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Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir
Popular music would not be the same today without Irving Berlin. His tunes created a golden age in American music and influenced every singer, songwriter, and composer of the last century. The Russian-born cantor's son composed more than 1,000 popular songs, including White Christmas, God Bless America, and Puttin' On the Ritz. He lived a full century and died only recently -- still a very private man. What was he like?
This charming reminiscence by Berlin's eldest daughter illuminates that private life. Mrs. Barrett describes an idyllic childhood with servants, homes in New York City, California, and the Catskills, and such family friends as the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin. He was an exciting father to grow up with. Her recollection: candid and affectionate.
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First published December 31, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 20, 2016
This book is so intimately written I cried at the end when the author, Mary Ellin Barrett, describes her mother and father's last days. I love Irving Berlin's songs. The 800+ written during his long (101) life. His song, How Deep Is the Ocean, was sung at my father's and sister's funeral. There are so many songs still played that IB comes to mind almost daily, if not more. IB's daughter pens her memories in a highly readable, personal way that one almost feels like a member of the family. If you love his songs, you have got to read this book to get a feeling for what the greatest American popular songwriter was like as seen through his oldest daughter's eyes.
December 5, 2011
I love Irving Berlin. His songs have had such a huge impact in my life, particularly "Always" and "God Bless America". I have deeply personal, meaningful stories of both of these songs and I can easily burst into tears just looking at a photo of this amazingly talented man, so I definitely need to give you a disclaimer that my review of this book could be slightly prejudicial. Okay, very prejudicial.
I was so glad to find a version of his daughter's memoir on Kindle since the book has been out of print. If you love American popular music history or if you love Irving Berlin, you will enjoy this book. It has lots of lists of names, places and song titles that might be a little too detailed for the casual reader, but I really loved reading about all of the people who were a part of Mr. Berlin's 101 year life. In spite of the lists of names that meant nothing to me, it was fun to see his connections to those I definitely recognize such as Mr. & Mrs. Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin, George M. Cohen, George Gershwin, Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Daryl Zanuck and even artists such as Chagall and Picasso. So much history in this book.
I suppose my favorite stories were those about his collaborations with Ethel Merman. Annie Get Your Gun is my number one favorite movie of all time, and although the adorable Betty Hutton played the lead on film, I would have loved to have seen Merman on Broadway where she played the role for three years.
"As for Ethel Merman...there was never a question of how he felt about her, or to my knowledge, she about him. It was silly, he said, to talk about writing a 'Merman Song' when so obviously she could sing any kind of song -funny, sad, hot, sweet- and make it 'hers'. You'd just better write her a good lyric, that was all, because they'd hear every word in the last row of the balcony, and you'd better not write her a lousy tune, because they'd hear that tune exactly the way you wrote it."
But the best of this book is the intimate personal story of his life with his beloved wife and daughters, through the good times and the difficult times. Reading about Mr. Berlin's life from the perspective of his eldest daughter was heart-warming. For instance, her description of her father's performance of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" at the opening night of "This is the Army" on July 4, 1942 stirred my soul. I wish I could share the whole chapter, but here is one short paragraph:
"When he finished, the cheering began all over again. I felt my mother's hand take mine and saw a suspicious glitter in her eyes. 'He was GOOD,' I said. My mother nodded, not trusting herself to speak."
Because this book is Mary Ellin Barrett's memoir, some Berlin fans might not be interested in the details of her personal life, but I found them interesting and felt this information gave me a new slant on Irving Berlin as a parent and a husband. Mary Ellin has a gift as a writer which she must have learned or inherited from her novelist mother. I have been looking for the novels of Ellin Mackay Berlin to no avail, but I won't give up.
I apologize for the length of this review, but I have been saving and savoring this book for some time and I just wanted to savor it a bit longer. This man was a gift to the world and has left a legacy that will go on as long as singers seek songs that will entertain and inspire audiences. Thank you, dear Irving Berlin and thank you Mary Ellin for sharing your father with us.
Oh, and on a personal note to my cousins Sharon and Holly, he also wrote Uncle Chad's sweet "It's a Lovely Day Today". Gotta love it.
I was so glad to find a version of his daughter's memoir on Kindle since the book has been out of print. If you love American popular music history or if you love Irving Berlin, you will enjoy this book. It has lots of lists of names, places and song titles that might be a little too detailed for the casual reader, but I really loved reading about all of the people who were a part of Mr. Berlin's 101 year life. In spite of the lists of names that meant nothing to me, it was fun to see his connections to those I definitely recognize such as Mr. & Mrs. Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin, George M. Cohen, George Gershwin, Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Daryl Zanuck and even artists such as Chagall and Picasso. So much history in this book.
I suppose my favorite stories were those about his collaborations with Ethel Merman. Annie Get Your Gun is my number one favorite movie of all time, and although the adorable Betty Hutton played the lead on film, I would have loved to have seen Merman on Broadway where she played the role for three years.
"As for Ethel Merman...there was never a question of how he felt about her, or to my knowledge, she about him. It was silly, he said, to talk about writing a 'Merman Song' when so obviously she could sing any kind of song -funny, sad, hot, sweet- and make it 'hers'. You'd just better write her a good lyric, that was all, because they'd hear every word in the last row of the balcony, and you'd better not write her a lousy tune, because they'd hear that tune exactly the way you wrote it."
But the best of this book is the intimate personal story of his life with his beloved wife and daughters, through the good times and the difficult times. Reading about Mr. Berlin's life from the perspective of his eldest daughter was heart-warming. For instance, her description of her father's performance of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" at the opening night of "This is the Army" on July 4, 1942 stirred my soul. I wish I could share the whole chapter, but here is one short paragraph:
"When he finished, the cheering began all over again. I felt my mother's hand take mine and saw a suspicious glitter in her eyes. 'He was GOOD,' I said. My mother nodded, not trusting herself to speak."
Because this book is Mary Ellin Barrett's memoir, some Berlin fans might not be interested in the details of her personal life, but I found them interesting and felt this information gave me a new slant on Irving Berlin as a parent and a husband. Mary Ellin has a gift as a writer which she must have learned or inherited from her novelist mother. I have been looking for the novels of Ellin Mackay Berlin to no avail, but I won't give up.
I apologize for the length of this review, but I have been saving and savoring this book for some time and I just wanted to savor it a bit longer. This man was a gift to the world and has left a legacy that will go on as long as singers seek songs that will entertain and inspire audiences. Thank you, dear Irving Berlin and thank you Mary Ellin for sharing your father with us.
Oh, and on a personal note to my cousins Sharon and Holly, he also wrote Uncle Chad's sweet "It's a Lovely Day Today". Gotta love it.
September 3, 2020
If you’re a musical theater aficionado, this book will have even deeper meaning for you than it did for me. But you can know nearly nothing about musicals and still thoroughly enjoy this book, as I discovered.
What isn’t this book? It’s not a biography. It naturally references experiences in Berlin’s life; it references songs he wrote; it looks at friendships he had and enemies he made. Rather than a chronicle of a life, Barrett emphasizes his relationship with his family and business decisions he made that effected the family. She deals frankly here with her imperfections—particularly the ones that made the relationship between the two more difficult than it needed to be. But she also talks about an event when she was 16 that cemented the love between the two of them from then forward.
Of course, I knew many of the songs referenced here, but not most. I read this because, while I know nearly nothing about musicals, I have at least a working knowledge of fatherhood, and I wanted to see how Berlin managed his. As it turns out, he did rather well at it despite his eccentricities. Barrett confidently believes he never cheated on his wife despite the rampant affairs happening among their friends. She recalls with fondness his patriotism—the constantly broke immigrant kid who made it big in the one country where a poor immigrant kid could make it big. He cherished his freedom, and his “God Bless America,” still sung and well known today by tens of thousands of us, came from the heart.
This is less a story about Berlin’s talent and more about the family he created which doubtless served as a wellspring of inspiration for that talent. It’s the story of an ardent Democrat who, because he loved the young people of the military, could set aside his Democratic party leanings and perform “God Bless America” in the Nixon White House on a night when the nation temporarily set aside the nightmare that was Watergate and saluted returning Vietnam veterans.
This book begins and ends inside an apartment Berlin owned throughout his life. It had been his bachelor pad until he met his Catholic wife, some 15 years his junior. It became a storage place for his awards and much of his sheet music. Barrett instantly captivated me with her descriptions of the place in the beginning, and she captured me again at the end as she described the changes the family made to it prior to selling it once their 101-year-old dad had died. I loved the stories of the parents finding ways to celebrate both Jewish and Christian holidays. I came away with a deep admiration for Berlin’s wife because she so fairly and thoroughly taught both Jewish traditions and Christian ones. As for Berlin, he remained thoroughly agnostic, and he set the example his oldest daughter would follow into adulthood. Berlin’s wife reached out more determinately to Catholicism as she aged, and Berlin didn’t begrudge that. In fact, he said he was glad she had her beliefs to rely on as she aged and weakened.
If the book has imperfections, they are minor. It sometimes felt as if some of the reminiscences went on a bit long—almost as though Barrett were a lonely old woman eager to talk about yesterday with anyone who would listen. But those sometimes-elongated memories were infrequent.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess to having an affinity to Berlin and his music that stretches back to my boyhood. I had a rather remarkable band teacher at the Utah School for the Blind back in the late ‘60s who felt that kids under his tutelage needed to be as well rounded as possible. To that end, he would not only teach us the music of great composers, he insisted that we research and submit reports on the lives of the composers. Mr. Peterson assigned me to report on Irving Berlin, and after an oral presentation from me, he taught us to play some Berlin music. So, I can’t even pretend to deliver any objectivity regarding this book. I had made up my mind to thoroughly enjoy it before I ever loaded it onto my phone.
What isn’t this book? It’s not a biography. It naturally references experiences in Berlin’s life; it references songs he wrote; it looks at friendships he had and enemies he made. Rather than a chronicle of a life, Barrett emphasizes his relationship with his family and business decisions he made that effected the family. She deals frankly here with her imperfections—particularly the ones that made the relationship between the two more difficult than it needed to be. But she also talks about an event when she was 16 that cemented the love between the two of them from then forward.
Of course, I knew many of the songs referenced here, but not most. I read this because, while I know nearly nothing about musicals, I have at least a working knowledge of fatherhood, and I wanted to see how Berlin managed his. As it turns out, he did rather well at it despite his eccentricities. Barrett confidently believes he never cheated on his wife despite the rampant affairs happening among their friends. She recalls with fondness his patriotism—the constantly broke immigrant kid who made it big in the one country where a poor immigrant kid could make it big. He cherished his freedom, and his “God Bless America,” still sung and well known today by tens of thousands of us, came from the heart.
This is less a story about Berlin’s talent and more about the family he created which doubtless served as a wellspring of inspiration for that talent. It’s the story of an ardent Democrat who, because he loved the young people of the military, could set aside his Democratic party leanings and perform “God Bless America” in the Nixon White House on a night when the nation temporarily set aside the nightmare that was Watergate and saluted returning Vietnam veterans.
This book begins and ends inside an apartment Berlin owned throughout his life. It had been his bachelor pad until he met his Catholic wife, some 15 years his junior. It became a storage place for his awards and much of his sheet music. Barrett instantly captivated me with her descriptions of the place in the beginning, and she captured me again at the end as she described the changes the family made to it prior to selling it once their 101-year-old dad had died. I loved the stories of the parents finding ways to celebrate both Jewish and Christian holidays. I came away with a deep admiration for Berlin’s wife because she so fairly and thoroughly taught both Jewish traditions and Christian ones. As for Berlin, he remained thoroughly agnostic, and he set the example his oldest daughter would follow into adulthood. Berlin’s wife reached out more determinately to Catholicism as she aged, and Berlin didn’t begrudge that. In fact, he said he was glad she had her beliefs to rely on as she aged and weakened.
If the book has imperfections, they are minor. It sometimes felt as if some of the reminiscences went on a bit long—almost as though Barrett were a lonely old woman eager to talk about yesterday with anyone who would listen. But those sometimes-elongated memories were infrequent.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess to having an affinity to Berlin and his music that stretches back to my boyhood. I had a rather remarkable band teacher at the Utah School for the Blind back in the late ‘60s who felt that kids under his tutelage needed to be as well rounded as possible. To that end, he would not only teach us the music of great composers, he insisted that we research and submit reports on the lives of the composers. Mr. Peterson assigned me to report on Irving Berlin, and after an oral presentation from me, he taught us to play some Berlin music. So, I can’t even pretend to deliver any objectivity regarding this book. I had made up my mind to thoroughly enjoy it before I ever loaded it onto my phone.
February 22, 2023
Great Insights into Irving Berlin
This warm and affecting memoir by Irving Berlin’s eldest daughter tells the story of Berlin’s 60+ year marriage to heiress and writer Ellin Mackay and the family they built.
The match was initially opposed by Mackay’s Catholic father, a symptom of the anti-Semitism of the time. Due to the same prejudice, the couple was frequently excluded from the high society circles that Ellin Mackay had previously enjoyed.
But the marriage endured and flourished, producing 3 children who survived to adulthood (the second child tragically succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), 9 grandchildren and, at the time of publication, a new generation of great-grandchildren.
Barrett’s account is an excellent counterpart to other Berlin biographies because it views Berlin through the lens of husband and father. The memoir is particularly valuable because it offers a fuller portrayal of Berlin’s last years than is offered by other biographers. Typically portrayed as a depressed and irascible recluse in old age, Barrett presents a picture of a somewhat more contented retirement, cushioned by Berlin’s love of fishing and painting and his warm relations with his wife, children and grandchildren.
The central figures of this story are Berlin and Mackay, who persevered in creating a devoted and lasting marriage in the face of societal disapproval. Theirs is a love story that deserves to be celebrated.
This warm and affecting memoir by Irving Berlin’s eldest daughter tells the story of Berlin’s 60+ year marriage to heiress and writer Ellin Mackay and the family they built.
The match was initially opposed by Mackay’s Catholic father, a symptom of the anti-Semitism of the time. Due to the same prejudice, the couple was frequently excluded from the high society circles that Ellin Mackay had previously enjoyed.
But the marriage endured and flourished, producing 3 children who survived to adulthood (the second child tragically succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), 9 grandchildren and, at the time of publication, a new generation of great-grandchildren.
Barrett’s account is an excellent counterpart to other Berlin biographies because it views Berlin through the lens of husband and father. The memoir is particularly valuable because it offers a fuller portrayal of Berlin’s last years than is offered by other biographers. Typically portrayed as a depressed and irascible recluse in old age, Barrett presents a picture of a somewhat more contented retirement, cushioned by Berlin’s love of fishing and painting and his warm relations with his wife, children and grandchildren.
The central figures of this story are Berlin and Mackay, who persevered in creating a devoted and lasting marriage in the face of societal disapproval. Theirs is a love story that deserves to be celebrated.
July 21, 2021
If you have a casual interest in Irving Berlin and would like to read one book about him, this is not it. This is not a biography, and it contains almost no musical analysis. However, if you have a serious interest in Berlin and have read one or more of the standard biographies, this book is essential reading.
Irving Berlin lived to be 101. In his late 80’s and into his 90’s, he became reclusive and misanthropic. He thought people were out to take advantage of him. Thus, he was profoundly uncooperative with musicians and scholars who wanted to perform and write about his work. By the time he died, virtually everyone in the industry disliked him.
In this book, his oldest daughter provides a compelling correction to that perception. She views Berlin as no one else has been able to, from within the family unit, not from the outside as a public figure. She writes about his relationship with his exceptionally intelligent wife of 62 years, his parenting style, his social and political attitudes. The portrait is complex and compelling. It is not sugar coated, but it is affectionate. To develop this portrait, Barrett is able to draw on many personal letters that had not previously been available to biographers. This book fundamentally changed the way biographers approached and assessed Irving Berlin.
I first read this book 25 years or so ago when it was first published. I have just finished re-reading it, and I enjoyed as much if not more this time.
Irving Berlin lived to be 101. In his late 80’s and into his 90’s, he became reclusive and misanthropic. He thought people were out to take advantage of him. Thus, he was profoundly uncooperative with musicians and scholars who wanted to perform and write about his work. By the time he died, virtually everyone in the industry disliked him.
In this book, his oldest daughter provides a compelling correction to that perception. She views Berlin as no one else has been able to, from within the family unit, not from the outside as a public figure. She writes about his relationship with his exceptionally intelligent wife of 62 years, his parenting style, his social and political attitudes. The portrait is complex and compelling. It is not sugar coated, but it is affectionate. To develop this portrait, Barrett is able to draw on many personal letters that had not previously been available to biographers. This book fundamentally changed the way biographers approached and assessed Irving Berlin.
I first read this book 25 years or so ago when it was first published. I have just finished re-reading it, and I enjoyed as much if not more this time.
December 5, 2019
3.5. Pleasant memoir from Irving Berlin’s daughter. Not much storytelling, some snobbery, perhaps not enough deep digging, but occasional insights into the great man, his songs, and his working methods.
May 17, 2020
So much name dropping, so hard to follow because of it. I kept getting bored and then going back to it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews