Tin Pan Alley: Berlin Festival

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Irving Berlin got 37¢ for writing his first song, Marie from Sunny Italy. Today, at 77, he is the most successful songwriter in the world, rich enough to own Italy if he wanted it. But he can't, won't, and doesn't want to retire.

This summer, Manhattan's Lincoln Center will stage a revival of Annie Get Your Gun with Ethel Merman, the original (1946) Annie. The idea so delights Berlin that he has written two new songs for it and added new lyrics to the anthem of the trade, There's No Business Like Show Business.

"When I'm feeling good," says Berlin, "I can write the same way now as I could 40 years ago. And I'm feeling great." He would have to. Forty years ago, he had already written Alexander's Ragtime Band, Always, Remember, and A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. He had become a millionaire and married a debutante, Ellin Mackay—prompting his fellow songwriters to hymn in tribute: A Kid Who Came from the East Side Found a Sweet Society Rose.

He has sold MGM seven new songs for the movie Say It with Music, and is toying with some ideas for a Broadway musical, East River, a valedictory valentine to the good old days when he slept on a tenement fire escape and dreamed of getting rich.

Just how rich, even his wildest dreams could not have told him. White Christmas has sold 49,960,645 records, has been recorded 400 times, and has earned Berlin well over $1,000,000. Easter Parade has become a profitable perennial, as has God Bless America, whose royalties—more than $400,000 —Berlin turned over to the Boy and Girl Scouts. Annie still takes in $75,000 annually in stock and amateur rights, apart from royalties earned through performances of songs from the show. The World War II musical, This Is the Army, made nearly $10 million, with all royalties donated to the Government.

Yet, though his multimillion-dollar publishing company still demands most of his worktime, and his family—three children and six grandchildren—most of his playtime, Berlin refuses to turn in his keyboard, never looks back for long. "The past is fine," he is fond of saying, "but you can't live there."