Word: berlin
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...when the country was at war, there was Berlin banging the drum at the head of the parade. He had often used military metaphors to invigorate his lyrics - remember that Alexander's bugle call was "So natural that you want to go to war" - and thus was primed with jingoist jingles when America did go to war. In 1917, Berlin scored with "For Your Country and My Country," "I?m Gonna Pin My Medal on the Girl I Left Behind," "Let?s All Be Americans Now? and a mother?s fond lament about her wayward soldier son, "They Were...
...country?s best known songwriter, now 30, was drafted into the armed forces. News of his induction was bigger than Elvis'; a tabloid headline trumpeted: "Army Takes Berlin!" The noted wag Wilson Mizner wondered, "What does the Army want with Irving? Up to now the Allies had a chance!" The Army wanted him to do what he did best: write songs. While serving at Camp Upton, near Yaphank, Long Island, he composed a musical for the boys to put on, and late that summer "Yip Yip Yaphank" transferred to Broadway. The show had a couple of hits: "Mandy...
...might never have been heard outside the Camp Upton rehearsal hall. The song did a Rip Van Winkle, sleeping for 20 years until Ted Collins, Kate Smith's manager, asked Berlin if he had a patriotic song Smith might sing to mark the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day. Berlin had been in Europe a few weeks before and seen close-up the international cataclysm of the Munich Conference, where Chamberlain of Britain, declaring "peace in our time," capitulated to Hitler of Germany. Digging out his old song, Berlin demilitarized the lyric (no more "Make her victorious") and depoliticized...
...America" never made it to #1; Smith's version went to #10, then #5 in a reissue the following year, when war erupted in Europe. But it quickly became the second National Anthem and, over the decades, has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties...
...Then the U.S. joined World War II (a phrase, incidentally, that was popularized by Time magazine), and Berlin produced a new slew of patriotic songs. At the request of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, he wrote "Any Bonds Today?" - best known in the Bugs Bunny rendition - that urged Americans to buy war bonds. Berlin assigned all royalties to the Treasury Department, then wrote a variation, for another fund-raising drive, called "Any Bombs Today?" Profits from his song "Angels of Mercy" went to the American Red Cross; from "Arms for the Love of America," to the Army Ordnance Department; and from...