Quarter Century

(See front cover)

In Manhattan one afternoon last week, a dark-skinned crickety little man jumped from a taxi into a Broadway barber shop, had himself shaved, dashed for his office, summoned a stenographer and in a plaintive singsong voice dictated a dozen lines of verse. He read them over ruefully as he paced the floor. His subject was old songs and he was worried for fear it would sound conceited to say:

I'm proud to have written a few That still are remembered by you.

Irving Berlin was celebrating his 25th year as a songwriter by putting on a radio revue, sponsored by Gulf Refining Co. (Sundays 9-9:30 p.m. E. D. S. T.). The latest lyric was to introduce "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and "Always," his two favorites. For the five broadcasts there were 100 Berlin songs. Three weeks ago the programs began with a smashing song parade (see box), left millions of listeners marveling not only at Berlin's record for hits but also at the way he has survived the changing fashions. Many an oldtime songwriter can stir up sentimental memories. Irving Berlin's parade marched proudly and vigorously into 1934, ended with a medley from As Thousands Cheer, the biggest theatrical success since Depression.

A man would need to be even more modest than Irving Berlin not to be proud of As Thousands Cheer, with its sure-fire title, its quick topical lines on which Moss Hart collaborated, its lyrics and music which Berlin wrote alone, varying his mood until it was hard to believe that the same man had written gentle, reminiscent "Easter Parade" and stomping Harlemy "Heat Wave." The box-office success of As Thousands Cheer beats that of Of Thee I Sing, the 1932 Pulitzer Prize-winning show for which George Gershwin wrote the music. It is running far ahead of Jerome Kern's Roberta, although no single show tune is selling so well as "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," Roberta's lifesaver.

Irving Berlin is proud of having set a record in the theatre's lean time, proud of having written a fast, popular show at 46, when most songwriters' careers are over. But deep in his heart he has a warmer feeling for the first Music Box Revue ("Say It With Music"). And never has he been so proud as when in 1910 he was able to buy his mother a hard shiny set of parlor furniture with the royalties from "My Wife's Gone to the Country" and "Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon."

The previous years had been hard for young Irving Berlin, born Israel Baline in Molgne, Russia. He was the youngest of eight children. His father was a cantor. First thing he remembers is lying on a blanket on the side of a road while his home and half the village burned to the ground. The family drifted to New York where Father Baline got irregular work certifying meat for kosher butcher shops. He died when "Izzy" was eight. Four sisters went on doing bead work in an East Side basement home. An older brother worked in a sweat shop. For two years "Izzy" went to public school, sold newspapers on the side. But on Saturday nights he was rankled to see that the other children had earned more money than he to put in their mother's apron. At 14 he decided he was a burden, ran away.

All Izzy Baline was equipped with was a thin pleasant voice and a sad way of singing which he had learned from his cantor father. He made for a Bowery saloon, wriggled under the swinging doors and sang "The Mansion of Aching Hearts'' until he had picked up enough pennies for a 10-c- night's lodging. Not long after he got a $5-a-week job "busking"* for the Keaton family at Tony Pastor's vaudeville theatre on 14th Street. The Keatons had a young son named Buster, whom they threw back & forth, bounced against the scenery. But once during their act they would pause to plug a song and then it was Izzy Baline's turn to stand up in the balcony and lead them on to singing it again. When young Buster Keaton acquired Hollywood fame he had himself incorporated and Songwriter Irving Berlin was one of the first to buy his stock. All through Depression when railroad dividends and Anaconda copper failed him Irving Berlin steadily collected revenue from Buster Keaton Inc.

Uptown New York heard of Izzy Baline when he was a singing waiter at Nigger Mike's Chinatown saloon. Herbert Bayard Swope, who later became editor of the New York World, went there on a slumming expedition with Prince Louis of Battenberg, returned to his paper and wrote a piece about the waiter who shied from a handsome tip. Nigger Mike, a dark-skinned Russian Jew like Berlin, had a way of borrowing from the till when drink was on him. One night he took $25, blamed Izzy Baline and fired him. A year later the first Berlin song was published. It was called "Marie From Sunny Italy," signed I. Berlin, an approximation of the way the Bowery pronounced Baline.

Year after that, in 1909, Irving Berlin decided he was made. A Tin-Pan Alley firm hired him as a $25-a-week lyric writer. Fussy English words were beyond him. (His mother stuck to Yiddish until she died.) But he had a gift for blending the vernacular with tunes that were catchy and easy to sing. In less than five years after he left Nigger Mike's the ragtime craze had reached its peak. And all the hit tunes seemed to be Irving Berlin's. There was "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Everybody's Doin' It Now," "That Mysterious Rag,"'"The Ragtime Violin.". . .

Irving Berlin's song titles tell part of his story. When he was 23 he married Dorothy Goetz, sister of Producer Ray Goetz who later married Irene Bordoni. On a Cuban honeymoon young Mrs. Berlin caught typhoid fever, died five months later. The young widower tried in vain to produce another good, rowdy song. His next big hit was "When I Lost You."

In 1917 Irving Berlin was drafted, sent to Camp Upton in Yaphank, L. I. In his radio program fortnight ago there was a great sound of groaning and creaking cots while he re-enacted the agony which prompted him to write "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning."

Back to Broadway, after the Follies of 1919 and 1920 ("Mandy," "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody"), an ideal name for a theatre suddenly popped into Irving Berlin's head. In the middle of the night he tackled Producer Sam Harris, a friend from his East Side days, to say: "If you ever want to build a theatre for musical comedy, why not call it the Music Box?"

The Music Box Revues ran for four years before Irving Berlin met Ellin Mackay, pretty young daughter of Clarence Hungerford Mackay, board chairman of Postal Telegraph & Cable Corp. and an ardent Catholic. Social New York made a great to-do when it discovered that Mr. Mackay's daughter was serious about the songwriter who made no bones about his East Side background. Irving Berlin went quietly about his business, wrote "Always," the song which coincided with their engagement. If it were true that lately he helped his father-in-law to the tune of $1,000,000 Irving Berlin would be the last to admit it. But the two are reconciled. When time allows they have dinner together once a week. And Grandfather Mackay takes pride in the two Berlin children: Linda Louise, 2; and Mary Ellin, 7, who hears her father's broadcasts on phonograph records because the Gulf Oil programs go on after her bedtime.

"Always" is typical of the simplicity Berlin works for, unless he happens to be writing a variety piece for a show. Sophisticates may prefer the rhythmic tricks of George Gershwin, the tongue-twisting verses of Gershwin's Brother Ira. But running his own publishing house for 15 years has taught Berlin that people buy music they can play and sing. Irving Berlin is the very active head of Irving Berlin Inc. He may work all night in his East End Avenue apartment. (Lately he has been busy on the broadcasts, planning a revue for next autumn.) He may occasionally flee the city for Nassau or Bermuda, any place to sit in the sun. But most afternoons he is hustling downtown, first to the barber who for 23 years has combed his hair and shaved him, then to the office. He has seen the music-publishing business in three distinct phases: 1) when songs sold for a dime and made little profit; 2) when the price reached 30-c- and people gladly paid it; 3) when radio came along, cut the sale of a hit from 2,000,000 to 200,000 copies, the life of a song from a year to two months. Berlin, the businessman, has a log kept to show the number of times his songs are broadcast over the three major networks. But he forgets to call for it the days he arrives downtown with a song in his head. Then he paces the floor and dictates the lyric, rushes to his big old piano, strikes an F sharp chord and painstakingly picks out the tune while a musical stenographer writes down the notes. Irving Berlin never had a music lesson. He plays by ear, in only one key. If he wants the effect of another, he turns a crank and the keyboard shifts.

Song enthusiasts will argue interminably over the respective merits of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin, the important triumvirate in the U. S. songwriting industry. But comparisons are inept. George Gershwin, more technically ambitious than the others, has more musically ambitious enthusiasts. Jerome Kern has never claimed to be a popular songwriter. Like Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, he writes wholly for shows. His charming music would fit well into the best of Viennese operettas. When Alexander Woollcott wrote his biography of Irving Berlin (1924), he asked Jerome Kern to supply a colleague's estimate. Kern was reminded of Wagner because Berlin, like the operatic titan, "molds and blends and ornaments his words and music at one and the same time, each being the outgrowth of the other." Kern could have carried the likeness further. Wagner, too, was a shrewd businessman. And his inspiration never seemed to run dry.

*Busker--stage slang for a hireling who echoes a stage song from the gallery.

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