Irving Berlin, Part 2

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is
part two of our episode on Irving Berlin, which I
did not intend to have as a two partner, but

(00:23):
that's what happened. If you start with this episode and
you skip the first one, you're gonna be missing more
than three decades of his life, plus just a lot
of context about the music industry in the United States
in the first half of the twentieth century. Also, Irving
Berlin was really prolific, and so we cannot possibly mention
every single song or even every single show that he

(00:46):
worked on. So if you have a favorite that just
doesn't come up, we're sorry, just not possible to do
all of it. Also, as a heads up, we are
going to talk about the death of an infant in
this episode in more than just a passing reference to
a baby who died in Irving Berlin met Ellen Mackie.

(01:11):
He was thirty six and she was the twenty one
year old daughter of financier Clarence Mackie. Clarence did not
approve of this relationship. In addition to the gap in
their ages, Irving was Jewish and the Mackis were Catholic.
When Irving sought their blessing to propose, Ellen's mother gave it,
but her father arranged for Ellen to take a prolonged

(01:33):
trip in an effort to separate them. Berlin was famous
and the Mackies were rich, so all of this was
kind of big news, with reporters focused on their seemingly
star cross relationship and Clarence's objection to it. As all
of this was going on, Berlin wrote a musical for
the Marx brothers that was The Coconuts. Berlin wrote the

(01:56):
music and the lyrics, while George S. Kaufman wrote the book.
This show was set in a hotel in Florida during
its nineteen twenties land boom. Groucho Marx played the role
of the hotel proprietor with Zeppo, his assistant, Chico, and
Harpoh were conmen trying to rob the place. There were
also other characters, including another con man. Although this show

(02:19):
was really a lot more about the comedic sort of
chaos that the Marx brothers were known for more than
for the actual plot. It's kind of any Marks Brothers property. Right,
this is a movie, but really it's about poking each
other in the eyes, that's correct. The Coconuts ran for
two years on Broadway, followed by a tour and then

(02:40):
a film. Although the Marx Brothers hated the film so
much when they saw it that they tried to buy
it back and keep it from being released, it was
released over their objections and was generally well reviewed, and
it was a big financial success. On January four, Irving
Berlin and Ellen mack he got married at City Hall

(03:02):
in New York. Ellen's family did not know this was happening.
The witnesses for the couple were Irving's longtime friend and colleague,
Max Winslow and his wife, as well as Irving's publicity manager.
When Ellen's father found out about this, he was furious.
He cut her out of her inheritance except for a

(03:22):
trust that he could not legally touch. Ellen and her
father did not speak to one another for the next
three years. Irving and Ellen's first child was born on November.
They named her Mary Ellen, and how to raise her
and any other children they might have was the first
big fight of Irving and Ellen's marriage. Specifically, they argued

(03:46):
about whether to raise the children Jewish or Catholic. Ultimately,
they decided on raising them as Jewish, but teaching them
about Catholicism when they got a little older, and then
allowing them to decide for themselves how they wanted to.
Of various accounts of their home life, describing corporating elements
from both traditions, like having both a Hanakah manora and

(04:08):
a Christmas tree around those holidays. Yeah, Mary Ellen, I
think is the one who wrote a memoir later on
uh and described all of the holidays as being very
important in their household. Christmas, though, quickly became a sad
holiday for the family. Irving and Ellen had a son,
Irving Berlin Jr. But he died at the age of

(04:30):
only four weeks. He was found dead in his crib
on Christmas morning. The term sudden infant death syndrome was
not coined until nineteen sixte but it really describes what
happened to Irving Junior. He died unexpectedly with no other
explanation for what happened. The tragic loss of Irving Jr.

(04:51):
Is what finally led Clarence Mackie to reconcile with his daughter.
Aside from their grief over the loss of their son,
Irving and Ellen's struggled in some other ways as well.
It's very very clear that they loved each other deeply,
but Irving had trouble writing music with newborns and toddlers
in the house, and his nighttime hours did not line

(05:13):
up with his family's needs. And also, while he considered
himself to be pretty active, he quickly got a sense
that becoming a parent at forty was a lot different
from becoming a parent at twenty or even thirty would
have been. The film The Jazz Singer debuted in which
marked the start of the shift in the film industry

(05:35):
from silent films to talkies, and Irving started doing more
work for movies. That meant that he often needed to
be in Hollywood, and he and Ellen had to figure
out whether to move the family back and forth, or
whether to keep the children in New York, where, in
the Berlin's opinion, they had better schools and a stronger community.

(05:55):
They made it work, though, and over the years they
had two more children, Linda Louis in nineteen thirty two
and Elizabeth Irving in nineteen thirty six. Of course, this
also means that their family was growing during the Great Depression,
which was at its worst from ninety nine to nineteen
thirty three, but it continued to have economic effects for
years afterwards. By starting his own publishing house and owning

(06:19):
the rights to a lot of the music he'd written,
Berlin's income was protected in the long term, but in
the short term he lost a lot of his savings
and investments. Ellen's trust was not invested in the stock
market and was mostly protected, so the family still had
enough money to live on, but Irving really hated the
fact that they were having to rely almost entirely on

(06:41):
his wife's money. Ellen's father also lost most of his
fortune in the stock market collapse. The depression also affected
all the industries that he was trying to work in. Waterson, Berlin,
and Snyder went bankrupt in nineteen nine. In nineteen thirty,
Berlin wrote a score for a film called Reaching for

(07:01):
the Moon, but in the face of spiraling financial costs
and personality conflicts and the financial impact of the Great Depression,
United Artists made big changes to this movie that included
cutting out most of Berlin's work. Berlin tended to take
criticism and rejection pretty personally for his whole career, and

(07:22):
that was the case here. Even though these cuts really
do seem to have been more about money, maybe a
little more about personality conflicts, not about the quality of
the work that he had written. He became really depressed
and he struggled to regain his confidence afterward. Although times
were tight, Berlin did have some success during the Great Depression.

(07:44):
In three he wrote a review called as Thousands Cheer.
Two of his better known songs were written for this show,
Easter Parade and heat Wave. There were also satirical sketches
based on real world figures, many of whom have been
covered on our podcast, including Amy Simple, McPherson, John d. Rockefeller,

(08:04):
and Josephine Baker. Act two of this show began with
an anti lynching song called supper Time, sung by Ethel Waters,
who also sang three other songs in the show. This
was the first time on Broadway that a black performer
was given equal billing with white co stars, and there
were people who saw this as a problem, both the

(08:27):
content of the song supper Time and the expectations that
white performers treat Waters as their equal. Three of her
white co stars refused to take a bow with her
at the end of the show, and Irving Berlin's response
to that was, in that case, there need be no
bows at all. They did have bows. He basically forced

(08:49):
her colleagues to treat her as equal to them. I
would love it if she got the only one, but
that's just me. That also sure would have been great.
This show wasn't a normal success, Running for four hundred
performances at Berlin's Music Box Theater, followed by a tour
and Easter Parade, was a big seller as sheet music.

(09:09):
This really helped Irving Berlin start to recover financially in
the later years of the depression. On thirty four, Irving
Berlin was on the cover of Time magazine with the
descriptor quote, Jerome Kern was reminded of Wagner. So Jerome
Kern was a composer and a songwriter whose work included

(09:29):
Oldman River and The Way You Look Tonight and the
music for the musical show Boat. Kern had made this
comment about Irving Berlin reminding him of Wagner a decade prior,
but by nine thirty four this had become a pretty
jarring comparison. Wagner was deeply anti Semitic, and Wagner had

(09:50):
earned vocal praise from Adolf Hitler, who by this point
was ruling Germany as a dictator. We are coming up
on one of Irving Berlin's most famou his songs, and
eventually to World War Two, and we will get to
all of that after a sponsor break. In the nineteen thirties,

(10:15):
a lot of Irving Berlin's work was in film, including
the movie Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
in five. This was the start of a long friendship
between Irving and a Stare, and in nineteen thirty six,
Irving was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song
for the song Cheek to Cheek. This oscar wound up
going to Lullaby of Broadway from the movie Gold Diggers,

(10:39):
and Irving Berlin thought that was a pretty big insult.
In ninety seven, the Berlin family planned a vacation to Alaska.
This was a trip that involved a cruise. This trip
was long enough that Berlin needed to be able to
keep working, so he planned to take his transposing piano
with him. This presented a problem when I turned out

(11:00):
that his transposing piano would not fit on the ship.
He was informed that any size grand piano would work
as long as the legs were removed to get it
on board, so he may do with that. I just
find that story just delightful, like wild. The musical film

(11:23):
Alexander's Ragtime Band came out in y eight and it
was named after Berlin's hit song from nineteen eleven that
we talked about in part one. Berlin wrote the script
in collaboration with Catherine scola At, Lamar Trotty and Richard Sherman,
and it included several of his most popular songs. In
this film, Alexander is a band leader who wants to

(11:45):
make people think of ragtime as a more legitimate style
of music, and through his story, the music gives a
general history of the musical styles of ragtime and jazz.
This movie was pretty well reviewed, but this is also
a movie was about the history of ragtime and jazz,
which are two musical styles that were developed by black

(12:05):
people that did not include any black people. I haven't
seen this movie, but looking at castless like, I don't
I think, not at all, like not even in like
a background role. None. Yeah, I haven't seen it either.
This film also faced allegations of plagiarism. Marie Cooper diyke
House filed suit against both Berlin and twentieth Century Fox,

(12:29):
alleging that the plot was the same as her unpublished
novel Love Girl. She had submitted this novel to agents
and filmmakers in Hollywood the year before the movie was made.
This legal case went on for years, with a judge
ruling that the movie's plot was the same as the
book in but two years later this was overturned because

(12:50):
there was no evidence that Berlin or any of the
other screenwriters involved had ever seen the novel, and that
none of them knew any of the literary agents that
the book had been submitted to. While the earlier ruling
had focused on similarities between the book and the movie,
the ruling in the appeal noted some key differences. Quote

(13:11):
the book is late in part in the same period
as the picture, but it is about the loves of
the love girl and her several lovers, and there is
no note of music in it. The pictures real interest
and value as to every scene and action in it,
are in the music. Its presentation requires an hour and

(13:31):
three quarters, and each minute is filled with action attuned
to the music to return to. One of Irving Berlin's
most famous songs made its debut that Armistice Day that year,
that was November eleven, commemorating the armistice at the end
of World War One. Of course, by this point parts

(13:52):
of the world were at war again and tensions were
escalating in others. The Second Sino Japanese War had started
in July of nineteen seven, and Germany had annexed Austria
in March of ninety eight. That September, Germany, Italy, Great Britain,
and France had signed the Munich Agreement, forcing Czechoslovakia to
see it it's predominantly German speaking border region to Germany.

(14:17):
This was done under threat of war with Germany and
without the involvement of Czechoslovakia. In the face of all
of this, Kate Smith had asked Irving Berlin for a
new song for her Armistice Day performance, one that wound
up taking place the day after the November program also
known as Crystal Knocked, which took place over November ninth

(14:38):
and tenth of nineteen thirty eight. We covered this program
on the podcast. In the song that Berlin gave her
was God Bless America, which he had originally worked on
to include in Yip Yip yap Haank, but had not
been satisfied with at that time. One lyric that he
changed as he was working on this for Kate Smith
was stand beside her and guide her through the night

(15:01):
with the light from above through the night. Was originally
to the right meaning toward what was right, but he
made the change out of concerns that people would interpret
right as instead having a political meaning. This song was
an immediate hit, becoming one of Kate Smith's signature songs.
It got huge amounts of radio play, and its sheet

(15:22):
music became a bestseller. People called for God Bless America
to be made the national anthem and replaced the star
spangled banner that had been adopted just seven years prior.
Among other things. Like many of Berlin's songs, God Bless
America was much easier to sing. But this song also
faced an anti Semitic xenophobic backlash as people question how

(15:46):
a Jewish immigrant had the right to call on God
to bless the United States. The ku Klux Klan called
for a boycott. Others disliked this song for different reasons,
including folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie. Guthrie found the
song to be too uncritically patriotic and too optimistic, especially

(16:06):
given the state of the world and how many people
were still financially really struggling in the wake of the
Great Depression. This is also one of those songs that
was just on the radio constantly. I know we've all
had that song to sign the radio constantly. We just
are so sick of it. Guthrie felt like it was
impossible to get away from God Bless America, so in
nineteen forty he wrote a song of his own, and

(16:29):
that song was This Land Is Your Land, which followed
the same basic tune as two different Carter Family songs.
Those songs were When the World's On Fire, which came
out in nineteen thirty, and Little Darling Palamine, which came
out in five Guthrie performed this song a lot, as
did Pete Seeger, who has come up on the show recently.

(16:49):
One of the ironies about all of this is that
Guthrie's criticism of God Bless America included what he saw
as its uncritical elevation of the United States, but he
wound up cutting out the most critical verses of this
land is Your Land. In most early recordings and sheet
music printings, one verse that was usually cut was as

(17:11):
I went walking, I saw a sign there, and on
the sign that said no trespassing. But on the other
side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for
you and me. Another was in the squares of the city,
in the shadow of the steeple by the relief office.
I seen my people as they stood there, hungry. I
stood there asking is this land made for you and me?

(17:33):
The verses that were left meeting, the ones that people
became most familiar with, were mostly the happier ones about
endless skyways and golden valleys and diamond deserts and wheat
fields waving not especially critical. Also, Woody Guthrie was a
white man from Oklahoma writing a song about this land
is My Land. So sure, Godless America can come across

(17:57):
as a glorification of American optionalism. That's a fair point,
Woody Guthrie. But also, this land is Your Land can
really read like a tribute to settler colonialism. But your
return to Irving Berlin towards the end of the nineteen thirties,
he bought a place in the cat skills that needed
a lot of fixing up, and he had it renovated

(18:19):
so the family could spend their summers there. In nineteen forty,
he set up a trust to divert all of the
royalties from God Bless America to the Girl Scouts and
the Boy Scouts. In nineteen forty, Irving Berlin finished writing
one of his biggest hits, and that was the song
White Christmas. Soon he was also working on a movie
to put it in. That movie was Holiday in When

(18:42):
he talked to producers and executives about this movie in
the works, he said he already had a big song
for it, which needed to be included in the contract
for the film. The first public radio broadcast of White
Christmas was on Christmas Eve ninety one on Bing Crosby's
weekly radio program, and us was just weeks after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. White Christmas can sound like

(19:05):
a really wistful or even sad song, depending on how
it's performed, and that's been interpreted as tracing back to
the death of his infant son on Christmas of The
movie Holiday m came out in nineteen two, starring Bing Crosby,
Fred Astaire Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale, and Walter Abel. In

(19:27):
addition to making sure White Christmas was included in plans
for the film, Berlin had also worked to make sure
Bing Crosby was cast in it. In ninety three, the
song White Christmas won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
This movie came out in August, and Berlin had planned
to start marketing the sheet music for White Christmas closer

(19:48):
to Christmas, but it became an immediate bestseller, with six
hundred thousand copies sold by November of that year. Holiday
Inn also caused some controversy. One of its musical umbers
is called Abraham and in the context of the movie,
it's a song that's meant to be performed on Abraham
Lincoln's birthday, and it is also a black faced menstrual number.

(20:10):
Berlin was also criticized for some of this song's lyrics,
specifically the use of one adjective that black audiences found offensive.
I don't feel like we need to repeat with that
adjective was in the show. A Baltimore newspaper called The
African American called Berlin out on this, and in response,
he changed the lyric in future printings of the sheet music,

(20:33):
saying quote, no song is important enough to offend a
whole race. I should never have released it had I
known the epithet was objectionable. This was not Irving Berlin's
last controversy about how he approached race in his work,
and we're going to talk more about that after we
take a quick little sponsor break. In December of ninety one,

(21:04):
the War Department asked Irving Berlin to work on a
patriotic military musical along the same lines of Yip Hip
Yap Hank during World War One that would be performed
to raise funds and also to raise the morale of
the troops. And the results of that request was This
is the Army. That is an effort that was simultaneously

(21:24):
progressive and regressive in terms of race. In terms of
its progressiveness, Berlin insisted on casting black performers for this
show at a time when the U. S. Army was
racially segregated. The Army would continue to be racially segregated
until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order one in nine.

(21:47):
This was the only racially integrated uniformed Army unit in
the Second World War, and that was because Irving Berlin
had demanded it. Berlin also pressured theaters where the show
was being performed to integrate. The same newspaper that had
criticized his language and holiday In published a piece titled
Irving Berlin cracks DC's Jim Crow Law after he forced

(22:09):
a Washington, d c. Theater to admit a black woman
who bought a ticket. However, he also had a huge
argument with director Ezra Stone about the show's opener, which
Berlin envisioned as involving the entire cast of a hundred
and ten men in black face. Stone told him, quote,
I know the heritage of the Menstrul show, those days

(22:32):
are gone. People don't do that anymore, but Berlin continued
to insist that this was how the show should start.
Stone only got him to change his plans by pointing
out the practical issue of getting a hundred and ten
performers out of their black face makeup for the rest
of the show, but Berlin still insisted on having a

(22:54):
different number with a smaller group of performers in black face.
Later on, Berlin's conflicts with Stone and others during this
show did not end. There there was a lot of
haggling over money, with Berlin's financial manager, Saul Bornstein, horrified
at Berlin's plans to donate all of his proceeds from
the music sales. There was some unfortunate back and forth

(23:17):
between Berlin, Stone, and others about whether there were too
many Jewish people in the cast, something that seems particularly
jarring considering that Berlin himself was Jewish. But there were
several overlapping factors here. Berlin was concerned about increasing anti
Semitism in the US and abroad, and about whether having
a predominantly Jewish cast would lead to rumors that they

(23:40):
were in the show to try to get out of
combat duty. One particular tour performance left Berlin feeling like
Stone had intentionally insulted him. Normally, at the end of
the show, Berlin would come out from the wings and
Stone would order the cast to face left where Berlin
was standing. But when they performed in Washington, d see,

(24:00):
President Roosevelt was in a box to the right, so
Stone ordered them to face that way. That meant that
the entire cast turned their backs to Berlin in front
of the President. It was very upset about this, but
it also seems like if they had done the opposite
that would have involved a whole bunch of military men
and uniform simultaneously turning their backs on the president, and

(24:22):
that seems like it would have caused a different problem.
Like the only correct thing to do with the show
would have been to realize what was going on and
changed the blocking totally differently ahead of Diamond, that's not
what happened, or either just say hey, we have to
turn this way. Make it look like you're joining the
cast to face the president their solutives here. Yeah, that's yeah.

(24:44):
This is the Army tour to the US as well
as in Europe and North Africa, and it was eventually
made into a movie. Berlin was with the touring cast
whenever he could be. At various points he had to
leave for both personal reasons and for other commitments. While
they were in London, he met Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
although there is an oft repeated story that this invitation

(25:05):
was an error and that Churchill thought he would be
meeting philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin. Irving Berlin rejoined the
tour for its final performance in nineteen forty five. Gave
a final stage performance of Oh How I Hate to
Get Up in the morning and said that he hoped
he'd never have to write another war song. This is
the Army raised more than six million dollars for the

(25:28):
Army Emergency Relief Fund. I saw some numbers that were
even higher than that, and in ninety five President Harry
Truman awarded Berlin the Medal of Merit for his efforts
on it. In nineteen forty four, the National Conference of
Christians and Jews honored Berlin for quote advancing the aims
of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict. I

(25:50):
feel like the idea of racial conflict here, it's like
very He seems to have been all over the place
on this issue and generally much better at how he
worked with individual performers than like broad issues like not
doing black base anymore. Yeah, it seems like some part
of him wanted to do the correct thing, but he

(26:11):
just kept stepping in it like problematic um. Towards the
end of the war, Berlin ended his business relationship with
Saul Bornstein. It wasn't just because of the conflict over
Berlin wanting to donate his royalties, but also because they're
working relationship had really been deteriorating for years and Berlin
had evidence that Bornstein had been stealing from him. Berlin

(26:34):
never discussed this publicly, and he never pressed any charges.
It seems like he had clear evidence of wrongdoing, but
since Bornstein's actions hadn't caused the business to fail or
meaningfully harmed Berlin, he had still become wealthy through its songwriting.
He just wanted this whole incident to be over with
and quietly. During and after World War Two, there was

(26:56):
a shift in the kind of shows that were popular
on Oadway, moving from things like musical reviews and vaudeville
shows that had at most a very thin suggestion of
a plot, kind of holding a bunch of songs together,
to instead a more narrative form of musical storytelling. These
kinds of narrative musicals definitely existed before the war, but

(27:19):
they became a lot popular afterward, and this was especially
true following the success of Oklahoma, which was the first
musical written by the duo of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.
The second Berlin's first foray into rating for this kind
of musical was Annie Get Your Gun In, which was
about Annie Oakley. This was something Dorothy Fields had been

(27:42):
working on with Rogerson Hammerstein as producers. The plan was
for Fields to write the lyrics and for Jerome Kern
to write the music, with the spectacular that's my interjection
ethel Verman in the lead role. But then Kern unexpectedly
died of a stroke. This was a personal and professional
loss for many, including Irvan Berlin, who was also upset

(28:05):
by the realization that Kern was only three years older
than he was when he died. The team approached Berlin
about taking Kern's place, which he was willing to do
only if he also took fields place as lyricist. Fields
seems to have felt like she had enough to do
on the show without doing the lyrics. It doesn't seem
like she felt she was being forced out in this change.

(28:28):
But even after she had stepped aside, Berlin still really
had to be convinced to take the job. He had
some trepidation about joining the show that he hadn't been
part of from the start. By this point, a lot
of his other shows were basically marketed with his name
at the beginning, like Irving Berlin's Whatever Uh. He also

(28:50):
just wasn't sure how well he would do at writing
this kind of material, As many creative ventures are. This
seems to have been chaotic and stress full, but it
was also another success. The show opened in May of
nineteen forty six and it ran for one thousand, one
hundty seven performances, and it was later made into a film.

(29:12):
Berlin would later say of writing for Ethel Merman quote,
I love to write songs for Ethel. It's a little
like a dress designer getting an extra kick when he
dreams of a gown for a beautiful woman with a
perfect figure. Irving Berlin continued to do both creative and
philanthropic work from there. In ninety eight, during the Berlin Airlift,

(29:32):
Irving Berlin traveled to West Berlin with past podcast subject
Bob Hope to perform for the troops who were involved
with that effort. In nineteen forty nine, he wrote the
music and lyrics for a musical called Miss Liberty, which
included setting Emma Lazarus's poem The New Colossus to music.
Emma Lazarus and that poem also a past episode of

(29:52):
the podcast. This musical was not a success, though it
ran for three d and eight performances, but it was
badly reviewed and a touring show lost money after this
Irving Berlin became increasingly depressed. His oldest daughter got a
divorce that year, something that was widely covered in the press,
and she blamed herself for her father's mental illness, feeling

(30:15):
like it was because she had let him down. He
started to recover someone when he started working on another
show for ethel Merman, this one called Call Me Madam,
which opened in nineteen fifty, but he continued to experience
periods of depression and anxiety, and at times he had
to be hospitalized for treatment. In nineteen fifty four, President

(30:36):
Dwight Eisenhower presented Irving Berlin with a Congressional Gold Medal
for God Bless America and other patriotic songs he had written.
That same year, White Christmas became a movie starring Bing Crosby,
Danny Kay, Rosemary Clooney, and Barrett Ellen. White Christmas is
often described as a spiritual successor to Holiday Inn, although

(30:57):
unlike Holiday Inn, it does not include a black face number.
It does, however, include a medley that sings about how
much they love going to menstrual shows. Yeah, you know
you gotta take the goodness the bed when you look
at classic films, for sure, um, and I think critically
about what they're saying. In nineteen sixty two, Berlin wrote

(31:20):
his last full length musical, that was Mr President, about
a fictional US president's personal and political life, and like
Miss Liberty, it was not a success overall. It was
poorly reviewed, and it closed after a little more than
two performances. Yeah. I think they basically got through all
of their advanced ticket sales and then that was the end.

(31:41):
This was not the note that Irving Berlin wanted to
end his career on. He kept wanting to just write
one more successful musical, or put together one last review
at the music box theater, or write one more hit song.
In nineteen sixty three, he received a Tony Award for
quote his distinguished contribution to the musical theater for these

(32:02):
many years. But this did not really lift his spirits.
He increasingly felt obsolete and out of touch with changing
musical tastes and probably social morays. Towards the end of
his life, he said, quote, it was as if I
owned a store and people no longer wanted to buy
what I had to sell. Music changed to the Beatles

(32:24):
and other groups reached audiences I couldn't. It was time
to close up shop, and since he was in his
seventies with a career that had started at the turn
of the twentieth century, many of his longtime friends, colleagues,
and collaborators had died. He also outlived all of his siblings,
the last of whom died in night. He had taken

(32:45):
up painting, and he spent more of his time on
that while becoming more reclusive and generally withdrawing from public life.
In nine seventy r Ving Berlin was inducted into the
Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and in nineteen seventy three he
gave his last public formants. This was at the White House,
singing God Bless America for more than five hundred American
POWs from the Vietnam War. After retiring from writing and performing,

(33:11):
Irving Berlin donated his transposing piano to the Smithsonian, and
he donated his World War One military uniform to the
Museum of American Jewish Military History. In nineteen seventy seven,
President Gerald Ford awarded Irving Berlin the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
but he was not at the ceremony and no one
represented him there. The same was true of two other honorees.

(33:33):
One of those was Georgia O'Keefe and the other was
Alexander Calder, who was awarded the medal posthumously. When Irving
Berlin turned a hundred on May eleventh, a tribute concert
was held in his honor at Carnegie Hall, Although he
did not personally attend. This concert was later aired as
a television broadcast that won two Emmy Awards. This concert

(33:57):
had a star studded cast, including Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Leonard Bernstein,
Natalie Cole, Nell Carter, Jerry Orbach, Madeleine con Willie Nelson, Ray, Charles,
and be Arthur, among many others. Shirley McLean made a
joke that they couldn't sing Happy Birthday because that was

(34:17):
the one song he didn't Right before, she sang There's
No Business Like show Business. That was another song from
the musical, and to Get Your Gun and There's No
Business Like Show Business also later became part of a
movie musical by the same name. A couple of months later,
on July, Irving Berlin's wife, Ellen Mackie Berlynn, died. They

(34:39):
had been married for sixty two years. Irving had a
stroke the day after Christmas that year, and he was
not expected to survive, but he did recover. He died
on September twenty two, nine eight nine, at the age
of a hundred and one. Over the course of his career,
he had written more than nine hundred songs. I saw
some totals that were much greater than that, and that

(35:01):
seems a little low to me, honestly. He also wrote
the music and lyrics for nineteen musicals and scores for
eighteen movies. According to the Guinness Book of World Records,
Bing Crosby's recording of White Christmas is still the best
selling album of all time. One quote that comes up
a lot and discussions of Irving Berlin's life and work

(35:23):
is from Jerome Kern, who wrote it in a letter
to biographer Alexander Wolcott. In so this quote does not
really reflect the complexities of his work that we've talked
about in this episode, but it does really show how
people regarded him in the early twentieth century, Kern wrote, quote,
Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is

(35:46):
American music. As part of the same letter, he also
said quote, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the
people manners and life of his time, and in turn
gives these impressions back to the world simplified, clarified, glorified. Uh.

(36:06):
I have a lot of feelings about Irving Berlin. He
has a lot of songs that I love. I enjoy
watching White Christmas at Christmas Time, even though that movie
has simultaneously aged beautifully and terribly. Like, yeah, I tend
to focus a lot on the clothes, and I'm like,
I acknowledge that that part's there, but that is not
what this movie is about for me. Yeah. Yeah, I

(36:28):
knew we were going to have to talk a lot
about black face in these two episodes, but I did
not really realize that there was going to be a
part where he was stridently defending the use of black
face and the people telling him like, no, seriously, dude,
we don't do this anymore. So anyway, we'll talk some
more about personal stuff and behind the scenes. On Friday,

(36:51):
I have listener mail from Jennifer Uh and Jennifer wrote, Hey,
Holly and Tracy, I love the podcast and have my
PhD and s Y M HC and have a shart
to prove it. I just finished listening to the episode
on Charles Drew, which was great. At the end of
the podcast, talking about the American Red Cross band on
donated blood from men who have sex with men triggered

(37:13):
the memory for me that the Canadian Blood Services recently
in April lifted the ban on these men from donating.
They have instituted protocols to have this blood closely tested
for HIV and other blood borne illnesses. This is a
great move forward for blood collection in Canada. And then
there's a link to an article on this. Included with
this email is a picture of my house panther Batman

(37:35):
being a diva at having his picture taken. He is
both handsome and very snugly. Thank you for all the
entertainment you provide, Jennifer, so that that's correct. I did
not know this, but the Canadian Blood Services did just
change their policy in April on this. Their policy has
still gotten some some criticism. Um like we were talking

(37:58):
about in the behind the scenes on our chart also
Drew episode, it is focused on behaviors instead of broadly
banning all like all men who have sex with men
and all people who may have had sex with a
man who has had sex with a man, And instead
of looking at behaviors that people have criticized that some

(38:21):
of these behaviors still could be discriminatory. So, um, while
that's definitely a change that seems to be generally favorable,
it is still one that people have had criticisms of.
But thank you for letting us know about that, Jennifer
Uh if you would like to send us a note
about this or any other podcasts were at history podcasts
that I heart radio dot com. And we're all over

(38:42):
social media at miss in History. Um, that'ster. We'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, interest in Instagram, and you can subscribe
to our show on I heart radio app or where
ever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed
in History Class is the production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart

(39:05):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Irving Berlin, Part 2