Editing Irving Berlin (section)

==Early life==

===Jewish immigrant===

====Life in Russia====
Berlin was born '''Israel Beilin'''<ref>{{cite web| title=Irving Berlin| url=https://www.irvingberlin.com/| website=Irving Berlin| language=en-US| access-date=June 2, 2020}}</ref> on May 11, 1888, in the [[Russian Empire]].<ref name="FuriaWood1998">{{cite book| first1=Philip| last1=Furia| first2=Graham |last2=Wood |title=Irving Berlin: A Life in Song |url= https://archive.org/details/irvingberlinlife00furi |url-access=registration |year=1998 |publisher=Schirmer Books |location=New York |isbn=978-0-02-864815-6}}</ref> Although his family came from the ''[[shtetl]]'' of [[Tolochin]], Berlin later learned that he was probably born in [[Tyumen]], Siberia, where his father, an itinerant [[Hazzan|cantor]], had taken his family.<ref name="FuriaWood1998"/> He was one of eight children of Moses (1848–1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).

From Tyumen, the family returned to Tolochin, and from there, they travelled to [[Antwerp]] and left the old continent aboard the [[SS Rhynland|SS ''Rhynland'']] from the [[Red Star Line]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bello |first=Grace |date=November 27, 2013 |title=Red Star Line Museum Recalls the Ships That Brought Einstein and Irving Berlin to America |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/red-star-line-museum-antwerp |access-date=September 28, 2022 |website=Tablet Magazine}}</ref> On September 14, 1893,<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/russianarrivalsimmigrationdatafile/?name=_Beilin&arrival=1893-9&arrival_x=0-0-0&count=50&name_x=_1| website=Ancestry.com| title=Passenger list of the Beilin family| url-access=subscription}}{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> the family arrived at [[Ellis Island]] in New York City. When they arrived, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and five sisters until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into the city.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C-rR_ihoOw&t=1m39s "Irving Berlin - The Voice of the City"], BBC Bristol and A&E network's 1988 broadcast</ref> After the family's [[naturalization]], the name "Beilin" was changed to "Baline".

According to biographer [[Laurence Bergreen]], as an adult Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years in Russia except for one: "he was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground. By daylight the house was in ashes."<ref name=Bergreen>{{cite book| last=Bergreen| first=Laurence| title=As Thousands Cheer| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ZgJu3UKRfIC&q=as+thousands+cheer| edition=reprint| publisher=Hachette Books| date=March 22, 1996| isbn=978-0306806759}}</ref>{{rp|10}} As an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he had known no other life.<ref name=Whitcomb>{{cite book| last=Whitcomb| first=Ian| title=Irving Berlin and Ragtime America| publisher=Century| year=1987| isbn=9780712616645}}</ref>{{rp|19}}

The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who emigrated to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, escaping discrimination, poverty and brutal [[pogrom]]s. Other such families included those of [[George Gershwin|George]] and [[Ira Gershwin]], [[Al Jolson]], [[Sophie Tucker]], [[L. Wolfe Gilbert]], [[Jack Yellen]], [[Louis B. Mayer]] (of [[MGM]]), and the [[Warner Bros.|Warner brothers]].<ref name=Whitcomb/>{{rp|14}}

====Settling in New York City====
[[File:LES, 1910.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|Lower East Side in 1910]]
After their arrival in New York City, the Baline family lived briefly in a basement flat on Monroe Street, and then moved to a three-room tenement at 330 [[Cherry Street (Manhattan)|Cherry Street]].<ref name=":0" /> His father, unable to find comparable work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a [[kosher]] meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side to support his family. He died a few years later when Irving was thirteen years old.<ref name=Whitcomb/>

With only a few years of schooling, eight-year-old Irving began helping to support his family.<ref name=NYT-obit>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/obituaries/irving-berlin-nation-s-songwriter-dies.html |title=Irving Berlin, Nation's Songwriter, Dies |website=[[The New York Times]] |date=September 23, 1989 |url-access=subscription |first1=Marilyn |last1=Berger |url-status=live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20231228213558/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/obituaries/irving-berlin-nation-s-songwriter-dies.html |archive-date= December 28, 2023 }}</ref> He became a newspaper boy, hawking ''The Evening Journal.'' One day while delivering newspapers, according to Berlin's biographer and friend, [[Alexander Woollcott]], he stopped to look at a ship departing for China and became so entranced that he did not see a swinging crane, which knocked him into the river. When he was fished out after going down for the third time, he was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies he earned that day.<ref name=NYT-obit/><ref name=Woollcott>{{cite book| last=Woollcott| first=Alexander| title=The Story of Irving Berlin| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2ez7DAAAQBAJ&q=the+story+of+irving+berlin| publisher=Read Books Ltd|date=September 26, 2016| isbn=978-1473359604| access-date=June 5, 2020}}</ref>

His mother took a job as a [[midwife]], and three of his sisters worked wrapping cigars, common for immigrant girls. His older brother worked in a sweatshop assembling shirts. Each evening, when the family came home from their day's work, Bergreen writes, "they would deposit the coins they had earned that day into Lena's outspread apron."<ref name="Bergreen"/> {{rp|11}}

Music historian [[Philip Furia]] writes that when "Izzy" began to sell newspapers in the [[Bowery]], he was exposed to the music and sounds coming from saloons and restaurants that lined the crowded streets. Young Berlin sang some of the songs he heard while selling papers, and people would toss him some coins.  He confessed to his mother one evening that his newest ambition in life was to become a singing waiter in a saloon.<ref name=Furia-Poets>{{cite book| last=Furia| first=Philip| title=The Poets of Tin Pan Alley| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZNsc1AnOnSkC&q=the+poets+of+tin+pan+alley| publisher=Oxford Univ. Press| date=June 25, 1992| isbn=978-0198022886}}</ref>{{rp|48}} From this he stepped up to work as a [[song plugger]] and singing waiter in cafes and restaurants in the downtown areas of New York City. His first lyric, written with a café pianist, earned him a royalty of thirty-seven cents.<ref name=":1">
"The Waltzes of Irving Berlin", 1962</ref>

However, before Berlin was fourteen his meager income was still adding less than his sisters' to the family's budget, which made him feel worthless.<ref name=Woollcott/> He then decided to leave home and join the city's ragged army of other young immigrants.<ref name=Bergreen/>{{rp|15}} He lived in the Bowery, taking up residence in one of the lodging houses that sheltered the thousands of other homeless boys in the [[Lower East Side]]. Bergreen describes them as being uncharitable living quarters, "[[Dickensian]] in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to ordinary human beings."<ref name=Bergreen/>{{rp|15}}

===Early jobs===
[[File:Irving Berlin 1906.jpg|thumb|left|Berlin at his first job with a music publisher, aged 18]]
Having left school around the age of thirteen,<ref name="FuriaWood1998" /> Berlin had few survival skills and realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only ability was acquired from his father's vocation as a singer, and he joined with several other youngsters who went to saloons on the Bowery and sang to customers. Itinerant young singers like them were common on the Lower East Side. Berlin would sing a few of the popular ballads he heard on the street, hoping people would pitch him a few pennies. From these seamy surroundings, he became streetwise, with real and lasting education. Music was his only source of income, and he picked up the language and culture of the [[ghetto]] lifestyle.<ref name="Early Career of Irving Berlin">{{cite web |last1=Maslon |first1=Laurence |author-link=Laurence Maslon |title=Early Career and Tin Pan Alley |url=http://www.irvingberlin.com/early-career-and-tin-pan-alley |website=Irving Berlin |publisher=The Irving Berlin Music Company |access-date=October 13, 2018}}</ref>

Berlin learned what kind of songs appealed to audiences, writes Bergreen: "well-known tunes expressing simple sentiments were the most reliable."<ref name=Bergreen/>{{rp|17}} He soon began [[Song-plugger|plugging songs]] at [[Tony Pastor]]'s Music Hall in [[Union Square, Manhattan|Union Square]] and, in 1906, when he was 18, got a job as a singing waiter at the Pelham Cafe in [[Chinatown, Manhattan|Chinatown]]. Besides serving drinks, he sang made-up "[[Ribaldry|blue]]" parodies of hit songs to the delight of customers.

Biographer [[Charles Hamm]] writes that in Berlin's free time after hours, he taught himself to play the piano.<ref name=Hamm>Hamm, Charles. ''Irving Berlin: Songs from the Melting Pot'', Oxford Univ. Press, 1997</ref> Never having had lessons, after the bar closed for the night, young Berlin would sit at a piano in the back and begin improvising tunes.<ref name=NYT-obit/> He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", written in collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist Mike Nicholson,<ref name="FuriaWood1998" /> in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights.<ref name="Starr 2009, pg. 64" /> The sheet music to the published song presented his name as "I. Berlin".<ref name=Freedland>Freedland, Michael. 'Irving Berlin', Stein and Day, 1974</ref>

[[File:Irving Berlin (1907 portrait, NPG.93.388.3).jpg|thumb|Berlin photographed in 1907 in Pach Brothers Studio]]

Berlin continued writing and playing music at Pelham Cafe and developing an early style. He liked the words to other people's songs but sometimes the rhythms were "kind of boggy", and he might change them. One night he delivered some hits composed by his friend [[George M. Cohan]], another kid who was getting known on Broadway with his own songs. When Berlin ended with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy", notes Whitcomb, "everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little fellow."

===Recognition as songwriter===
Max Winslow (c. 1883–1942), a staff member at music publisher [[Harry Von Tilzer]] Company, noticed Berlin's singing on many occasions and became so taken with his talent that he tried to get him a job with his firm.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1942/06/09/archives/max-winslow-dead-music-publisher-59-official-of-irving-berlin-inc.html |title=Max Winslow Dead; Music Publisher, 59| newspaper=The New York Times |date=June 9, 1942 |access-date=June 5, 2020 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Von Tilzer said that Max claimed to have "discovered a great kid", and raved about him so much that Von Tilzer hired Berlin.{{when|date=November 2021}}<ref name=Hamm/>{{rp|viii}}

In 1908, when he was 20, Berlin took a new job at a saloon named Jimmy Kelly's in the Union Square neighborhood.<ref name=":0" /> There, he was able to collaborate with other young songwriters, such as [[Edgar Leslie]], [[Ted Snyder]], [[Al Piantadosi]], and [[George A. Whiting]]. In 1909, the year of the premiere of [[Israel Zangwill]]'s ''[[The Melting Pot (play)|The Melting Pot]]'', he got another big break as a staff lyricist with the [[Ted Snyder Company]].

Installed as a staff lyricist with a leading Tin Pan Alley music publishing house, Berlin quickly established himself as one of that frantic industry's top writers of words to other composer's melodies. By 1910 he was already in demand and even appeared in a Shubert Broadway revue performing his own songs.<ref name=":1" /> It was purely by chance that Berlin started composing music to the words of his songs. A lyric he had submitted to a publisher was thought to be complete with music. Not wishing to lose the sale, Berlin quickly wrote a melody. It was accepted and published. The success of this first effort opened the door to his career as a composer of music as well as lyrics.<ref name=":1" /> In 1910, Berlin wrote a hit that solidly established him as one of Tin Pan Alley's leading composers. ''Alexander's Ragtime Band'' not only popularized the vogue for "ragtime", but later inspired a major motion picture.<ref name=":1" />