker 1: Museum of American Jewish Military History. In nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: President Gerald Ford awarded Irving Berlin the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
Speaker 1: but he was not at the ceremony and no one
Speaker 1: represented him there. The same was true of two other honorees.
Speaker 1: One of those was Georgia O'Keefe and the other was
Speaker 1: Alexander Calder, who was awarded the medal posthumously. When Irving
Speaker 1: Berlin turned a hundred on May eleventh, a tribute concert
Speaker 1: was held in his honor at Carnegie Hall, Although he
Speaker 1: did not personally attend. This concert was later aired as
Speaker 1: a television broadcast that won two Emmy Awards. This concert
Speaker 1: had a star studded cast, including Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Leonard Bernstein,
Speaker 1: Natalie Cole, Nell Carter, Jerry Orbach, Madeleine con Willie Nelson, Ray, Charles,
Speaker 1: and be Arthur, among many others. Shirley McLean made a
Speaker 1: joke that they couldn't sing Happy Birthday because that was
Speaker 1: the one song he didn't Right before, she sang There's
Speaker 1: No Business Like show Business. That was another song from
Speaker 1: the musical, and to Get Your Gun and There's No
Speaker 1: Business Like Show Business also later became part of a
Speaker 1: movie musical by the same name. A couple of months later,
Speaker 1: on July, Irving Berlin's wife, Ellen Mackie Berlynn, died. They
Speaker 1: had been married for sixty two years. Irving had a
Speaker 1: stroke the day after Christmas that year, and he was
Speaker 1: not expected to survive, but he did recover. He died
Speaker 1: on September twenty two, nine eight nine, at the age
Speaker 1: of a hundred and one. Over the course of his career,
Speaker 1: he had written more than nine hundred songs. I saw
Speaker 1: some totals that were much greater than that, and that
Speaker 1: seems a little low to me, honestly. He also wrote
Speaker 1: the music and lyrics for nineteen musicals and scores for
Speaker 1: eighteen movies. According to the Guinness Book of World Records,
Speaker 1: Bing Crosby's recording of White Christmas is still the best
Speaker 1: selling album of all time. One quote that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot and discussions of Irving Berlin's life and work
Speaker 1: is from Jerome Kern, who wrote it in a letter
Speaker 1: to biographer Alexander Wolcott. In so this quote does not
Speaker 1: really reflect the complexities of his work that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in this episode, but it does really show how
Speaker 1: people regarded him in the early twentieth century, Kern wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is
Speaker 1: American music. As part of the same letter, he also
Speaker 1: said quote, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the
Speaker 1: people manners and life of his time, and in turn
Speaker 1: gives these impressions back to the world simplified, clarified, glorified. Uh.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of feelings about Irving Berlin. He
Speaker 1: has a lot of songs that I love. I enjoy
Speaker 1: watching White Christmas at Christmas Time, even though that movie
Speaker 1: has simultaneously aged beautifully and terribly. Like, yeah, I tend
Speaker 1: to focus a lot on the clothes, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I acknowledge that that part's there, but that is not
Speaker 1: what this movie is about for me. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: knew we were going to have to talk a lot
Speaker 1: about black face in these two episodes, but I did
Speaker 1: not really realize that there was going to be a
Speaker 1: part where he was stridently defending the use of black
Speaker 1: face and the people telling him like, no, seriously, dude,
Speaker 1: we don't do this anymore. So anyway, we'll talk some
Speaker 1: more about personal stuff and behind the scenes. On Friday,
Speaker 1: I have listener mail from Jennifer Uh and Jennifer wrote, Hey,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, I love the podcast and have my
Speaker 1: PhD and s Y M HC and have a shart
Speaker 1: to prove it. I just finished listening to the episode
Speaker 1: on Charles Drew, which was great. At the end of
Speaker 1: the podcast, talking about the American Red Cross band on
Speaker 1: donated blood from men who have sex with men triggered
Speaker 1: the memory for me that the Canadian Blood Services recently
Speaker 1: in April lifted the ban on these men from donating.
Speaker 1: They have instituted protocols to have this blood closely tested
Speaker 1: for HIV and other blood borne illnesses. This is a
Speaker 1: great move forward for blood collection in Canada. And then
Speaker 1: there's a link to an article on this. Included with
Speaker 1: this email is a picture of my house panther Batman
Speaker 1: being a diva at having his picture taken. He is
Speaker 1: both handsome and very snugly. Thank you for all the
Speaker 1: entertainment you provide, Jennifer, so that that's correct. I did
Speaker 1: not know this, but the Canadian Blood Services did just
Speaker 1: change their policy in April on this. Their policy has
Speaker 1: still gotten some some criticism. Um like we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the behind the scenes on our chart also
Speaker 1: Drew episode, it is focused on behaviors instead of broadly
Speaker 1: banning all like all men who have sex with men
Speaker 1: and all people who may have had sex with a
Speaker 1: man who has had sex with a man, And instead
Speaker 1: of looking at behaviors that people have criticized that some
Speaker 1: of these behaviors still could be discriminatory. So, um, while
Speaker 1: that's definitely a change that seems to be generally favorable,
Speaker 1: it is still one that people have had criticisms of.
Speaker 1: But thank you for letting us know about that, Jennifer
Speaker 1: Uh if you would like to send us a note
Speaker 1: about this or any other podcasts were at history podcasts
Speaker 1: that I heart radio dot com. And we're all over
Speaker 1: social media at miss in History. Um, that'ster. We'll find
Speaker 1: our Facebook, Twitter, interest in Instagram, and you can subscribe
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