As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin

This book is a well-written, exhaustively researched biography of a musical legend. It takes 586 pages to do justice to the 101-year-old icon, and will take a while to finish, however, AS THOUSANDS CHEER gives an honest, objective history of arguably the greatest American songwriter ever.

This is a terrific show-biz bio that focuses on Berlin's career and tells enough about his personal life to satisfy those of us who remember how complex he was. There are many details of his projects on Broadway and in Hollywood, his publishing company, his early career as a singing waiter, and his tormented retirement. Anyone who likes the kind of anecdotes Moss Hart recounts in "Act One," anyone who is interested in the process of putting on shows and developing movies, will be fascinated by this. The book overflows with the larger-than-life personalities you expect from show business, and there are choice revelations (to me, at least), like his first encounter with George Gershwin, who as a very young man wanted to be Berlin's musical secretary but was rejected for being too talented (i.e., threatening).The psychology (or psychosis?) of Berlin's genius is presented in a straightforward, non-babbling way. His complexity comes through in his ambivalence towards colleagues, with examples of generosity (an anecdote about the young Burton Lane), avuncularity (Harold Arlen), and rivalry (Richard Rodgers), all contrasted with the almost comical hostility he showed towards some "civilians," especially the scholarly types ("f***ing longhairs") who wanted to dissect him late in his career. His most famous paradox -- the fact that without being able to read music or play an instrument well or even sing decently, he was able to create works of matchless intricacy and depth -- is discussed thoroughly, although it will forever remain mysterious. There are two dimensions I would like to have seen more fully explored. First, his relations with his original family are almost non-existent after his childhood. While this must be a reflection of reality, I was left curious about what went on between him and his sisters, nephews, and nieces. It's obvious that a major part of his assimilation was to reject all vestiges of his childhood, but it would have been nice to have more detail about encounters with those inconvenient relations. One of the few stories Bergreen includes -- about a sister dying of cancer -- is so painful that maybe he couldn't bring himself to pile on more.Another aspect that could have been more developed was Berlin's technique. Although no one will ever be able to explain exactly why he's the greatest American songwriter, I would have liked more analysis about how he was able to achieve his unique combination of simplicity and sophistication. There is a total absence of musical examples, which might have two reasons: that publishers of musical bios tell their authors to leave notation out the same way authors of popular science books are prohibited from using equations, or that Berlin's estate forbids the quoting of even the smallest snippets of his songs. Or maybe the author isn't as much of a "longhair" as he seems to be from the precision and insight of his observations.But even though I would have enjoyed reading more of the above, the bo

LAURENCE BERGREEN has done a terrific job in all departments. When you finish the book, you have a good idea of who IRVING BERLIN was, and what a life he had from singing waiter to AMERICAN's first great composer with JEROME KERN. Anyone interested in the story of AMERICAN music should read that book.

I enjoyed Bergreen's book about Irving Berlin as I did his book on Al Capone. To think that all these great songs came from one man simply boggles the mind.