As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin by Laurence Bergreen

Author:Laurence Bergreen [Bergreen, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-23T19:52:00+00:00

None of these difficulties brought real hardship to Berlin, for the success of As Thousands Cheer had rescued him from financial peril. Even with a top ticket price of $4.40, the revue played to standingroom-only audiences throughout its run. As the show's coproducer, he received forty percent of its profits, and he earned further royalties as composer and lyricist. On top of that, he enjoyed still more income from the sale of sheet music of the show's hit songs, published by his own company.

The influx of cash enhanced his life-style but did not drastically alter it. The days when income from hit songs meant a quantum leap in his standard of living were over. He had achieved a plateau of comfort-the spacious Manhattan home, the cook, chauffeur, limousine, antiques, and European vacations-that he would maintain for the rest of his life. Still, he did make overdue refinements and additions. In town, he moved his family from Sutton Place to a new apartment at 130 East End Avenue. Reflecting Ellin's taste rather than his, it was a formal, stately dwelling with impressive views of the East River. There was nothing showbizzy about the place; the antiques and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves quietly suggested the home of a wealthy, cultivated businessman possessed of exacting, if severe taste. The Berlins would live in these surroundings for the next thirteen years.

Irving complemented his comfortable city home with a new place in the country. For just $6,000, he purchased a fifty-two-acre estate in the Catskill Mountains, a two-and-a-half hour drive northwest of New York City. The tiny, exclusive hamlet of Lew Beach, near the town of Livingston, was in a hilly, heavily forested region best known for its trout fishing. Although Irving was no fisherman at the time he acquired this land, in later years he would make desultory attempts at the sport, but the patience it required did not accord with his highstrung disposition. Despite its proximity to Borscht Belt resorts catering primarily to Jewish clientele, the Lew Beach area had a distinctly upper-crust WASP tone. It was an unlikely place to find a celebrity of Berlin's stature, for one did not go there to mingle or to be seen, but to find peace and solitude.

The respite he awarded himself following As Thousands Cheer extended to his social activities, as well. Irving had always been fascinated by high society-that had been part of Ellin's desirability, as well as the logical goal of his steady drive toward complete assimilation into the American mainstream. Now, for the first time since marrying Ellin, he felt secure enough to make a concerted effort to penetrate her old-money milieu-a world where Broadway successes counted against an individual if they counted at all.

Though his father-in-law, Clarence, had lost his fortune in the Crash, the Mackay family still enjoyed access to a hunting estate on Gardiners Island, an exclusive preserve nestled between the prongs of eastern Long Island. Clarence's declining health prevented him from using it, but Ellin's brother Willie, who had maintained

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