Customer Reviews

As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a terrific show-biz bio that focuses on Berlin's career and tells enough about his personal life to satisfy those of us who remember how complex he was. There are many details of his projects on Broadway and in Hollywood, his publishing company, his early career as a singing waiter, and his tormented retirement. Anyone who likes the kind of anecdotes Moss Hart recounts in "Act One," anyone who is interested in the process of putting on shows and developing movies, will be fascinated by this. The book overflows with the larger-than-life personalities you expect from show business, and there are choice revelations (to me, at least), like his first encounter with George Gershwin, who as a very young man wanted to be Berlin's musical secretary but was rejected for being too talented (i.e., threatening).

The psychology (or psychosis?) of Berlin's genius is presented in a straightforward, non-babbling way. His complexity comes through in his ambivalence towards colleagues, with examples of generosity (an anecdote about the young Burton Lane), avuncularity (Harold Arlen), and rivalry (Richard Rodgers), all contrasted with the almost comical hostility he showed towards some "civilians," especially the scholarly types ("f***ing longhairs") who wanted to dissect him late in his career. His most famous paradox -- the fact that without being able to read music or play an instrument well or even sing decently, he was able to create works of matchless intricacy and depth -- is discussed thoroughly, although it will forever remain mysterious.

There are two dimensions I would like to have seen more fully explored. First, his relations with his original family are almost non-existent after his childhood. While this must be a reflection of reality, I was left curious about what went on between him and his sisters, nephews, and nieces. It's obvious that a major part of his assimilation was to reject all vestiges of his childhood, but it would have been nice to have more detail about encounters with those inconvenient relations. One of the few stories Bergreen includes -- about a sister dying of cancer -- is so painful that maybe he couldn't bring himself to pile on more.

Another aspect that could have been more developed was Berlin's technique. Although no one will ever be able to explain exactly why he's the greatest American songwriter, I would have liked more analysis about how he was able to achieve his unique combination of simplicity and sophistication. There is a total absence of musical examples, which might have two reasons: that publishers of musical bios tell their authors to leave notation out the same way authors of popular science books are prohibited from using equations, or that Berlin's estate forbids the quoting of even the smallest snippets of his songs. Or maybe the author isn't as much of a "longhair" as he seems to be from the precision and insight of his observations.

But even though I would have enjoyed reading more of the above, the book is totally splendid as is. The best compliment I can think of is that it does justice to one of the great artists of the 20th century.

LAURENCE BERGREEN has done a terrific job in all departments. When you finish the book, you have a good idea of who IRVING BERLIN was, and what a life he had from singing waiter to AMERICAN's first great composer with JEROME KERN. Anyone interested in the story of AMERICAN music should read that book.

When I casually mentioned to a friend's mother about a certain Russian Jew who had written "White Christmas" which was being sung to us, she challenged me to speak to her group about this American paradox.

To do so, I needed to re-read this biography purchased before Amazon.com's birth. So, having just finished this great biography (again), I am ready to introduce her group to one of America's most compelling, complex musical geniuses.

But, I had another compelling and selfish reason for the re-read. My grandfather was also a Russian Jew who naturalized signing and renouncing a Czar in the same paperwork as Irving at almost precisely the same time. The discussion of his name change - ditto my father. The bigotted nature of Americans in the twentieth century drove many Jews in that direction. I got to share some of Berlin's experience in a vicarious manner through As Thousands Cheer.

Most important to the reader, though, is Bergreen's recurring biographical message: Irving Berlin was always Izzy Baline just under the surface...a tough to satisfy and never scared, precocious, multi-talented, inferiority-complex laddened genius whose musical tastes infected and permanently changed the nature of American popular music forever.

The biography is a long but very deeply interesting read about a life that spanned across two centuries and times...pre-Berlin and post Berlin.

Enjoy - you will!

This book is so much fun, filed with intelligent analysis of what made the genius Berlin tick, why he was a genius, how he fit and didn't fit into his time and culture, etc. Berlin emerges both larger and clearer than his public image, a charming, busy, character. I am off, immediately, to get Bergreen's life of Capone. I understand he also wrote a biography of James Agee, but I don't see it on Amazon's data base. Does anyone know if that is still available anywhere

This book is a well-written, exhaustively researched biography of a musical legend. It takes 586 pages to do justice to the 101-year-old icon, and will take a while to finish, however, AS THOUSANDS CHEER gives an honest, objective history of arguably the greatest American songwriter ever.

I enjoyed Bergreen's book about Irving Berlin as I did his book on Al Capone. To think that all these great songs came from one man simply boggles the mind.

Have you ever wondered why "White Christmas", one of the best selling songs of all time was written by a Jewish man? "Easter Parade" was also written by the same man. He came to be known as the king of ragtime because of his first published song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band". Musically the songs could not have been different which makes Irving Berlin's career so impressive.
This book not only talks about Berlin's seemingly unending catalogue but also talks about the man. His contemporaries included George M. Cohan, Florence Zeigfield and George Gershwin. Berlin was not only the most prolific of all time but was a true gentleman. Even though he was never accepted by his father-in-law, he ended up supporting him in his final days.
At the end of this book I was more in love with his music and completely impressed with the man. This is a important look at a true American treasure.

In 1947, when I was seven, my parents brought home from a night at the theatre the cast recording of the show they had seen. It was Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun," and the album was the old fashioned kind, with multiple disks in paper slips. I listened to that album countless times, staring at the photos on the cover of Ethel Merman in her glorious cowgirl clothes, including one of her next to a gleaming white motorcycle. The name Irving Berlin soon became indelibly inprinted in my consciousness and I grew up listening to his music, in this and other albums. Even after his heyday was over and replaced by rock music, disco, and all the other styles that came later, Berlin's music retained an important place in my music library, as I continued to favor the singers of my youth, like Sinatra, Garland, and Bennett, who kept the American songbook alive.

Having read Michael Freedland's 1978 biography of Berlin long ago, I let Laurence Bergreen's much more substantial biography languish on the shelf for years after buying it for research purposes following its publication in 1990, a year after Berlin's death at the age of 100. Now that I've finally read it, I have a much deeper appreciation for the contributions to American music and popular culture of Irving Berlin, but I also come away with a strong distaste for the man himself. Although Bergreen's book seems evenhanded, his research provides so many examples of the songwriter's personal failings--his miserliness, profanity, arrogance, combination of a giant ego and enormous insecurities, and meanspiritedness--that it is difficult to realize how wide a separation there is between his wonderful songs and the irascible misogynist who wrote them.

Bergreen's massive book will pay you back in spades for the effort to hold it in your hands while reading it (unless it becomes available on Kindle); it covers Berlin's career and personal life in great detail, with hundreds of anecdotes, and is always compelling. It only rarely attempts to analyze the music, so it avoids the pitfalls of becoming overly academic, but it also doesn't closely investigate the details of the movies and shows for which Berlin wrote so much of his music; I would have appreciated more commentary on the shows themselves and not just the troubles they had in being brought to life. Still, this is a very sound biography of one of our greatest popular music artists, a man who, while capable of writing hilarious, patriotic, and romantic classics, was nevertheless--despite moments of magnanimity and a lifetime of marital fidelity--not someone you would likely have wanted for a friend.