Perhaps the most meaningful judgment ever spoken about Irving Berlin came from Jerome Kern. When asked once (perhaps more than once) about Berlin’s place in American music, Kern replied, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music. Irving Berlin is American music.”
For solid substantiation of that encomium, song lovers need go no further than Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood, a revue conceived, directed, and choreographed by Randy Skinner with a book written by one of Manhattan’s cabaret masters, Barry Kleinbort.
For 80 minutes. utterly proficient performers Phillip Artmore, Jeremy Benton, Victoria Byrd, Kaitlyn Davidson, Joseph Medeiros, and Melanie Moore sing and dance through a delectable and indisputably significant series of Berlin songs for movies, many for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to sing and dance to.
A considerable collection of these items made the charts, several nailing Oscar nominations. The only one to win is “White ‘Christmas,” introduced by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942) but written some years earlier and, curiously, only briefly referenced during this Yuletide season by Skinner and Kleinbort. (Was it deemed too obvious?)
Since Skinner has remained one of Broadway’s best choreographers for quite a few decades, it may be that he selected his players according first to their terping skills, tap mostly. Accordingly, the troupe members do him proud throughout, as does music director David Hancock Turner. Two of the best dance routines feature a less-well-known Berlin item “Drum Crazy” (with band drummer Louis B. Crocco taking forceful drum breaks) and the even less-well-known “My Walking Stick.” Artmore, Benton, and Medeiros distinguish themselves in these.
Moore, who might be thinking of the way Rogers used her arms, is especially appealing when swirling to Berlin’s love songs. (Nicole Wee is the costume designer; James Morgan the always capable set designer.) Moore also has a piquant voice, giving further hint of a charisma she could make even more noticeable sometime soon.
Davidson is the standout singer, particularly when letting go on “Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me.” Byrd gets enticingly Lena Horne-like with “Reaching for the Moon.” That the others can be credited with jobs well done but not necessarily spotlight-grabbing may be traced to Skinner’s being more choreographer than director. Each entertainer is lumbered with delivering Kleinbort’s narration, which tells Berlin’s Hollywood story extremely well. But it hardly calls for the ensemble members to disport themselves so perkily.
Indeed, much less perk would suffice during a revue that, among other enticements, invites cheerful yet serious thoughts about the elements of Berlin’s songwriting. He very frequently dealt with emotions without anything close to ambivalence. Beginning with “When I Lost You,” written after his wife Dorothy Goetz’s death barely a few months following their 1912 marriage, he wrote directly from his unconflicted heart. When he married socialite Ellin MacKay, he wrote “Always,” assigning all royalties to her after her father dropped her from his will.
Consider “Now It Can Be Told, which is included here and is about a “great love story,” and “Say it Isn’t So,” which isn’t rendered here and has the lyric “People say that you no longer love me.” It could be said these two (of Berlin’s approximately 1500 songs) aptly represent the breadth of the Berlin spectrum.
Think about Berlin’s rhymes. He rarely gets pointedly clever, almost always preferring to echo everyday language. His rhymes are the you-true-blue, the me-see-be, the heart-start-part, the moon-June-soon variety. (Check “Reaching for the Moon” for the longingly moon-June-soon usage.) He worked his words so craftily onto the effortless melodies that they don’t stand out, whereas the heart-start-part emotion does. On the other hand, Berlin did rhyme the word “the” in “The Yam,” heard and danced here.
In his narration Kleinbort neatly points out that there was an aspect of Berlin’s life when he was anything but emotional: when doing business. The man drove hard bargains that made him a spectacular money-coiner.
Pursued by RKO Radio Pictures and 20th Century Fox in the 1930s, he chose RKO. Shrewdly figuring that because they were offering less, he could make a better deal. He did, retaining, for instance, all publishing rights to his songs. When Fox came back later, he stipulated that all future titles include his name, e. g. Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.
The story goes that when Steven Spielberg was making Always, the Audrey Hepburn starrer, he called the 100-year-old-or-so Berlin (who died at 101) for the rights to use the standards. Berlin turned him down, insisting “I have great plans for that song.”
Over the years Berlin was known for his definition of a good song. He maintained that a good song was a hit song. Who, on leaving Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood, would dare challenge him?
Cheek to Cheek opened December 2, 2021, at the Theatre at St. Jean’s and has closed. Tickets and information: yorktheatre.org
