We’ll Be Loving You, Always : Stars Croon to Their Absent Idol, Irving Berlin, on His 100th Birthday

NEW YORK — Midway through the 25-star, 32-dancer, 31-piece orchestra salute to Irving Berlin on his 100th birthday, Cy Coleman, a fair Broadway composer himself, was asked what he thought of Berlin’s music.

He grinned. “I think he’s got a definite future,” he said. “I’ve got a very, very keen ear about this sort of thing, and I would say that some of this might even go further than Carnegie Hall.”

So it went at the venerable 2,812-seat hall, where tuxedoed notables and civilians alike packed the house to honor Berlin and hear all or excerpts of more than 30 of the 1,500 songs he’s written since 1906.

But Berlin, a reclusive man who has shunned interviews for 20 years, was absent from the gala, taped Wednesday night for a May 27 two-hour broadcast on CBS. His secretary said he’ll watch the show when it airs.

On his birthday, he and his wife Ellin celebrated quietly at their Beekman Place townhouse, where, as the day began, about 50 well-wishers on the street serenaded him with one of his best-known romantic songs, “Always.”

Written by Berlin as a wedding gift for his wife, “Always” was reprised at the gala by Frank Sinatra--who also sang “When I Lost You,” a poignant 1912 ballad that Berlin was said to have written in memory of his first wife, who died shortly after their honeymoon.

Wednesday’s concert, for which ticket prices ranged from $50 to $1,000, doubled as a benefit for the Carnegie Hall Society and a foundation run by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Berlin is a charter member of ASCAP, having co-founded it in 1914.

The show included film clips of Berlin hits. In one (“This Is the Army,” 1943), the composer, clad in a World War I Army uniform, sang “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” from his 1918 Army musical “Yip, Yip, Yaphank.”

The gala, in which it was noted that Berlin’s dossier includes hit songs from 19 Broadway musicals and 18 Hollywood movies, was performed on a stage decorated with huge gold and white piano keys.

It began with Shirley MacLaine singing “Let Me Sing and I’m Happy.” It ended with the entire cast--including Walter Cronkite and choral groups from the Army, the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts--singing Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

The evening was spectacular but not flawless. Sinatra’s sound monitor on stage apparently went out, briefly causing him to sing out of tempo with the orchestra on “Always” so that a retaping was required.

And when Bea Arthur of NBC’s “Golden Girls” soloed in her trombone voice during a Berlin medley with Barry Bostwick and Maryann Plunkett, she was at times impossible to hear, due to wayward miking.

But no matter. Delegates from the diverse musical worlds of classical, popular, jazz, country and Broadway came together to honor a man who could neither read nor write music, but who successfully wrote in varied ways about all ranges of human emotion.

One member of the audience, George Steinbrenner, a pianist better known as the owner of the New York Yankees, put it this way:

“Irving Berlin could write in any frame of mind. If you wanted a patriotic song, he would write it. If you wanted a love ballad, he could write it. He’s one of the few American composers who covered the whole scope of any kind of music that this country’s had.”

The proof was on stage. Willie Nelson, clad in tuxedo and a black cowboy hat, sang “Blue Skies,” an evergreen he made a hit again. Natalie Cole wowed the multitudes with a wrenching version of “Supper Time.” Tommy Tune, backed by eight dancers, jauntily sang and tap-danced his way through “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Tony Bennett, who has a recent album in which he sings Berlin songs, soared with “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” then did a frisky “Shakin’ the Blues Away.”

Nell Carter erupted with a joyous “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Ray Charles did a soulful “How Deep Is the Ocean,” soaring up into falsetto range near the end and staying there.

Marilyn Horne belted out a strong, clear “God Bless America.” Leonard Bernstein, announcing his debut as a singer, did “Russian Lullaby” (and then playfully sang a gently dissonant, self-mocking piece he’d written for Berlin, “My 12-Tone Melody”).

A visibly nervous Garrison Keillor, late of public radio’s “Prairie Home Companion,” said Berlin once wrote “a poem of 81 words without one unnecessary word.” As the orchestra played the song, he gently recited the lyrics of “All Alone.”

Others heard from included Michael Feinstein, Maureen McGovern, Jerry Orbach and an uneasy-sounding trio composed of Diane Schur, Joe Williams and Billy Eckstine. Madeline Kahn also checked in with a 1919 curio, “You’d Be Surprised.”

In her turn, Rosemary Clooney recalled how Berlin once paced nervously when she and Bing Crosby were about to record a new song of his: “Bing said, ‘Relax, Irving, it’s already a hit.’ ”

Then she sang it--a song called “White Christmas.”

Among those listening to all this was Broadway composer Jule Styne, who wrote his first song hit, “Sunday,” in 1926. He has worked both with Berlin and an even older musical theater legend, George Abbott, now 101.

Berlin, he said, “was the songwriter, the ultimate songwriter. He laid the ground plans. We all learned from him, including George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers. . . . From him we learned how to write a popular song.”

Outside Carnegie Hall, a woman unable to attend because she had no ticket got to talking with a reporter at intermission.

A friendly woman in her 50s, she identified herself as Marilyn Shapiro and said she was a street-singer of sorts. She liked to sing for the Carnegie crowds during intermissions of concerts there, and wished she’d had a ticket for the show.

She said her uncle worked for Berlin as wardrobe manager on Berlin’s all-Army “This Is the Army” musical during World War II.

“I love his music,” she added. “He writes the kind of songs everyone loves.”

And without further ado, she sang “Always.”