- Person
- Irving Berlin
- Lived
- 1888–1989
- Field
- Songwriting
- From
- Russian-born American
The story
Annie Get Your Gun began as an idea of the lyricist Dorothy Fields: a musical about Annie Oakley, the sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, written for her friend Ethel Merman. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, fresh from Oklahoma!, agreed to produce it and asked Jerome Kern to compose the music. Kern returned to New York to start work on 2 November 1945, collapsed in the street three days later and died on 11 November.
The producers turned to Irving Berlin, Kern's longtime friend, and Fields stepped aside as lyricist because Berlin always wrote his own words. Berlin was worn out after years of touring with his wartime show This Is the Army, and at first he refused, worried that he could not write songs tied to particular scenes and joking that he knew nothing about "hillbilly music". Hammerstein persuaded him to read the script and try a few numbers. Within days Berlin came back with "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly", "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" and "There's No Business Like Show Business". The last nearly went unused because Berlin wrongly thought Rodgers disliked it. When he overheard Hammerstein and the director Joshua Logan wishing for another duet, he wrote "Anything You Can Do" within a few hours.
With a book by Dorothy and her brother Herbert Fields, the show opened on Broadway in 1946 and ran for 1,147 performances, Berlin's biggest box-office success. It also had a long London run and became a film in 1950. Berlin gave Merman tender ballads such as "They Say It's Wonderful", and she said he had made a lady out of her, while "There's No Business Like Show Business" became her trademark. Stephen Sondheim later singled out "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" as one of the best comic songs ever written.
Critics still rank it as Berlin's finest theatre score, both for its run of hits and for the way the songs build character and move the plot along. The quick weekend of writing was unusual: his daughter said he normally "sweated blood" over his songs. He went on to write Call Me Madam (1950) for Merman, and in 1966 added a new song to a Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun. Across his career he wrote seventeen complete Broadway scores and contributed to six more.
The musical keeps returning to the stage and "There's No Business Like Show Business" remains the anthem of performers everywhere.
Why it matters
Annie Get Your Gun remains one of Broadway's most beloved musicals, and its songs are still sung worldwide.
About Irving Berlin
Cantor’s son and refugee from the Russian Empire who never learned to read music, yet wrote “White Christmas” “God Bless America” and well over a thousand other songs.
More about Irving Berlin
- Alexander's Ragtime Band made Irving Berlin a starIrving Berlin's 1911 hit "Alexander's Ragtime Band" made him a star, revived ragtime and sparked a national dance craze.
- Berlin's Blue Skies was sung in the first feature talkieIrving Berlin's song "Blue Skies" was featured in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length talking picture, sung by Al Jolson.
- Irving Berlin wrote the best-selling single of all timeIrving Berlin, a refugee with no formal musical training, wrote "White Christmas", the best-selling single ever, and gave all royalties from "God Bless America" to the Scouts.
- Irving Berlin helped found ASCAP to protect songwritersIn 1914 Irving Berlin became a charter member of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which has protected songwriters' royalties ever since.
- Irving Berlin set Emma Lazarus's sonnet to musicFor his 1949 musical Miss Liberty, Irving Berlin set the closing lines of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus" to music as "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor".
Sources
- Irving Berlin Wikipedia
- Irving Berlin: Biography The Irving Berlin Music Company
- Annie Get Your Gun (musical) Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.