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FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Dear Friends, Welcome to a very special performance. other songs that celebrated and validated And please join me in a warm welcome to the American Experience. Walter Cronkite, the extraordinary pianist-actor-composer- at Berlin’s 100th birthday tribute, said Berlin, playwright Hershey Felder. In his work, this “helped write the story of this country, capturing deeply thoughtful and inspiring entertainer has the best of who we are and the dreams that brought to life not only Irving Berlin, but also shape our lives.” such musical legends as Leonard Bernstein, At this divisive current American moment, when Piotr Tchaikovsky, George Gershwin, and immigrants from many countries (including Claude Debussy. Hershey has entertained and present-day Russia) are themselves struggling enlightened audiences across America, and to become a part of the American Dream so his probing, well-crafted solo biographies, celebrated by, among others, Irving Berlin, it garlanded with brilliant music-making, provide gives me poignant pleasure to present the story us with new insights about these great culture- of this gifted composer who embraced his new shaping figures. Here he gives us the life and world with such fervor and diligence and love. music of a man of whom fellow composer Jerome Kern said, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music — he is American music.” MARK LAMOS Irving Berlin’s name conjures up music that Artistic Director is a rich, deeply felt part of America’s cultural DNA. Evergreen and never out of date, his cornucopian songbook, filled with an amazing variety of invention, warmth, depth, and sheer joy, is without equal. In fact, his songs have been interpreted and recorded by everyone from the Andrews Sisters to Lady Gaga. This immigrant boy, born in Imperial Russia, arrived in this country at the age of five. By 1911 he had written his first international hit song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Over his lifetime, this Jewish immigrant would conjure up for his adopted home such classics as “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” and many Photo by Bruce Plotkin HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 4 WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | 2019 SEASON 6 WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | 2019 SEASON PRESENTS MUSIC + LYRICS BY BOOK BY irving berlin hershey felder SCENIC DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN PROJECTION DESIGN Hershey Felder Richard Norwood Christopher Ash Lawrence Siefert SOUND DESIGN & PRODUCTION HISTORICAL & BIOGRAPHICAL RESIDENT COSTUME MANAGEMENT RESEARCH & SCENIC ARTIST Erik Carstensen Meghan Maiya, M.A. Stacey Nezda CONSULTING PRODUCER Joel Zwick DIRECTED BY trevor hay Presented by permission of Rodgers & Hammerstein: an Imagem Company, on behalf of the Estate of Irving Berlin, www.irvingberlin.com. All Rights Reserved. PRODUCTION SPONSORS CORPORATE PRODUCTION PARTNER BARBARA AND JOHN STREICKER PRODUCTION PARTNERS JOHNNA G. TORSONE AND JOHN MCKEON JULY 16 – AUGUST 3, 2019 HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 9 THE CAST IRVING BERLIN Hershey Felder HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN WILL BE PERFORMED WITHOUT AN INTERMISSION. Westport Country Playhouse employs members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 74. HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 11 12 WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | 2019 SEASON 14 WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | 2019 SEASON ’’ AMERICAN HE ISMUSIC The Life of Irving Berlin PROGRAM NOTES BY BETHANY GUGLIEMINO, ARTISTIC & MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATE EDITED BY DAVID KENNEDY, ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ’’ Delancey Street in New York’s Lower East Side, 1908 Irving Berlin was born Israel Beilin in 1888, contributed the lyrics and split the 75-cent the youngest of seven children. His exact royalty with composer Mike Nicholson. The birthplace is unknown, but his family had published sheet music credited the words to roots in Byelorussia (present-day Belarus) “I. Berlin,” the name by which he would soon roughly halfway between Moscow and be known across the country. the Polish border. At the age of five, Berlin By 1909, two years after the publication of and his family left their home to escape “Marie,” Berlin began composing music as the state-sanctioned persecution of Jews, well as lyrics, although he never learned to arriving in New York City’s Lower East Side in play in more than one key signature and used September 1893. a special transposing piano to compose in In 1901, Berlin’s father, a cantor and active different keys. In 1911, his song “Alexander’s participant in the area’s growing Jewish Ragtime Band” began its public life as a community, died. Berlin left school and took vaudeville number. Before long, it became up various odd jobs, eventually working as a his first real hit, selling a million copies in singing waiter at Chinatown’s Pelham Café. sheet music within four months and over two It was during this time that he published his million copies by 1912, making it the fastest first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy.” Berlin selling song of its time. 1912 also brought HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 15 “he is american music”: The Life of Irving Berlin personal tragedy, however, when Berlin’s first wife Dorothy Goetz contracted typhoid on their honeymoon in Cuba and died just six months later. As his career developed, Berlin turned his attention to Broadway. He wrote his first full musical score in 1914, and in 1918 he created the first of his military revues, Yip, Yip, Yaphank. After the war, he continued producing successful revues, contributing regularly to the Ziegfeld Follies as well as producing at Berlin and Ellin Mackay returning from their honeymoon in 1926. his own venue, the Music Box Theatre, built with producer Sam H. Harris. In 1925, Berlin because in 1917 Berlin had established his turned his hand to composing the score for own publishing house and controlled the a book musical for the Marx Brothers. The management of his royalties. The couple had resulting The Cocoanuts, created with George three daughters, as well as a son who died S. Kaufman, became a hit in both New York in infancy, and enjoyed 62 years of marriage and London, and in 1929 was one of the first until Mackay’s death in 1988. Broadway musicals to be filmed with sound. During the 1930s, Berlin took his talents to Hollywood. In 1935, he contributed five songs to Top Hat, the most financially successful film made by the legendary team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Over the next decade, a number of films would feature both new songs and old classics by Berlin. In May of 1942, his song “White Christmas” was released as a single and soon became the most popular recording of the wartime era, winning the Academy Award for Best Song that same year. Berlin in the offices of music publishing firm Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, 1914 Berlin’s flourishing career was matched by developments in his personal life. In 1924, he met writer and socialite Ellin Mackay, the daughter of an Irish-Catholic billionaire. When Berlin and Mackay married in 1926, her father disinherited her out of anger over the religious and age differences between the couple (Berlin was 15 years Mackay’s senior). Their fortunes remained stable, however, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in 1935’s Top Hat. 16 WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE | 2019 SEASON The 1940s saw Berlin’s return to Broadway, and with the outbreak of WWII he created another military revue, This Is The Army. In its inclusion of a number of black soldier- performers, the revue marked an important step in the integration of the U.S. armed forces. In 1945, Berlin joined the team of a new Broadway musical after the death of the team’s composer, Jerome Kern. That musical, Annie Get Your Gun, would go on by the numbers to become the longest running of Berlin’s stage musicals and was central to his career- long professional relationship with star Ethel Merman. In 1966, he wrote his last new number for Broadway, “An Old-Fashioned 1,500songs (estimated) Wedding,” specifically for Merman in the Lincoln Center revival of the musical. 25number one hits 20Broadway scores 15hollywood film scores Members of the This Is the Army unit in rehearsal. The cast was the only integrated World War II company in the armed forces. 8academy award nominations On September 22, 1989, Berlin died at home in his sleep at the age of 101. His body of work 3Presidential and defined American popular music for much military honors of the 20th century. Composer Jerome Kern captured the enduring appeal of Berlin’s music with the following assessment: 2tony awards “[Berlin] honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time, and in turn, gives these 1grammy lifetime impressions back to the world — simplified, achievement award clarified, glorified.” HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 17 HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN 19 WHO’S WHO Hershey Felder including the Broadway productions of Irving Berlin/Playwright Jack O’Brien’s Damn Yankees, How the Grinch Named to Time Magazine’s Stole Christmas, and Twyla Tharpe’s The Times 2016 Top 10 Plays and They Are A-Changin’. Included in his 23 seasons Musicals, Hershey Felder at the Old Globe were eleven seasons of the has played over 5,000 Summer Shakespeare Festival Repertory, as performances of his self- well as work on Tracy Letts’ August: Osage created solo productions County, directed by Sam Gold, and Hershey at some of the world’s most Felder’s George Gershwin Alone, Monsieur prestigious theatres and Chopin and Maestro Bernstein. has broken box office records consistently. American Theatre Magazine Joel Zwick has said, “Hershey Consulting Producer Felder is in a category all his own.” His shows Joel Zwick directed My Big Fat Greek Wedding, include: George Gershwin Alone (Broadway’s the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all Helen Hayes Theatre, West End’s Duchess time.

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