Irving Berlin

Your always marvelous magazine was especially most marvelous because of its tribute to Irving Berlin. As a member of the board of ASCAP and as president of the Songwriters' Hall of Fame, I speak for all of us who write words and music, and who share the pride that is the one and only Irving Berlin--I am saving my issue. SAMMY CAHN Beverly Hills

There may be no more dapper ensemble than Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester. The combo drinks deep from flapper-era jazz, Weimar Berlin and Irving Berlin alike for a sound both preserved in amber and entirely entrancing. The combo also has a cracking sense of humor — the banter is as witty as the arrangements. Royce Hall, UCLA. 8 p.m. Thu. $25 to $80. http://www.uclalive.org.

One fact I did not see mentioned in the articles on Irving Berlin after his death Sept. 22 was that he entertained the WACS, Far Eastern Air Force, in Leyte in 1944. There were 400 of us WACs in the company, and we have each a WAC book of pictures of Irving Berlin entertaining us and soldier friends at a dance in our mess hall. It sure gave all of us a lift in that muddy hole. GEORGIA WEEGE, Woodland Hills

Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas," one of the biggest-selling songs of all time, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Although the wistful tune soothed homesick soldiers in such God-awful places as Guadalcanal more than half a century ago, and no doubt it still plays in Kandahar today, Berlin most likely wrote what he called "the best song that anybody's ever written" somewhere in the sunny Southwest, probably while sitting by a swanky hotel swimming...

--"Sing softly with great love," John Wallowitch told a group of about 75 people early this morning as they gathered outside the home of composer Irving Berlin to serenade him on his 100th birthday. Berlin planned to spend the day at his five-story Manhattan town house and will skip a star-studded tribute at Carnegie Hall, his secretary, Hilda Schneider, said. "His birthdays are always spent very quietly with family."

Monday will be the 99th birthday of the composer of "That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune," "How Do You Do It, Mabel, on Twenty Dollars a Week?," "Ragtime Mocking Bird," "Keep Away From a Fellow Who Owns an Automobile," and something like a thousand other popular songs. Irving Berlin's other songs, of course, are a bit better known. Like Berlin himself, who is quietly entering his centennial year, his songs have an extraordinary longevity.

A quartet outside Irving Berlin's town house at sunrise today serenaded the composer of "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade" as he marked his 99th birthday. The group sang "Always" and "Happy Birthday." Two shades went up but there was no direct acknowledgement from the man who wrote, "Oh, How I Hate to Get up in the Morning."

Irving Berlin began the second year of his second century today. For his 101st birthday, the composer of such holiday classics as "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas" continued his practice of not paying much attention to his personal holiday. "A quiet day with family. That he always has. He never had any big to-dos," said his secretary, Hilda Schneider. Another icon of American culture, dancer-choreographer Martha Graham, reached her 95th birthday today and, like Berlin, largely ignored it. She spent the afternoon at her dance studio rehearsing Mikhail Baryshnikov for a performance of the her 1947 creation, "Night Journey."

Irving Berlin & Ragtime America by Ian Whitcomb (Limelight Editions, 118 E. 30th St., New York, N.Y. 10016: $18.95, 219 pages) "Everything in America Is Ragtime" was one of Irving Berlin's hit tunes in 1916--and everything in Ian Whitcomb's new biography of Berlin is ragtime too.

Who wrote the song "How Do You Do It Mabel, on Twenty Dollars a Week?" Clue: He also wrote "White Christmas" and "God Bless America." Now you know. Irving Berlin, who managed to live through about nine-tenths of the century (he died in 1989 at 101), wrote more songs--both the music and the lyrics--than anybody else. He could have hung a sign outside his door that said "hits for all occasions," because eventually he seemed to cover every human emotion and state of mind.

Bob Dylan's decision to put out a Christmas album this year caught a lot of people by surprise. It wasn't just that the preeminent songwriter of the rock era had chosen to record secular seasonal staples such as "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus" for his "Christmas in the Heart" collection. Equally intriguing was that the musician born Robert Zimmerman and raised in a Jewish household also included exceptionally sincere versions of such quintessentially Christian carols as "Hark!

Imagem Music Group, a Dutch music-publishing investment fund, has agreed to purchase the musical-theater catalog of Broadway giants Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. No purchase price was announced, but the Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, said the sale could bring in as much as $200 million. The deal gives Imagem licensing rights not only to such Rodgers and Hammerstein classics as "South Pacific," "Oklahoma!" and "The Sound of Music," but also to the works of more than 200 other writers, including Irving Berlin.

When asked where Irving Berlin ranked in American music, fellow giant Jerome Kern famously said, "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." The enduring truth of Kern's assessment underpins the showbiz panache of "I Love a Piano," presented by Musical Theatre West. This delightful West Coast premiere of Ray Roderick and Michael Berkeley's salute to America's greatest tunesmith is as invigorating a song-catalog revue as any since "Ain't Misbehavin'."

Ben Sidran's appearance Thursday at the Skirball Center was titled "Jews, Music and the American Dream" and billed as a "concert with commentary." It was all that, and more. In fact, what might initially have appeared to be an intriguing, if not especially mesmerizing, social-science seminar turned out to be something closer to jazz, more like a spontaneous improvisation on a theme. Sidran is a well-regarded music world multi-hyphenate: jazz pianist, producer, songwriter, educator and author.

KATE SMITH turned "God Bless America" into such a clarion call for love of country in 1938 that efforts arose to have it replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. But composer Irving Berlin, renowned for his patriotism, wouldn't have it. Instead he donated the song's copyright, a gesture that has contributed more than $10 million to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

It's a feel-good bonanza: The boys get the girls, the boys help out their old Army general and everyone gets infused with holiday spirit to the strains of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." Such warmth of feeling is a key reason the 1954 movie "White Christmas" remains a seasonal staple and a fond part of many people's memories.

EBENEZER SCROOGE, watch your back. Kevin McCollum, the same Broadway producer behind the musicals "Rent" and "Avenue Q," is out to grab a chunk of the holiday audiences that queue up yearly across the U.S. for productions of "A Christmas Carol" and "The Nutcracker."

What can you say about an American genius who had a career spanning more than eight decades before dying in his sleep at the age of 101? At first glance, the life of Irving Berlin, the legendary songsmith whose prolific output included the beloved "White Christmas" and "God Bless America," seems to lack the necessary oomph for stage treatment.