‘I’ll Be Loving You Always,’ Fans Tell Berlin on 100th

NEW YORK — The American music world today paid tribute to a 100-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant who can neither read nor write music, knows no other key on the piano than F sharp and sings in a raspy monotone.

The man with all the handicaps is Irving Berlin.

Today’s celebration of the composer’s 100th birthday began at the stroke of midnight with four dozen fans softly serenading the composer of many of America’s most beloved songs with “Always.”

“He says to say, ‘Thank you.’ He’s very grateful to you all,” a woman called down from a fifth-floor veranda of Berlin’s home on Manhattan’s East Side, where Berlin listened from his window.

While he marked his 100th birthday in the quiet of his five-story Manhattan mansion, dozens of show business’s biggest stars gathered at Carnegie Hall to declare him America’s greatest songwriter. The reclusive songwriter will not attend the concert but planned to view a tape of the performance. Family members said his children and grandchildren would join the composer and his wife at home for a birthday party.

Berlin is the man who declared in song that “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” and “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.”

He also wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “White Christmas” and “God Bless America.”