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...Berlin could also battle for what he thought he was due. "It took longer to write one of his contracts than a whole script," producer Arthur Freed recalled, adding that, afterward, he'd "give you anything you wanted." Avid to see his name above the title, he demanded and got possessive credit on many of his films: "Irving Berlin's 'On the Avenue,'" "Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas,'" Irving Berlin's 'Blue Skies,'" "Irving Berlin's 'There's No Business Like Show Business'" and the grammatically confounding "Irving Berlin's 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.?" Even in the service, he needed...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: That Old Feeling: A Berlin Bio-pic | 12/30/2001 | See Source »

...Even Berlin could not assume that every song he offered the fickle masses would be received with rapture. So he kept his old music in the public ear through revivals and movie knapsacks - the five Greatest Hits films "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Blue Skies," "Easter Parade," "White Christmas" and "There's No Business Like Show Business." All this perpetuated "Irving Berlin" as a product with no expiration date. He was second only to Walt Disney at branding, and extending the brand. Both men were media visionaries; they saw that such seemingly ephemeral items as cartoons and pop songs...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: That Old Feeling: A Berlin Bio-pic | 12/30/2001 | See Source »

...Shakespearean play, is extended, not obliterated, by even the most radical new readings. It is said he was so annoyed by Elvis Presley's 1957 version of "White Christmas" that he financed a call-in campaign to have the song pulled from radio stations. In the late 80s Berlin turned down Steven Spielberg's pleas to use "Always" as the theme for a film of the same title, saying that he had his own plans for the song. The composer was 90 at the time. (Spielberg substituted Kern's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: That Old Feeling: A Berlin Bio-pic | 12/30/2001 | See Source »

...Berlin's ability to generate new hits had long since been sapped. Indeed, after Astaire's run of mid-30s hits, Berlin's only chart-toppers were instant nostalgia items, some actual oldies (Les Brown's 1949 version of the 1937 "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm"), some that only seemed that way ("White Christmas"). "Annie Get Your Gin" spawned three top-10 songs but no #1's. His last charter was another secular spiritual, "Count Your Blessings" - #5 for Eddie Fisher...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: That Old Feeling: A Berlin Bio-pic | 12/30/2001 | See Source »

...Berlin was by then at retirement age. But he was never comfortable "sittin' in the sun, countin' my money," to quote the title of a Berlin tune that Louis Armstrong took to #30 in 1953. Around that time he prepared a musical, never produced, about Wilson and Addison Mizner (a Sondheim musical on the Mizner brothers, "Wise Guys," has languished for years). His last produced musical, the 1962 "Mr. President," meant to capitalize on the fascination with Jack and Jackie Kennedy but ran only eight months. He spent more than a decade on a sixth trunk-song film...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: That Old Feeling: A Berlin Bio-pic | 12/30/2001 | See Source »

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