Editing Irving Berlin (section)

===Marriages=== <!-- Dorothy Goetz redirects here -->
In February 1912, after a brief whirlwind courtship, he married 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz of [[Buffalo, New York]], the sister of one of Berlin's collaborators, [[E. Ray Goetz]]. During their honeymoon in [[Havana]], she contracted [[typhoid fever]], and doctors were unable to treat her illness when she returned to New York. She died July 17 of that year. Left with [[writer's block]] for months after Goetz's death, he eventually wrote his first ballad, "[[When I Lost You]]", to express his grief.

[[File:IrvingBerlinEllenMackayBain.jpg|thumb|upright|{{center|With wife [[Ellin Berlin|Ellin]], ca. 1926}}]]
Years later in the 1920s, he fell in love with young author and heiress [[Ellin Mackay]].<ref name=":2">{{cite news| last1=Krebs| first1=Albin| title=Ellin Berlin, 85, a Novelist, Dies; The Songwriter's Wife of 62 Years| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/30/obituaries/ellin-berlin-85-a-novelist-dies-the-songwriter-s-wife-of-62-years.html| newspaper=[[The New York Times]]| date=July 30, 1988| page=32, Sec. 1}}</ref> Because Berlin was Jewish and she was a Catholic of Irish descent, their life was followed in every possible detail by the press, which found the romance of an immigrant from the Lower East Side and a young heiress a good story.<ref name=NYT-obit/> Mackay's father, [[Clarence Mackay]], the socially prominent head of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company, objected to their marriage.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />

They had met in 1924, and her father opposed the match from the start. He went so far as to send her off to Europe to find other suitors and forget Berlin. However, Berlin wooed her with letters and songs over the airwaves such as "Remember"<ref name=":1" /> and "[[All Alone (Irving Berlin song)|All Alone]]", and she wrote him daily.<ref name="Barrett">{{cite book| title=Irving Berlin: a daughter's memoir| first=Mary Ellin| last=Barrett|author-link=Mary Ellin Barrett| publisher=Simon & Schuster| year=1995| isbn=978-0671711498| pages=98–99; 123–124| quote=All three of us would share our father's agnosticism and sidestep our husbands' faiths. ...If I can picture my father, the nonbeliever, it is listening to the reading, learning just like me, for he had long ago forgotten the story, pleased that this is what my mother and I are doing.}}</ref> Biographer [[Philip Furia]] writes that newspapers rumored they were engaged before she returned from Europe, and some Broadway shows even performed skits of the "lovelorn songwriter". After her return, she and Berlin were besieged by the press, which followed them everywhere. ''Variety'' reported that her father vowed that their marriage "would only happen 'over my dead body.'"<ref name=Furia/> As a result, they decided to elope and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the [[Manhattan Municipal Building|Municipal Building]] away from media attention.

The wedding news made the front page of ''[[The New York Times]]''. The marriage took her father by surprise, and he was stunned upon reading about it. The bride's mother, however, who was at the time divorced from Mackay, wanted her daughter to follow the dictates of her own heart. Berlin had gone to her mother's home before the wedding and had obtained her blessing.<ref>"[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980DE7D81539E633A25756C0A9679C946795D6CF Ellin Mackay Wed to Irving Berlin; Surprises Father]", ''[[The New York Times]]'', p. 1, January 5, 1926</ref><ref name="Barrett" />

There followed reports that the bride's father disowned his daughter because of the marriage. In response, Berlin gave the rights to "Always", a song still played at weddings, to her as a wedding present.<ref name="FuriaWood1998" /> Ellin was thereby guaranteed a steady income regardless of what might happen with the marriage. For nearly three years Mackay refused to speak to the Berlins, but they reconciled after the death of the Berlins' son, Irving Berlin Jr., on [[Christmas Day]] 1928, less than one month after he was born.<ref name="FuriaWood1998" />

Their marriage remained a love affair and they were inseparable until she died in July 1988 at the age of 85. They had four children during their 63 years of marriage: [[Mary Ellin Barrett]] in 1926, Irving Berlin Jr., who died in infancy in 1928, Linda Louise Emmet in 1932, and Elizabeth Irving Peters in 1936.<ref name=NYT-obit/>