The immeasurably famous Irving Berlin seems like the perfect example of a U.S. immigrant success story. But reality is complicated and imperfect, and so was Berlin’s music-filled life.
Research:
- Bergreen, Laurence. “Irving Berlin: This Is the Army.” Prologue. Summer 1996, Vol. 28, No. 2 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/summer/irving-berlin-1
- Carlson, Olivia. “What’s White Christmas without Minstrelsy?” Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music. Student Blogs and Library Exhibit Companion. https://pages.stolaf.edu/americanmusic/2021/10/25/whats-white-christmas-without-minstrelsy/
- CBS Sunday Morning. “American songsmith Irving Berlin.” Via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV9uq8z2k5E
- Greten, Paula Anne. “Irving Berlin.” American History. August 2006.
- Hamm, Charles. “Irving Berlin -- Songs from the Melting Pot: The Formative Years, 1907-1914.” Oxford University Press. Via New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hamm-berlin.html
- Hamm, Charles. “Alexander and His Band.” American Music , Spring, 1996, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1996). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052459
- Hyland, William G. “The Best Songwriter Of Them All.” Commentary. October 1990.
- "Irving Berlin." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture Online, Gale, 2013. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K2419200098/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=be3b3028. Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.
- Jewish Lives. “Irving Berlin.” Podcast. Episode 4. 11/18/2019.
- Jewish Virtual Library. “Irving Berlin.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/irving-berlin
- Judaism Unbound. “Bonus Episode: Irving Berlin – Judah Cohen (American Jewish History #5).” Podcast. Episode 248, October 2 2019.
- Kaplan, James. “Irving Berlin: New York Genius.” Yale University Press. 2019.
- Kennedy Center. “This Land is Your Land: The story behind the song.” https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/story-behind-the-song/the-story-behind-the-song/this-land-is-your-land/
- Magee, Jeffrey. "'Everybody Step': Irving Berlin, jazz, and Broadway in the 1920s." Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 59, no. 3, fall 2006, pp. 697+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A157180372/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=07c374cd. Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.
- Markel, Howard. “How Irving Berlin’s blue skies turned to blue days.” PBS NewsHour. 9/24/2021. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-irving-berlins-blue-skies-turned-to-blue-days
- Maslon, Laurence. “Overture.” (And following pages) The Irving Berlin Music Company. https://www.irvingberlin.com/overture
- Schiff, David. “For Everyman, By Everyman.” The Atlantic Monthly. March 1996.
- Spitzer, Nick. “The Story Of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land'.” NPR. 2/15/2012. https://www.npr.org/2000/07/03/1076186/this-land-is-your-land
- The Irving Berlin Music Company. “Irving Berlin.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57d1974abe6594a72075321b/t/5a5f673eec212d2269841cf4/1516201791369/Irving+Berlin+-+official+biography.pdf
- White, Timothy. “Irving Berlin Knew Pop Music’s Power.” Billboard. Vol. 111, Issue 21. 5/22/1999.
- Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. v. Dieckhaus, 153 F.2d 893, 898 (8th Cir. 1946) https://casetext.com/case/twentieth-century-fox-film-corp-v-dieckhaus
- Bornstein, George. "Say it with music." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 5698, 15 June 2012, p. 9. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667239228/LitRC?u=mlin_oweb&sid=googleScholar&xid=7d90f5a8. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome this.
you missed in history glass, a production of I heart, radio
hello and welcomes the podcast, I'm tracy bewilderment and I'm holly fried early
in berlin really
me amazing example of the kind of story, but the united states likes to tell about itself as a nation, so the whole idea of being
a melting pot and a land of opportunity and a place where immigrants can make a better life for themselves and also his simultaneously and amazing example of just how complicated and imperfect and
incomplete that very idealized story can be because he was a jewish emigrant from Russia who went on to become a call lost,
billy famous songwriter at an enormous contributor to what's known as the great american song book. So that's a loosely defined collection of jazz standards and popular songs from the early twentieth sent
greed that have just had a really enduring appeal and are still being some decades later. So just a
You have irving Berlin's contributions to the great american song book or the songs white christmas. God bless america put not the ritz easter.
Brave and anything you can do. I can do better from the broadway musical Annie get your gun. I found working on this really challenging because I kept stopping what I was doing to go. Watch youtube videos of people singing these songs.
including watching a video of laura agnes and since he no funds hannah singing anything, you can do with
It did in the middle literally of writing this paragraph and, if you're like tracy, why why that person in particular one I'd, never seen it before too? I miss crazy ex girlfriend pits which then Tino vandam was on butts
In addition to other things that I just said, irving Berlin also worked in an industry that discriminated against people of color, while also
drawing inspiration from and even appropriating musical styles and traditions that were developed by those same people and also
having in performing musical members that could be really offensive to them. So
oh, I originally and vision to this as a win
her holidays. Last christmas episode, thanks to the song white christmas and the nineteen fifty four film by the same name, this instead turn into a two part.
It's not really about christmas that much at all, it's more about it.
musical and cultural context of irving berlin's works. So today we are going to talk about his life and work through world
or one and then in part, two. We will pick up in the years between the two world wars and go through the rest of his career,
irving berlin's family emigrated to the? U s in eighteen, ninety, three from dollar, keen in what's now belarus, which at the time was part of the russian empire,
There are some variations in the spelling and pronunciation of their name. It would have been written using either the hebrew alphabet or cyrillic script. So english speaking, officials, creating things like ship manifests and immigration records were basically making their best guess at writing, down the name that they heard in english when talking to journalists and biographers, Berlin's descendants have also used to slightly different pronunciations of the families last name baleen and baleen. Is there
a similar, but just different enough to go away. Supple accents shifts yeah. So we don't know much detail about their lives before they emigrated. Irving Berlin was born. Israel, Baleen also known as easy,
on may eleventh, eighteen. Eighty eight and some accounts give his place of birth as a shuttle in Siberia. He was the
unguessed of eight children born to leah and moses baleen moses, was a cancer and also worked as part of the culture butchering process. Sources contradict about exactly what his role was in that process, whether he actually conducted the slaughtering or whether he was inspecting and certifying that this process had been carried out according to jewish law, the family moved to the u s because they were trying to escape widespread pogroms and other anti semitic. Persecution
tsar alexander. The second had been assassinated in eighteen, ninety one, and although his assassin was not, jewish rumours had spread that jews were responsible for it. Massive anti semitic violence followed and the baleen family left when it was still at its peak
they arrived in new york city aboard the ss rhineland on september, twenty third eighteen. Ninety three: when is he was five: while the? U s would have been physically safer for a jewish.
Emily than the russian empire was at that point, the nation,
Also in the middle of an economic crisis, multiple factors had fed into the panic of eighteen, ninety three, which started months before the families arrival and continued until eighteen. Ninety seven, this economic depression affected virtually every industry and people lost all their money as stock price
it's collapsed, and banks failed. So after arriving in the us is his father struggled to find work like literally any work, eight members of the
Emily wound up living together in a windowless three room tenement with no running water, does not three bedrooms to be clear. That is three total rooms and they all try to me
ends meet. However, they could including renting out their beds to night shift worker, so they could sleep there during the day by day,
You have a is, he was doing his part by selling newspapers beyond that. We really dont know very much about his childhood. We know that his first language was given
and that he didn't have a lot of formal education as an adult. He tended to tell the same very few stories about his early years.
including, but he learned about christmas from irish neighbours whose tiny very scraggly christmas tree seemed just magical to him. A lot of articles described this as like the charlie brown christmas tree. I think that's probably what most of us envisioned, as you are sitting
There are already difficult financial situation actually got even worse in nineteen o one. When is his father died at the age of fifty three is he had just turn? Thirteen and soon he left home. Some accounts a tribute this to his feeling that, as a growing team, he had become a liability to his fate
He also described it as a challenge to be the only boy and a home that was otherwise overcrowded with women and girls. Soon he was trying to earn a living by basking in
winning singing in saloons, and he was living mostly in low rent boarding houses as a godsend, musical experience. He started trying to find work and tin. Pan alley which was applied,
it's an umbrella term for the music that was broadly popular in the u s in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a name for the composers and performers and publishers and others who were all part of making that music, the exact place shifted. Some went over the decades, but it started out on west twenty eighth street. Today, western twenty eightth between broadway and say
The avenue is known as tin, pan alley. The source of that name is also a little bit vague. One popular theory is that it came from the sheer cacophony of different songs being played simultaneously on multiple operate pianos some were played by aspiring songwriters, hoping to find a publisher for their work, and some by people employed a song plug yours, who were basically musical demonstrators playing songs to try to entice
people to buy the sheet music from them, I can imagine what the sounded like in my hand and why people might have acquainted it to the sound of ten pans being banged around. At this point sheet. Music was really at the heart of the economic model for the music business in the united states. The phonograph had been invented in the nineteenth century, and thomas edison had annoyed
his version in eighteen, seventy seven so by the early nineteen hundreds. This was still are really knew and still developing technology. Phonographs themselves could be expensive and the wax cylinders they played could only hold a couple of minutes of sound at first. The cylinders also had to be recorded, wanted it.
I'm so musicians had to play the same thing over and over, and that meant the finished product was also expensive. Even as mass production techniques improved, they still just did not sound very good
Meanwhile, pianos were seen as almost a requirement for middle class families. They had become a marker of both social status and respectability, many boarding house
This had a piano when a common area so did community gathering places like churches, schools and hotel. So a lot of people bought sheet music, so they could play and saying popular music for themselves, often that sheet music was printed with a colorful illustrated cover and a list of other music available from the same publisher on the back
a lot of publishers that wasn't just the notes on the page that you're buying it was sort of this nice thing. Does the liner notes, with a kind of you so fourteen year, old, izzie baleen got his start in this industry, as a song, blogger hired by songwriter and music publisher, Harry VON tells her in nineteen o to this with a job that is he pursued for himself, in spite of the fact that he did not know how to read music or play a piano he sang, he performed. Fun tells her songs to
public ants to people in the music industry, and for this he was paid five dollars a week. A couple of years later, he was hired as a singing waiter at mike salter's pelham cafe in chinatown the venue in its proprietor both had a nickname that included a racist slur because, while salter was of russian jewish descent, he also had dark skin
pelham cafe. Is he made seven dollars a week plus tips? This was an overnight job. The cafe was open from eight p m until six, a m which seems to have set the stage for irving berlin's lifelong habits as the nite owl and his chronic insomnia. Unsurprisingly, given this establishments hours
proud tended to be. On the coarser side, they were often inebriated and loud. The waiters
we're nicknamed nickel pickers, because those tips that they got came in the form of thrown coins which the waiters had to chase after as they roll
across the floor. Is he had already figured out that he had a knack for writing lyrics.
During his early years as a busker, he had found ways to put his own twist on songs that he was singing and when he improvised his lyrics were usually clever or funny, and then that usually got him bigger tip.
and he also seem to have an instinct for picking out a good melody when it was simple and memory.
Oh and often already felt familiar to people, so something that was grounded in establish tunes and patterns, but also which he managed to turn into something new.
So he started trying to write new songs of his own again. He had no formal musical training. You probably would have been exposed to music at home, but he had not been formally taught anything. He didn't know how to read or write music
he did not know how to play the piano. He would hear a melody and his head and then pick it out in the key of F sharp major, which
piano, f. Sharp major scale is played almost exclusively on the black keys of the piano. This required a lot of trial and error and a lot of craftsmanship and revision and for the rest of his professional wife. He would talk about working on songs through the night to get them exactly right. On may eighth, nineteen o seven a couple of days before his nineteen birthday is Ebay lean published his first song marie from sunny italy. This was certainly not his greatest work as a lyricists. Some of his later work features delightfully clever for
saying that doesn't quite right, but in this song it's more like. Please come out tonight, my queen, can't you hear my man don't leave, but just the same, this started getting his name out there
the name he was getting out. There was not israel beilein, though. Instead the cover of this sheet music, read words by I, berlin music by m nicholson and Nicholson was mike nicholson pianist at pelham. Cafe some sources describe I
lynn as a printer's error and others as more of a reflection of how people were pronouncing his last name. By that point, still, others, though, say that he was looking for a name for himself that was less recognizably jewish and that, in addition to the shift from bullying to berlin that he had been thinking about adopting the name earth
in full. I, while, regardless of exactly how the name change came about soon, isabel gleam was professionally known as
irving berlin, and we'll talk more about that after we take a quick sponsor break.
as there is a burning lynn published his earth song. The entertainment industry in new york city was growing and shifting new york's first subway line opened on october. Twenty seventh nineteen o four and one of the stations on that first line was at times square by the intersection of broadway and forty second street. Soon,
surrounding area with developing into a theatre district when Marie from sunny italy was published. Berlin was still work
at pelham cafe, but he was fired from that job that year, reportedly
he fell asleep while he was supposed to be tending the cash register and at the end of the night, twenty five dollars was missing from the till Berlin got another job pretty quickly, though, and it was a step up, it was Jimmy Kelly's
lee, where his wages were a little better. The clientele was
little more upscale. He earned enough money that he was able to afford to rent a place with his friend and colleague max winslow, rather than staying in low rent,
boarding houses. He started meeting and making more connections and friendships with other entertainers, including past podcast, subject: fanny bryce and he kept trying to publish songs, often as the lyricist at that point, with somebody else writing the music
If you look up music from this era, whether its by irving, berlin or by someone else, you're going,
find a lot of stuff, that's offensive or at the very least, insensitive by today's standards, and there were people who pointed out its offensiveness at the time. For example, black face had become an established part of popular entertainment with white actors wearing exaggerated black makeup and adopting a heavily stereotypical way of speaking and singing black face has multiple routes, including white performers, appropriating the music and danced styles of black communities and using them to make money, while also
largely excluding black performers from the same industry. Black face had become so widespread and popular that there were also black actors who performed and black face, although that, of course, added
additional layers of new wants to their performances by the time irving berlin started writing songs. People had been criticising white performers use of black face for decades. For example, frederick douglass was a vocal critic as early as the eighteen, forty, so like six decades worth of criticism here, and this is something that.
Was always racist, but was incredibly normalized at this point, further music, that key
out of tin. Pan alley was essentially audio black face songs that were written and sung by white performers that leaned really heavily into racist stereotypes of how black people spoke
acted in a lot of ways. Ten pen alley took a very similar approach to other racial and ethnic groups, music and lyrics, and the accents that were adopted to sing them reflect really stereotypical perceptions
emigrants from ITALY and ireland in particular, as well as perceptions of jewish emigrants from various parts of europe and
of indigenous people in north america. Basically, if there is a group you can stereotype, there was music that played into those stereotypes
and feeling in that. All of this was a broad fascination with anything that white people thought of as exotic, because entertainment was one of the industries that was open to jewish immigrants. Many of tin, pan alley, songwriters and composers were jewish immigrants themselves or where the children of jewish immigrants
They knew that they could make money through these exotic size, depictions whether they were of their own community or someone else's, and, as is the case today,
another big money maker was sex or at least innuendo, which means a lot of these songs could also lean into stereotypes around gender and relationships.
Irving, Berlin's first really big money
maker. Was my wife's gone to the country hooray hooray and which her ray is spelled like hurrah in the sheet music, which I find kind of delightful. Pico wrote this with george whiting and ted snyder TED Snyder was music publisher, who also published the sheet music for this song. As that title suggests, this song is about a man whose wife says she can't stand the heap anymore, so she's taking the children out to the country,
Chorus goes my wife's gone to the country, her re. She thought it best. I need a rest. That's why she went away. She took the children
with her her re hooray, I don't care what becomes of me my wife's gone away. This man is so excited that his wife and kids are gone. Did he puts an ad about it in the paper announcing it and also looks up a pretty girl, he used to know named molly fearless and through to a recording of the song, is generally recorded.
In a way that sounds exuberantly gleeful and it was a huge hit. Three hundred thousand copies of the sheet music were sold and irving berlin made a penny per copy. That added up to three.
thousand dollars, which was more money than he had ever seen in his life. He used some of the proceeds to move
his mother and one of his sisters out of their lower east side, tenement to a place in the bronx where he lived as well. He also bought his mother, a rocking chair and he bought a transposing piano, one that used a lever to change the keys, so he could keep picking out the melodies and f sharp major while then hearing what they sounded like in a different key
This is so fascinating to me. In nineteen ten irving, berlin became both of freemason and a schriner. The trainers are connected to freemasonry and well.
Not all freemasons become shriners. A man has to become a master mason before becoming a schriner
a year later, Berlin published, which often cited as his first international hit alexander's ragtime banned. This definitely was not his first song to sell internationally, but in the course of a single year more than two million copies of the sheet music were sold earning berlin,
hopefully forty thousand dollars we mentioned earlier that erling Berlin was a night owl and in particular he often talked about working through the night and just a grueling effort to finish a song or sometimes more struggling to write a song until the
very last minute and then having to pack all that same effort and see where very short window to hit a deadline. Alexander's ragtime band was an exception to that it came together for him.
Really quickly berlin biographer James kaplan describes the song ass quote a joyous tribute to african american musical genius, the first great and lasting one and american popular song from a jewish american musical genius. Kaplan also calls the song
celebration of america itself. There are some ironies involved in this song and its success. It introduced a lot of people
to the idea of ragtime, like its musical successor, jazz ragtime is a style of music, initially developed by black musicians and performers before becoming popular among white performers and songwriters. The name ragtime comes from the sink, a painted rhythms and ragged rhymes that her hallmarks of the style, but even though alexander
ragtime band included the word ragtime in the title and celebrated ragtime and in some ways introduced ragtime
to a broader audience. It isn't
really a rag. This song is often described really more as a march. Yeah and ragtime did have routes in marches, but if it's a little bit different before long rumors,
are also spreading that berlin had stolen the work of a black musician. In writing this song. Some people gave the credits a composer in song, writer, LUCA jobs and who said he didn't have anything to do with it, and counter quote. I wish I had written that
decades later lahti, stokes Joplin, the widow of Scott Joplin, who is known as the king of ragtime, said that berlin had stolen the tune for her late husband, but scholars who have compared alexander's ragtime bands of various pieces of joplin surviving work have not found a clear example of like definite,
Copying irving berlin would face other accusations of plagiarism during his career, including accusations of plagiarized the work of black performers. He vigorously denied these allegations sometimes in a way they could sound, really dismissive toward the performers or communities whose work he was allegedly copying. He absolutely drew influence from things like folk songs and common melodies, as well as from other people's work, and some of his work can definitely be seen as appropriating other cultures and musical traditions, but they are not really clear, cut examples of lifting other people's entire songs. Note for known most of the examples that have been brought up, our sequences of four or five notes that are part of a longer peace
there. I thought descriptions that we're like if people had heard this song before they might recognize. These borne out says the same as those for notes, which is not as obvious as something like taking the entire base line of under pressure and using it to make ice baby, which is like a thing that jumps out to me is like a clear example,
musical copying, we'll have considered a sampling, though isn't it yeah, but it
the acknowledged when it originally came out. I think, which was the problem right
I mean I was when, like the concept of sampling was still yeah, but, like that's a more direct obvious. This thing turned into this thing than most of the examples that people are like. What's it's more like, ok, they're, the sequence of for notes is the same as this other sequence of finance.
In february of nineteen, twelve irving berlin married Dorothy gets and their marriage was tragically short. She died on July, seventeenth of that same year. She likely died as a result of typhoid which she contracted during their honeymoon
in in cuba, Berlin wrote the ballad when I lost you after her death, and that is a song- that's often described as really the most personal one that he ever wrote. It took a while for berlin to really start writing again after his wife's death and when he did his next career move, was writing for broadway and we'll get into that after a sponsor break.
As we said earlier, irving, berlin started working for ted snyder and nineteen o nine
the nineteen teams. He became more involved with that business with TED Snyder Henry water son in irving, berlin, eventually coming together to become waters in berlin and Snyder, which became one of the most prominent sheet music publishers in the u s and the early twentieth century. During the
His hearers Berlin had also started working with his first musical secretary cliff hesse, who this night or company hired and nineteen thirteen
berlin and has worked together extensively over the next five years with has even moving into berlin's apartment to keep up with his work through the night writing habits. Berlin routinely woke up at noon. Eight breakfast and started working going to bed at five o clock. The next morning, which I will just say, sounds like a dream schedule a thicket. I think for him. It was until life intervenes to make it deeply income.
He needs a beyond that schedule has lost the first of several musical secretaries than a rangers who berlin worked with during his career, which really helped him compensate for the fact that he didn't know how to read or write music or really to play the piano. These were skills that he only started to develop much later and even then most account say he was never really proficient at them
often berlin would sing a melody or pick it out on his transposing piano and his musical secretary would play it back, adding in the harmony
is another musical elements. People described Berlin as being able to point out spots where his secretary had use different notes or cords than what berlin had intended, because while he could not read the notes on the page
He could hear them in his mind. He also had a sharp business sense, both through his own work and for the industry in nineteen fourteen. He was one of the key
co founders of the american society of composers, authors and publishers, orb ascap, along with other prominent composers and publishers. Ass cap,
as its own history that we are not going to get into, but at its founding the purpose was to help members to copyright and licence their music, making it easier to protect their work and earn money from it berlin's first full broadway score.
four watch your step, which opened at the new amsterdam, theater and nineteen fourteen berlin wrote
music and the lyrics- and this was the first time that a tin pan alley composer made the move to broadway, withdrew a lot of influence for more
at the time and one of it's best remembered songs. Is the overlapping duet play a simple melody which listeners of a certain age may remember from when jean stapleton and fuzzy bear saying it on the muppet show it is so charming? It's a very delightful song in the seven years that had passed since his first song publication in the
tina, seven berlin had published roughly one hundred ninety other songs as either a composer or a lyricist, while he mostly
in writing. The lyrics for his first songs over time that had shifted until
He was almost always responsible for both of those one hundred ninety songs published over seven years. He had written both the music and lyrics to about two thirds of them. This was a lot part of his creative process.
involves just turning out a huge amount of material, knowing that only some of it would be really great and one story. Somebody complemented him at a party saying no one is written as many hits as you have. His response was,
I know, there is no one who is written, so many failures during these years, berlin at home is songwriting style and craft. He was really focused on getting just the right melody, often a very simple melody at just the right lyrics, which again were often really simple but tucked in
if that simplicity were turns of phrase and patterns and rhymes that were very catchy and evocative. This work drew from a lot of musical influences, including ragtime and blues in the earliest years of jazz as a musical style. His work was sometimes described as jazz
definitely incorporated some elements that were really common in jazz, including the sink, updated beats that were also part of ragtime, but he didn't really incorporate the more improvisational elements that are often found in jazz. At the same time, as was the case,
with alexander's ragtime band, introducing the idea of ragtime to a white audience without actually being a rag? His jazz like work, became an entry
point for a lot of white audiences and, in some cases, even defined for those audiences. What jazz was all about world war? One started in nineteen fourteen following the assassination of archduke Franz ferdinand of Austria and his wife sophie duchess of Holmberg in the face of war and a growing sense of isolation and xenophobia in the? U S, Berlin started the process.
as a becoming a? U s. Citizen and nineteen. Seventeen, the united states became involved in road where one in early
nineteen eighteen irving, Berlin took his oath of citizenship and he was also drafted at the age of thirty. He was almost too old to be drafted. The cut off was thirty one, and he was really surprised that he passed his physical in addition to the chronic insomnia that we already talked about, he was also chronically ill with what is usually described as nervous indigestion and that affected him for his whole life. There are some accounts of all this that make it sort of sound like he started his citizenship process, in spite of the war,
thinking that he wouldn't be drafted because of his health, but like the draft applied to people, regardless of whether they were citizens, are not like it applied to all men living in the united states or whether he was a citizen are not was not part of whether he was gonna be drafted in may of nineteen eighteen, but
and became a private in the u s army and was stationed at camp upton in YAP, hank new york. He was intensely
eight riad egg any seems to have really wanted to serve his adopted country, but he also
life in the army, very difficult in
Take he hated how early he had to get up, which really is not surprising. Given his tendency to go to bed at five in the morning and get up at noon. He does
armed himself as haiti readily so much that he would lie awake at night. Thinking about it, I felt this so much in my focus in my bones. He wrote a song about this called oh, how I hate to get up in the morning and that song started to catch on around camp uptown
soon berlin proposed writing a musical about army life to be used to raise funds. That would be
along the lines of george cohen song over there, which came out of nineteen seventeen as well as
musical review that the? U s navy, had staged the previous spring exam.
We have. This all came about is a little bit fuzzy, but the result was yippee hippy app, hank
It was a review with a cast of army recruits. It was performed at camp upton before moving to the century theatre in new york city and running for thirty. Two performances
This was a vaudeville style review, with music and dance and acrobatics and a black face number and a drag number
berlin, who, at this point, had been promoted to sergeant performed. Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning himself.
To the end of world war. When berlin looked back at his career and tried to figure out what his next step should be, while his name was still part of waters in berlin and spider, he wasn't really working with the bat company anymore. Ultimately, he established his own publishing house irving berlin ink, so he could control the car,
be right than the royalties to his own music. Two years later, he wrote fourteen musical numbers for the exact follies he went on.
Did you various work with the follies in the years that followed in nineteen twenty one? He teamed up with Joseph m shank and sam harris to establish his own broadway theatre, the music box. This was a colossal early, expensive and difficult venture with technically complicated stage equipment, including an elephant
They're his work and his name recognition continued to grow in the early nineteenth twenties and he also fell in love again, and that is where we are going to pick up next time. Do you have some yummy listener? Male ted Titus over until our next episode
I do. This is from Angela and Angela wrote. After our recent episodes on Charles drew and blood banking Angela set high, holly and tracy, I'm sure you recorded the behind the scenes about blood banks before this news came out, but I thought I would put out the ps aid.
the deferral for donating blood. If you were in europe during mad cow, has been lifted. Blood donation is very important to me and has been a regular part of my life since I turned eight
him. I won't say how old I am, but I have recently gotten my six gallon pin and that doesn't include the different places I donated when I was younger, since I have loved many people who have benefited from blood donation. Anything that makes it so more people can donate makes me happy. I'm glad the f d a is constantly going back and reevaluating the policies to try
maximize the number of people who can their name. But I do agree with you that it seems like there are some in place for the wrong reasons. Thank you, as always, fear continued work to keep listeners informed of the past and its impact today. Angela. Thank you so much angela for this update. So yet the last time that I gave blood before writing that episode,
when they're behind the scenes and the f D, a had actually issued new guidance, but the red cross had not incorporated that new guidance into their process. Yet so, when I gave blood at that point, folks who had lived in europe during the big mad cow outbreak were still excluded from donating, they actually changed. They announced that they were changing the policy shortly before we recorded this episode and also shortly before the next time I gave blood, but I'm pretty sure that was still in the questionnaire that day it's not in the questionnaire.
more. This directly affects people. I know who either like lived in the uk for a period while they were in college or grad school or folks. I know who move from the uk to the united states so that that rule has changed from I what was in place for a very long time. So thank you answer.
For letting me know about that. A couple of folks, I know who this applies to also said something like within two or three days of getting this email that were like hey. I can give what again were very excited about it. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast were
three podcast, that I heart radio, dot com and we're all over social media and missed in history through you'll find our facebook, twitter, pinterest and instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on iheart radio app or wherever else
I'd like to get thereupon counts stuffy unless the district class, the production of iheart radio for more part,
as for my heart, radio busy by her radio, have added mankind's or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Today will wrap up with three things you should know about plan be one step, one
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Transcript generated on 2023-01-19.