78 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • DECEMBER 2020
REAR VIEW
IRVING BERLIN MR. WHITE CHRISTMAS
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
Nothing conveys holiday sentiment
like the wistful White Christmas and
its longing for the perfect holiday
setting. Crooner Bing Crosby’s 1942
recording of the classic wartime ballad
is the world’s best-selling single and
has sold more than 50 million copies.
But 22 years before Irving Berlin
wrote it, he was a U.S. Army GI stuck
on KP peeling potatoes at the remote
Camp Upton in Yaphank in eastern
Long Island. It was there, 100 miles
from his beloved, bustling Manhattan,
that the immigrant made the best of
a sad situation — as he often did — by
writing and performing songs.
OH, HOW I HATE TO GET UP
IN THE MORNING
He was already a successful legendary
lyric and melody writer by the time he
turned 30 in 1918. Wanting to serve
his country, he became a naturalized
citizen and was drafted three months
later. He wound up in boot camp surrounded
by potato fields with other
recruits who would likely be sent to
France to fight. Aside from being away
from home and family, what he hated
most was getting jolted out of sleep by
the early morning bugle.
World War I was in its fourth year.
His commander tapped Berlin’s musical
talent to give the fellas a morale
booster and raise money for a community
house for visitors. Berlin struck a
deal: He would write songs for a show
if he could sleep through reveille.
The dreaded bugle inspired one of
the songs, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up
in the Morning,” and in three months
Berlin wrote and produced Yip, Yip,
Yaphank. Subtitled “a military mess
cooked up by the boys at Camp Upton,”
the show dressed enlisted men
as hairy-chested chorus girls, in a
parody of Broadway’s lavish hit, The
Ziegfeld Follies.
Berlin was adept at using music to
entertain and put food on the table.
When Isadore (“Izzy”) Berlin was just
5, his family had fled the persecution
of Jews by the Russians and come to
America from Siberia in 1893. When
Berlin at piano in 1938 with Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, and Don Ameche.
he was 13, his father died, so Berlin left
school to earn money for the Lower
East Side family of eight, working as a
street busker singing for pennies and a
singing waiter in a café in Chinatown.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
At Camp Upton, Berlin wrote God
Bless America. His mother, despite the
family’s poverty, had often praised the
country that sheltered her family of
refugees, declaring, “God bless America.”
But Berlin thought the song was
too solemn for a comedy, and put it
away in a trunk.
He continued composing nonstop, by
ear, employing a transcriber to write
down melodies because he had never
learned to read or write music. He
would go on to write some 1,500 songs,
many of them patriotic and mindful
of fascism in Europe, which was escalating
especially during the Great
Depression starting in 1929. Wanting
to write a song about peace, he revised
the unpublished God Bless America in
1938.
His daughter Mary Ellin Barrett later
said that her father meant every
word: “He, the immigrant who had
made good, was saying thank you.” A
refugee’s grateful song to his adopted
country, penned at a desolate military
installation, became an unabashedly
proud, timeless unofficial national
anthem.
“MAY ALL YOUR CHRISTMASES
BE WHITE”
In 1940 Berlin composed White Christmas.
The holiday brought mixed feelings:
Being Jewish, he didn’t celebrate
Christmas; his infant son had died
from crib death on Christmas Day
1928, and each December 25, he and his
wife visited the grave. So what some
called the most wonderful time of the
year often brought sadness.
As to the song’s origin, some say he
wrote the melody in 1938, then shelved
it until Paramount Pictures signed
him to write the 1942 movie Holiday
Inn. Others said he longed for a wintry
setting while at Southern California’s
La Quinta Hotel — or at the Arizona
Biltmore. No, he was in Los Angeles,
some maintain, with Tinseltown people
lounging poolside, showing a false
veneer of nostalgia.
All these speculations would explain
his rarely heard verse about palm
trees: “The sun is shining/The grass
is green/The orange and palm trees
sway/There’s never been such a day in
Beverly Hills, L.A./But it’s December
the twenty-fourth/And I am longing
to be up North.”
Bing Crosby premiered the song on
his NBC radio show The Kraft Music
Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, 18 days
after the Pearl Harbor attack and
the U.S. entry in World War II. The
war song that wasn’t about wars, but
about peace, became a runaway hit, to
its composer’s surprise, and inspired
him to suggest a 1954 film based on the
song.
Berlin told the Jamaica (Long Island)
Press in September 1954, “Much as I’d
like to take a bow and say I anticipated
its future success, I must admit I
didn’t.”
Irving Berlin died at age 101 in Manhattan
in 1989.
“Much as I’d like to take a bow and say I
anticipated its future success, I must admit I
didn’t,” Berlin said of the song’s success.
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