An icon of Tin Pan Alley, Irving Berlin ranked among the most popular and beloved American songwriters during the opening decades of the twentieth century. As a co-founder of the performance-rights organization ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), he supplied a string of ubiquitous standards that included “God Bless America” and “White Christmas.” Commissioned for Bing Crosby in the 1942 motion picture Holiday Inn, the latter title became the best-selling record ever released and remains the most-recorded Christmas song in history. Numerous Berlin compositions originated in stage musicals and films yet continued to thrive long after those productions faded from view.
Israel Beilin entered the world on May 11, 1888, somewhere within the Russian Empire; although the precise location remains uncertain, his family left Tolochin in what is now Belarus and reached New York City in 1893. Upon arrival at Ellis Island the surname Beilin was altered to Baline. The Balines spent their earliest months in a single-room basement apartment on Monroe Street in the Lower East Side before relocating to a three-bedroom tenement on Cherry Street. After his father’s death a few years later, thirteen-year-old Baline took a series of odd jobs that eventually included street performing and work as a singing waiter in Chinatown, where he lingered after closing time to practice on the establishment’s piano. Entirely self-taught at the keyboard and accustomed to composing in the key of F sharp, he depended on assistants to notate his music and preferred transposing pianos whose levers shifted the entire keyboard. He first gained employment as a lyricist, publishing “Marie from Sunny Italy” in 1907 and adopting the name Irving Berlin in place of Israel Baline. His initial Broadway credits appeared in Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, and before he turned twenty-three he scored his breakthrough success with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911.
In 1912 Berlin wed Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz; she succumbed to typhoid fever six months afterward, inspiring his first widely embraced ballad, “When I Lost You.” A steady stream of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway assignments followed, among them additional editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, while 1921 saw the opening of the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street, which Berlin and producer Sam Harris constructed expressly for the Music Box Revues.
Berlin married heiress and author Ellin Mackay in 1926, and the following year his material reached the stage in The Cocoanuts, George S. Kaufman’s book for the Marx Brothers; he also released “Blue Skies,” a hit for bandleader Ben Selvin that figured prominently in the 1927 Al Jolson vehicle The Jazz Singer, the first full-length sound film to present synchronized singing and dialogue.
“Puttin’ on the Ritz” premiered in the 1930 film of the same name and topped the charts for Harry Richman; Dutch pop singer Taco revived the number into the Top Five once more in 1983. Working with writer Moss Hart, Berlin unveiled the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer, which introduced “Easter Parade,” a song later reprised by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn and granted its own screen adaptation starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in 1948. Further milestones included the 1935 Astaire–Rogers picture Top Hat, whose centerpiece “Cheek to Cheek” reached number one and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. Three years afterward the musical film Alexander’s Ragtime Band appeared with Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, and Ethel Merman in the cast and incorporated several of Berlin’s most celebrated compositions up to that point.
Holiday Inn reached theaters in the summer of 1942, unveiling “White Christmas” and “Happy Holiday” along with other seasonal numbers; the former ultimately sold more than 100 million copies, becoming the century’s biggest commercial success. This Is the Army opened on Broadway on July 4, 1942, with Berlin himself portraying Sgt. Irving Berlin; he also appeared in the 1943 screen version, which showcased Kate Smith performing “God Bless America.” Originally drafted during World War I and revised in 1938, Smith’s recording became an emblematic anthem of World War II. President Truman awarded Berlin the Army’s Medal of Merit in 1945, and the song served for decades as an unofficial alternate national anthem.
When his close friend Jerome Kern died suddenly in late 1945, Berlin stepped in to supply the score for the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun, which proved his longest-running stage success. Several of its numbers charted, among them “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “They Say It’s Wonderful.” A film adaptation starring Betty Hutton followed in 1950, and the 1954 CinemaScope production There’s No Business Like Show Business assembled a roster of Berlin’s best-known hits. That same year Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” anew for the Paramount picture White Christmas, twelve years after its debut. President Eisenhower presented Berlin with a Congressional Gold Medal in 1954 in recognition of his patriotic works. After an attempt at retirement, Berlin returned to Broadway in 1962 with the musical comedy Mr. President; aside from one contribution to the 1966 Ethel Merman revival of Annie Get Your Gun, he then withdrew permanently from songwriting yet remained in New York City.
Worldwide observances marked Berlin’s centennial in 1988, among them a Carnegie Hall benefit concert and ASCAP tribute broadcast on CBS that featured Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, and Willie Nelson. Later that year his wife of sixty-two years died, survived by Berlin and their three daughters and their families. Irving Berlin passed away peacefully at home one year later at the age of 101.
George Gershwin once described Berlin as “the greatest songwriter that has ever lived,” while Jerome Kern declared that “Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music.” Recognition continued into the new century: a U.S. postage stamp honoring Berlin appeared in 2002. Two years afterward the stage musical Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, adapted from the 1954 film, opened in St. Louis before reaching Broadway in 2008 and the West End in 2014. Drawing on the 1942 original, Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn arrived on Broadway in 2016.
