Now It Can Be Told: Irving Berlin’s Real Life Romance

Among the many immigrants who have brought enormous benefits to our country, Irving Berlin stands out. An incredibly talented self-taught musician, Berlin was one of the most successful songwriters who ever lived, responsible in large part for that gift to the world known as the American Songbook.

Everyone knows Irving Berlin’s songs, even today, more than a hundred years after he sold his first composition. (Listen to Paul McCartney’s beautiful version of “Always” , written in 1925, from his standards album, Kisses On the Bottom.) But most of us, if we remember Irving Berlin the man at all, think of a rather small, elderly man with glasses and a strong New York accent, who we might have seen in old television shows or movies like This Is the Army. Most people today don’t have any idea that he also figured in one of the great romances of the 1920’s.

Ellin Mackay and Irving Berlin

Berlin’s family arrived in New York from Russia in 1893, when he was five. The crowded, airless tenements of the Lower East Side were an improvement over Russia’s pogroms, but life was very hard. His father died when he was thirteen, and he worked to support six siblings. His musical career began with singing on street corners for pennies, then he became a song plugger (this was a person hired by sheet music publishers to promote their sheet music). From there he became a singing waiter. He wrote parodies of popular songs, and then his own. His first composition was published in 1907.

By the teens he had written dozens of hit songs, and several hit shows, providing material for top stars like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Elsie Janis, and Fannie Brice. He invested in The Music Box theater on Broadway, still an active venue today. Berlin was one of the best known and most successful songwriters in America. By the 1920’s, he was the Man Who Owned Broadway, as the song by his friend George M. Cohan said. His personal life was less happy; he had married Dorothy Goetz in 1912, and was devastated when she died that same year.

The nineteen twenties were an adventurous time. Having come through World War 1, people, especially young people, felt the shackles of social convention shatter, and a delicious sense of freedom and experimentation was abroad. But every rule did not disappear. The wealthy and powerful still socialized mainly with each other, and proper behavior — such things as paying formal calls, or attending debutante balls, were still important in certain segments of society.

A publication entitled The Social Register, updated yearly, listed the names of people who were rich enough, and respectable enough (in the eyes of other rich people) to engage in social interactions with each other. Mere money would not get you into what was usually called The Four Hundred. You had to be considered ladies and gentlemen, too.

One wealthy entrepreneur who did make it into the Register was Clarence Mackay, a San Francisco born multi-millionaire who was the son of Irish immigrants. He married a socialite whose family descended from English aristocracy. His immense mining fortune was based in the West, but he and his family spent their time in New York and Paris. He had two sons and one daughter, Ellin. All moved in elevated social circles and were expected to form matrimonial alliances with other pedigreed young people.

But somewhere, somehow, something went wrong — or, actually, it went right. Because the extraordinarily wealthy debutante met the famed Tin Pan Alley songwriter, and they fell in love.

Irving Berlin and Ellin Mackay

Even in 1924, this was quite a shock to, well, everyone. Berlin was a self-made man with essentially no education, forty years old, and a widower, which would have raised objections right there. Ellin was twenty five and the only daughter of perhaps the wealthiest man in America. But most dismaying to her family — and possibly his — he was a Jew, and she was a Catholic.

The idea of a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl was not unheard of; in fact, a Broadway comedy of 1922, “Abie’s Irish Rose,” explored just such a situation and became an enormous hit — much to the disgust of critics, who considered it corny and sentimental. Audiences loved it.

But this was real life. And this was a real society girl. It was one thing for a boy and girl to meet over a pushcart; it was something else again when the flower of the 400 became entangled with a man who rose from the ghetto. Clarence Mackay was furious. He sent Ellin to Europe in the hopes she would forget her unacceptable suitor.

But nothing changed either Ellin’s or Irving’s mind; they wrote to each other every day. The uproar went on for months, with gossip columns and scandal sheets covering their every move. They decided to elope. They married in a civil ceremony and departed for an extended honeymoon on the Riviera. Ellin’s father disinherited her — which she hardly noticed, since Irving made a very good living, to say the least. Ironically, Mackay lost his fortune in the market crash of 1929. Irving Berlin didn’t; in fact, he had even greater success ahead of him.

Ellin Mackay’s wedding bouquet is lilies of the valley, orchids, and ferns

And, oh, yes — Ellin Mackay’s name was struck off the Social Register

The Berlin family

The Berlins were happily married for sixty three years, raising three children, and lived in New York City until Ellin’s death in 1988. Irving Berlin died the next year at the age of 101, a revered figure in popular music and theater history. That’s why, perhaps, we think of him as a little old man.

But within that slight form was a spirit as romantic and dashing as the handsomest hero of fiction.

The Berlins in the 1940’s

10 thoughts on “Now It Can Be Told: Irving Berlin’s Real Life Romance

  1. Ellen’s family lost their money in the stock that’s what he got for being so mean to Irving and wife !! Irving never played the stock market so he was very wealth tell his death a year after his loving wife

    1. How cool! Thanks for the info! Berlin loved all kinds of music and I wouldn’t be surprised if that included Lani McIntyre and Martin Denny.

  2. Eddie Fisher sing and recorded many Irving Berlin songs. Didn’t he write White Christmas, Easter Parade and God Bless America?

    1. Yes, he did; also Alexander’s Ragtime Band, A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody, Top Hat, There’s No Business Like Show Business, and innumerable other eternal standards. And he couldn’t read music.

  3. I’m an irving gal from way back and I enjoyed beginning my Sunday morning with this enchanting true life love story. Irving’s romantic lyrics tell us of his soul, and his happy union with Ellin.

    We know a lot of singers, and my husband requested a friend sing Come to Me, Bend to Me from Brigadoon near the beginning of our wedding service. I requested another friend sing Always while we were signing the register. I sentimentally told the hubby it was my promise. He said it sounded more like a threat. We’ve been laughing since 1988.

    – Caftan Woman

    1. It’s amazing to think Always was written nearly 100 years ago. It still sounds fresh and real, as Sir Paul;s recording attests. (Congratulations on your 31 years!)

  4. “Ellin was twenty five and the only daughter of perhaps the wealthiest man in America.”
    ————–

    I’m guessing that Ellin Mackay’s father wasn’t anywhere nearly as wealthy as people such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Huntington, Vanderbilt, Morgan, DuPont, Astor, Frick, etc.

    1. Yes, he actually was. His father, Ellin’s grandfather, was one of the Bonanza Kings who developed the biggest gold and silver strike in history — it’s an interesting story in itself. He also had other holdings which he made the mistake of exchanging for stock.

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