Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers (9 page)

The theater world, however, was still largely populated by Jews, and the Shuberts had a firm hand on what was taking place on Broadway. In fact, many theater historians claim that if it weren’t for the Shuberts, Broadway would never have made it through the depression years. Depart -

ing from their usual hard-line business approach, during the early depression years, the Shubert Brothers helped bail out small producers and did what they could to keep their own employees working as long as possible.

After a couple of years with their own business in receivership, the Shuberts were able to buy back the organization under the name Select Theaters and come back strong, thanks to the Ziegfeld Follies pro ductions.

The Jewish people knew about persecution, and this new generation was not about to let the theater suffer because of it. A generation earlier, actors and playwrights had fled Eastern Europe to enjoy the freedom of the United States. This generation was determined to withstand any adversity they might face. The children of the immigrants had largely assimilated into the American mainstream, and while they would still embrace their Jewish culture, they were far more secular than their ancestors. For many, theater remained a safer haven than more traditional industries, one in which skills and talent largely overshadowed religious affiliation and one in which the Jews had already gained a foothold through the many Jewish theater owners. While attendance fell off during the depression years, theater remained a place to escape and enjoy entertainment, much as it was during the heyday of Yiddish theater. No matter how bad things got, theater always had its place in Jewish culture.

A LIGHT IN DARK TIMES

Throughout the 1930s, the Jewish composers wrote up-tempo music in a very somber time. The lyricists, meanwhile, wrote about love, about 49

Jews on Broadway

life and about country in patriotic songs. If nothing else, they used their musical talents to compose songs of hope and dreams, and in some cases significant shows about minority acceptance such as
Show Boat
and
Porg y
and Bess
. Often poignant messages about social acceptance showed up in both the storyline and the music itself, but guised in another frame-work, and not about Jewish acceptance, especially during the 1930s.

None theless, these composers and lyricists wrote timeless melodies and intimate lyrics for musicals that grew richer in storylines and away from the revues and follies of the 1920s.

While the number of shows opening on Broadway each year during the 1930s dropped, there as still quite a disproportionate number of musicals featuring Jewish composers and/or lyricists. One explanation for the many Jewish composers was that traditional Jewish religious music was typically led by a single singer, a cantor, while Christian music was usually sung by a chorus. In fact, many of the composers were the sons, or grand sons, of cantors, some emanating from several generations of cantors, and most had pianos in their homes. “Jewish homes had pianos and the children learned how to play. That was standard, no matter what the economic situation,” says Ellen Adler, of life in the 1930s.5

Many of the composers and lyricists of this era honed their skills in what was known as Tin Pan Alley, from which sheet music and later recordings originated and were hawked by shrewd salesmen. It all took place in the area of Manhattan around West 28th Street, a neighborhood that music publishers called home from the late 19th century up through the 1930s. It was there that the Jewish musical legends of Broadway worked and collaborated, including Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Vincent Youmans, as well as non–Jewish musical geniuses such as Cole Porter.

Irving Berlin

Israel Baline, who came to be known as Irving Berlin, may very well have been the most influential American songwriter of the 20th century. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Berlin, who rose to fame in 1911, remarkably never faded from prominence. Like many of the compos -

ers in this section, it’s difficult to condense the accomplishments of Irving Berlin, especially considering that his career spanned many decades.

Nonetheless, we’ll try to encapsulate some of his many accomplishments.

50

3. The Music of Broadway

Berlin and his family arrived in America in 1893, when we was just five years of age, escaping the persecution of the Jewish people in Russia.

He was the youngest of eight children. Like so many immigrant families, the Balines lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father was a cantor, but unable to find full-time work in the United States, he also worked at a local market.

When Israel’s father passed away, he took to street-singing for money while only eight years of age. Later, while in his teens, he became a singing waiter at several local cafés where he generated attention and in a short time became very popular. It was during this time that Israel teamed up with a pianist on a song called “Marie of Sunny Italy.” The song was published but the printer, in error, wrote the name Berlin on the page, and Baline adapted the new name.

In the early years, Irving Berlin mostly wrote lyrics, while other composers wrote the music, since he did not play the piano. In time, he would start coming up with melodies and have arrangers turn them into songs. One of his earliest lyrics was “Sadie Salome, Go Home,” made popular by Fanny Brice, and a huge hit in 1909. But it was a couple years later that
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
would follow, and Irving Berlin was immortalized.

By 1914, Berlin would write the first of more than 20 Broadway scores for a show called
Watch Your Step
starring the dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle, who were quite well known at the time. The show opened at the New Amsterdam Theater and ran for 175 performances.

At nearly 30 years of age, Berlin was drafted into the army in 1917.

He was, however, stationed in New York where he composed an all-soldier review called
Yip Yip Yaphank
, including the hit song “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” The show raised thousands of dollars for an army camp service center, and the grand finale had actual United States soldiers literally marching from the stage to the troop carrier to depart for destinations worldwide. While the show was a success, Berlin decided not to use one of the songs he had written, a tune that would become an American classic some 21 years later.

By the mid 1930s, Irving Berlin was a household name. He even had a Broadway theater, The Music Box, built in his honor, where he staged several
Music Box Revues
, writing tunes not unlike those he had written for the
Ziegfeld Follies
earlier in his career. The 30s were also 51

Jews on Broadway

unique in that Berlin teamed with a couple of the greatest Jewish talents of the century. Berlin would collaborate with Moss Hart and George S.

Kaufman on
Face the Music
and again with Hart on
As Thousands Cheer
.

As the decade neared an end, with tension escalating overseas, Berlin was asked if he had a patriotic song for Kate Smith to celebrate Armistice Day. He provided the song that had been left out of
Yip Yap Yankhank
, called “God Bless America.” Of the nearly 1,500 songs written by Berlin,

“God Bless America” would become the most significant of his 60-year career. It originated as a prayer of sorts, emanating from his mother’s fre quent words “God bless America,” in thanks for providing her family with a home after fleeing Russia. All of the royalties from the song were given to the Boy Scouts of America. Once the war began, Berlin would stage a 12-week run of
This Is the Army
, which opened on Broadway on the Fourth of July and then moved to Washington, D.C., before going on tour around the world. The money raised was used to help support the Army Emergency Relief Fund. So committed to the cause was Berlin, that he would appear on stages worldwide and sing “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” Over 350 military personnel were included in the 100-plus performances of the musical. Ironically, the integrated cast was the only integrated unit in the army at the time.

Berlin would also go on to team with Rodgers and Hammerstein, who served as producers, on
Annie Get Your Gun
. The classic musical featured the show biz anthem “There’s No Business Like Show Business,”

which, like “God Bless America” in 1917, was almost left out of the show.

Opening in May of 1946,
Annie Get Your Gun
became the third-longest-running musical of the 1940s, with over 1,100 performances. Then, while writing the music and lyrics, Berlin would team with Moss Hart as co-producers on
Miss Liberty
at the end of the ’40s, a show with choreography by Jerome Robbins. Yes, Berlin, in his extended career, would have the pleasure of working with many of the premiere talents of the 20th century. He would also pen numerous hit songs through the 1940s and

’50s, some for films and none bigger than “White Christmas.” As his friend Jerome Kern once noted, “Irving Berlin has no
place
in American music — he
is
American music.”6

Ironically, Berlin did not profess the same musical talent as many of Broadway’s other musical icons. As Alec Wilder noted in his book
Amer ican Popular Song
, “I heard Berlin play the piano, back in vaudeville 52

3. The Music of Broadway

days and found his harmony notably inept.”7 Yet, those who worked with him over the years recall that he had the melodies in his head, knew exactly what he was looking for, and wasn’t satisfied until the right chords were found.

In his personal life, Berlin’s first marriage in 1912 was to a Jewish woman, Dorothy Goetz. Tragically, she caught typhoid fever on their honey moon and died shortly thereafter. Berlin’s heartfelt love song

“When I Lost You” was written for her. Nearly a decade later, Berlin would fall in love again, this time to heiress Ellin MacKay, who was not Jewish. In fact, her wealthy and influential father, Clarance MacKay, did everything he could think of to stop the wedding of his daughter to the already famous Jewish songwriter. Even with the tabloids following their every move, the relationship continued despite his efforts. At one point in an effort to appease her father, Ellin suggested that a Catholic priest preside over the wedding ceremony. Berlin would not go along with this, so a justice of the peace at City Hall in New York City married them.

Despite MacKay’s dislike of his son-in-law, it was Berlin who helped MacKay when, following the stock market crash of 1929, he was in need of a “bailout” so to speak. Even that only softened MacKay’s dislike of Berlin.

For more than 60 years, the interfaith marriage would flourish, and Ellin’s father would eventually grow to accept Berlin and love his four granddaughters, who were raised to learn about both religions and both sets of holidays. And yes, the man who wrote
White Christmas
and
Easter
Parade
took his wife and children to a Reform Jewish temple and celebrated Passover and Yom Kippur with his family throughout the rest of his 101 years.

If anyone assimilated into the American mainstream, it was Irving Berlin. While he never lost touch with his Jewish roots, Berlin symbolized patriotism and American pride. Along with raising millions of dollars for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, his contribution to the United States Armed Forces was immeasurable. For his contribution to troop morale, Berlin was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Harry S Truman.

But his patriotism was also a form of gratitude. Like his mother, Irving Berlin was deeply thankful that America was here to welcome his family and the immigrants who had no place else to go. “God Bless America,” when released in 1938, became a prayer for the nation as well 53

Jews on Broadway

as a personal prayer for the Jewish people as news from Nazi Germany became increasingly frightening to American Jews. Even one of Berlin’s daughters would later recount that her father was terrified for the safety of his daughters who were half Jewish.

Jerome Kern

Like his good friend Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern was also the son of immigrants, although in his case of German descent. At an early age, his family would leave New York’s Lower East Side and settle across the Hud son River in Newark, New Jersey, where Kern started piano lessons at an early age. By the time he was a teenager, he was already proficient at musical composition and skipped his last year of high school to enroll in the New York College of Music.

It was evident early in Kern’s life that he was destined to be in the music business. Besides his great talent, he demonstrated that a more traditional job was not in his best interest when he was hired by his father to work in a furniture store. On his first day of work, Kern, with music on his mind, was asked to order two pianos. He accidentally ordered 200

pianos, and while the deliverymen carried them into the soon-to-be grossly overcrowded store, Jerome and his dad agreed that he was best pursuing a career playing piano rather than ordering them.

Like many other up and coming composers, Kern wanted to write music for shows “in development” for Broadway, which was one of the best ways to break into the business. However, without credits it was hard to launch such a career, so Kern took off for London where he found work writing for music hall shows.

Still not even 20 years old, he returned to the States and was asked to write music for a British production called
Mr. Wix of Wickham
. The production was being altered slightly for Broadway and was in need of some “American” songs. While
Mr. Wickham
was not a hit, Kern launched a successful career writing additional songs for shows. Some of these shows, such as
An English Daisy, The Catch of the Season, The Little
Cherub, The Doll Girl
and
The Girl from Utah,
among others, made it to Broadway in the early years of the 20th century. Kern was the composer while various lyricists, such as Schuyler Greene, penned the words.