title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: In August 2019, both houses of the Parliament of India passed resolutions to amend Article 370 and extend the Constitution of India in its entirety to the state, which was implemented as a constitutional order by the President of India. At the same time, the parliament also passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which contained provisions that dissolved the state of Jammu and Kashmir and established two new union territories: the eponymous union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and that of Ladakh.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: The reorganisation act was assented to by the President of India, and came into effect on 31 October 2019. Prior to these measures, the union government locked down the Kashmir Valley, increased security forces, imposed Section 144 that prevented assembly, and placed political leaders such as former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti under house arrest. Internet and phone services were also blocked.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: The state of Jammu and Kashmir consisted of three divisions: the Jammu Division, the Kashmir Division and Ladakh which are further divided into 22 districts. The Siachen Glacier, while under Indian military control, did not lie under the administration of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Kishtwar, Ramban, Reasi, Samba, Bandipora, Ganderbal, Kulgam and Shopian were districts formed in 2008.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: Jammu and Kashmir was the only state in India with a Muslim-majority population. In the Census of India held in 1961, the first to be conducted after the formation of the state, Islam was practised by 68.31% of the population, while 28.45% followed Hinduism. The proportion of population that practised Islam fell to 64.19% by 1981 but recovered afterward. According to the 2011 census, the last to be conducted in the state, Islam was practised by about 68.3% of the state population, while 28.4% followed Hinduism and small minorities followed Sikhism (1.9%), Buddhism (0.9%) and Christianity (0.3%).


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: The state's official language was Urdu, which occupied a central space in media, education, religious and political discourses and the legislature of Jammu and Kashmir; the language functioned as a symbol of identity among Muslims of South Asia. The first language of less than 1% of the population, it was regarded as a "neutral" and non-native language of the multilingual region, and broadly accepted by Kashmiri Muslims. The dominant position of Urdu has been criticised for rendering Kashmiri into a functional "minority language," effectively restricting its use to households and family.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: The most widely spoken language is Kashmiri, the mother tongue of % of the population according to the 2011 census. Other major languages include Dogri (%), Gojri (%), Pahari (%), Hindi (%), Punjabi (%), Balti, Bateri, Bhadarwahi, Brokskat, Changthang, Ladakhi, Purik, Sheikhgal, Spiti Bhoti, and Zangskari. Additionally, several other languages, predominantly found in neighbouring regions, are also spoken by communities within Jammu and Kashmir: Bhattiyali, Chambeali, Churahi, Gaddi, Hindko, Lahul Lohar, Pangwali, Pattani, Sansi, and Shina.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: Jammu and Kashmir was the only state in India which had special autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution of India, according to which no law enacted by the Parliament of India, except for those in the field of defence, communication and foreign policy, would be extendable in Jammu and Kashmir unless it was ratified by the state legislature of Jammu and Kashmir. The state was able to define the permanent residents of the state who alone had the privilege to vote in state elections, the right to seek government jobs and the ability to own land or property in the state.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: Jammu and Kashmir was the only Indian state to have its own official state flag, along with India's national flag, in addition to a separate constitution. Designed by the then ruling National Conference, the flag of Jammu and Kashmir featured a plough on a red background symbolising labour; it replaced the Maharaja's state flag. The three stripes represented the three distinct administrative divisions of the state, namely Jammu, Valley of Kashmir, and Ladakh.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: Like all the states of India, Jammu and Kashmir had a multi-party democratic system of governance and had a bicameral legislature. At the time of drafting the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, 100 seats were earmarked for direct elections from territorial constituencies. Of these, 25 seats were reserved for the areas of Jammu and Kashmir state that came under Pakistani control; this was reduced to 24 after the 12th amendment of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir. After a delimitation in 1988, the total number of seats increased to 111, of which 87 were within Indian-administered territory. The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly had a 6-year term, in contrast to the norm of a 5-year term followed in every other state assemblies. In 2005, it was reported that the Indian National Congress-led government in the state intended to amend the term to bring parity with the other states.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: In 1990, an Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of India, which gave special powers to the Indian security forces, including the detaining of individuals for up to two years without presenting charges, was enforced in Jammu and Kashmir, a decision which drew criticism from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for violating human rights. Security forces claimed that many missing people were not detained, but had crossed into Pakistan-administered Kashmir to engage in militancy.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: The economy of Jammu and Kashmir was predominantly dependent on agriculture and related activities. Horticulture played a vital role in the economic development of the state; produce included apples, apricots, cherries, pears, plums, almonds and walnuts. The Doda district, rich in high-grade sapphire, had active mines until the 1989 insurgency; in 1998, the government discovered that smugglers had occupied these mines and stolen much of the resource. Industrial development was constrained by the extreme mountainous landscape and power shortage. Along with horticulture and agriculture, tourism is an important industry for Jammu and Kashmir, accounting for about 7% to its economy.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (state)

text: Jammu and Kashmir was one of the largest recipients of grants from India; in 2004, this amounted to US$812 million. Tourism, which was integral to the economy, witnessed a decline owing to the insurgency, but foreign tourism later rebounded, and in 2009, the state was one among the top tourist destinations in India. The economy was also benefited by Hindu pilgrims who visited the shrines of Vaishno Devi and Amarnath Temple annually. The British government had reiterated its advise against all travel to Jammu and Kashmir in 2013, with certain exceptions.


title: Gang stalking

text: Gang stalking or group-stalking is a set of persecutory beliefs in which those affected believe they are being followed, stalked, and harassed by a large number of people. The term is associated with the targeted individual (T.I.) virtual community formed by like-minded individuals who claim their lives are disrupted from being stalked by organized groups intent on causing them harm.


title: Gang stalking

text: The concept of stalking arose in the 1980s following increased legal equity for women and prosecution of domestic violence. Generally, stalking has a single perpetrator, who may sometimes recruit others to act vicariously on their behalf, usually unwittingly. Beginning in the early 2000s, the term "gang stalking" became popularized to describe a different experience of repeated harassment which instead comes from multiple people who organize around a shared purpose, with no one person solely responsible.


title: Gang stalking

text: A 2016 article in "The New York Times" estimated that more than 10,000 people were participating in online communities "organized around the conviction that its members are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with mind-control weapons and armies of so-called gang stalkers". The article identified a 2015 paper by Sheridan and James entitled "Complaints of group stalking ('gang stalking'): an exploratory study of their nature and impact on complainants" as the only scientific study of the topic at the time.


title: Gang stalking

text: Hundreds of these communities exist online. News reports have described how groups of Internet users have cooperated to exchange detailed conspiracy theories involving gang stalking. Some psychiatrists and psychologists say "Web sites that amplify reports of mind control and group stalking" are "an extreme community that may encourage delusional thinking" and represent "a dark side of social networking. They may reinforce the troubled thinking of the mentally ill and impede treatment." A 2020 study established a framework to classify and examine the phenomenon of individuals with the subjective experience of being gang stalked. The study confirmed the subsequent "serious" sequelae of their experience and recommended further research.


title: Gang stalking

text: Those who believe they are victims report that they believe the motivation for the gang stalking is to disrupt every part of their lives. The activities involved are described as including electronic harassment, the use of "psychotronic weapons", directed-energy weapons, cyberstalking, hypnotic suggestion transmitted through remotely-accessed electronic devices, and other alleged mind control techniques. These have been reported by external observers as being examples of belief systems as opposed to reports of objective phenomena. Among the community of targeted individuals, gang stalking is described as a shared experience where the gang stalkers all coordinate to harass individuals, and the individuals share their victim experiences with each other.


title: Gang stalking

text: A study from Australia and the United Kingdom by Lorraine Sheridan and David James compared 128 self-defined victims of 'gang stalking' with a randomly selected group of 128 self-declared victims of stalking by an individual. All 128 'victims' of gang stalking were judged to be delusional, compared with only 5 victims of individual stalking. There were highly significant differences between the two samples on depressive symptoms, post-traumatic symptomatology and adverse impact on social and occupational function, with the self-declared victims of gang stalking being more severely affected. The authors concluded that "group stalking appears to be delusional in basis, but complainants suffer marked psychological and practical sequelae. This is important in the assessment of risk in stalking cases, early referral to psychiatric services and allocation of police resources."


title: Gang stalking

text: One report found that some who claimed to be targeted individuals have acted out with violence, sometimes extreme.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Lainie Kazan (born Lainie Levine; May 15, 1940) is an American actress and singer. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for "St. Elsewhere" and the 1993 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for "My Favorite Year". She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her role in "My Favorite Year" (1982). Kazan played Maria Portokalos in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and its sequel film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2". She also starred in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (2008).


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Kazan was born Lainie Levine in Brooklyn, the daughter of Carole and Ben Levine. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish and Sephardic Jewish descent. Some of her grandparents lived in Israel before moving to Manchester, England and settling in Brooklyn. Kazan has described her mother as "neurotic, fragile and artistic." Kazan attended Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School with Barbra Streisand, for whom she would later understudy. She graduated in 1956. Kazan studied theatre at HB Studio and graduated from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York in 1960. While at Hofstra, Kazan appeared in school musicals written and directed by a classmate director Francis Ford Coppola as well as actor James Caan.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Kazan made her Broadway debut in 1961 with the musical "The Happiest Girl in the World." She appeared the following year in another musical, "Bravo Giovanni," and understudied Barbra Streisand for the lead role of Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl" (1964). When Streisand could not perform due to a throat condition, Kazan took her place in a matinee and evening performance for one day of the show's run. Her popularity increasing, Kazan posed nude for the October 1970 issue of "Playboy," which was reused in "Pocket Playboy" #4, issued in 1974. Her appearance in the magazine opened the door for her to headline and operate two different Playboy Jazz Clubs. Overseen by Hugh Hefner, the clubs were named Lainie's Room West and Lainie's Room East, each on opposite coasts, with the first one located in Los Angeles and the other in Manhattan. Her "Playboy" photographs inspired the look of Jack Kirby’s superheroine Big Barda.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Along with appearing in numerous supper clubs across the country, Kazan guest-starred on Dean Martin’s variety series 26 times. Other television work includes a recurring role as Aunt Frieda on the Fran Drescher sitcom "The Nanny," the mother of Kirstie Alley's character on "Veronica's Closet," and various guest roles, including one on "St. Elsewhere" that resulted in an Emmy nomination. Her other television work has included "The Paper Chase," "Columbo", "Touched by an Angel," and "Will & Grace".


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Kazan played Maria Portokalos, the mother of Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) in the films "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2." Following the first film in the franchise, Kazan was featured in "My Big Fat Greek Life," a short-lived series based on the film. Other recent film work includes the mother of Adam Sandler’s character in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." Although the scene was deleted in the feature film, it is included on the DVD in the special features section. Kazan appeared as singer Ava St. Clair with Kevin James in two episodes of "The King of Queens".


title: Lainie Kazan

text: A life member of The Actors Studio, Kazan returned to Broadway to recreate her film role for the musical adaptation of "My Favorite Year," earning a Tony Award nomination for her performance. She completed a stint in "The Vagina Monologues." She has appeared in regional productions of "A Little Night Music," "Man of La Mancha," "," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "Hello, Dolly!," and "Fiddler on the Roof". In 1984, she made a guest appearance on the "Faerie Tale Theatre" episode “Pinocchio” as Sophia the Blue Fairy.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: In the "Ugly Betty" episode "Fire and Nice," Kazan played Dina Talercio, the mother of Bobby (Adam Rodriguez), who becomes the character's brother-in-law. In 2010, Kazan joined the cast of "Desperate Housewives" for season 7. She played the role of Mrs. Maxine Rosen, a self-employed business owner and neighbor to Susan Delfino.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: After meeting musical director-arranger Peter H.B. Daniels on the Broadway musical "Funny Girl", in which Kazan was a cast member and he was associate orchestra conductor, the two began a five-year relationship. They married sometime after the 1971 birth of their daughter Jennifer. The marriage did not endure, and Kazan was single again by 1976.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: In the 1970s, Kazan was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Since then, she has dedicated time to public education about DVT.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: Beginning in 2012, Kazan became an adjunct professor at UCLA, teaching acting classes and directing her students in drama-department production. She has served on the boards of the Young Musicians’ Foundation, AIDS Project LA, and B'nai Brith, the California Jazz Foundation, and her alma mater, Hofstra University.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: On April 9, 2016, Kazan was injured in a head-on traffic collision. Kazan was driving her car when the collision occurred in Sherman Oaks, California, which necessitated that she be hospitalized.


title: Lainie Kazan

text: In December 2017, outside a California supermarket, Kazan was arrested for shoplifting. Prosecutors reached a plea deal with her.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He started working for "The Washington Post" as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor.


title: Bob Woodward

text: While a young reporter for "The Washington Post" in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward continued to work for "The Washington Post" after his reporting on Watergate. He has written 21 books on American politics and current affairs, 13 of which have topped best-seller lists.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of Jane (née Upshur) and Alfred E. Woodward, a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in nearby Wheaton, Illinois, and educated at Wheaton Community High School (WCHS), a public high school in the same town. His parents divorced when he was twelve, and he and his brother and sister were raised by their father, who subsequently remarried.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Following graduation from WCHS in 1961, Woodward enrolled in Yale College with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship and studied history and English literature. While at Yale, Woodward joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was a member of Book and Snake. He received his B.A. degree in 1965.


title: Bob Woodward

text: After Yale, Woodward began a five-year tour of duty in the United States Navy. During his service in the Navy, Woodward served aboard the USS "Wright", and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes the "Wright" carried in its capacity as a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA). At one time, he was close to Admiral Robert O. Welander, being communications officer on the USS "Fox" under Welander's command.


title: Bob Woodward

text: After being discharged as a lieutenant in August 1970, Woodward was admitted to Harvard Law School but elected not to attend. Instead, he applied for a job as a reporter for "The Washington Post" while taking graduate courses in Shakespeare and international relations at George Washington University. Harry M. Rosenfeld, the "Post" metropolitan editor, gave him a two-week trial but did not hire him because of his lack of journalistic experience. After a year at the "Montgomery Sentinel", a weekly newspaper in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Woodward was hired as a "Post" reporter in 1971.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward and Carl Bernstein were both assigned to report on the June 17, 1972, burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in a Washington, D.C., office building called Watergate. Their work, under editor Ben Bradlee, became known for being the first to report on a number of political "dirty tricks" used by the Nixon re-election committee during his campaign for re-election. Their book about the scandal, "All the President's Men", became a No. 1 bestseller and was later turned into a movie. The 1976 film, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, transformed the reporters into celebrities and inspired a wave of interest in investigative journalism.


title: Bob Woodward

text: The book and movie also led to the enduring mystery of the identity of Woodward's secret Watergate informant known as Deep Throat, a reference to the title of a popular pornographic movie at the time. Woodward said he would protect Deep Throat's identity until the man died or allowed his name to be revealed. For more than 30 years, only Woodward, Bernstein, and a handful of others knew the informant's identity until it was claimed by his family to "Vanity Fair" magazine to be former Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director W. Mark Felt in May 2005. Woodward immediately confirmed the veracity of this claim and subsequently published a book, titled "The Secret Man", that detailed his relationship with Felt.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward and Bernstein followed up "All the President's Men" with a second book on Watergate, entitled "The Final Days" (Simon and Schuster 1976), covering in extensive depth the period from November 1973 until President Nixon resigned in August 1974.


title: Bob Woodward

text: The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.


title: Bob Woodward

text: In September 1980, a Sunday feature story appeared on the front page of the "Post" titled "Jimmy's World" in which reporter Janet Cooke wrote a profile of the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict. Although some within the "Post" doubted the story's veracity, it was defended by the paper's editors including Woodward, who was assistant managing editor. It was Woodward who submitted the story for Pulitzer Prize consideration, and Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981. The story was then found to be a complete fabrication, and the Pulitzer was returned. In retrospect, Woodward made the following statement:


title: Bob Woodward

text: China's alleged role in the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy first gained public attention when Woodward and Brian Duffy published a story stating that a United States Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence that Chinese agents sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the 1996 presidential campaign. The journalists wrote that intelligence information had shown the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions to the DNC.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward spent more time than any other journalist with former President George W. Bush, interviewing him six times for close to 11 hours total. Woodward's four books, "Bush at War" (2002), "Plan of Attack" (2004), "State of Denial" (2006), and "" (2008) are detailed accounts of the Bush presidency, including the response to the September 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.


title: Bob Woodward

text: In a series of articles published in January 2002, he and Dan Balz described the events at Camp David in the aftermath of September 11 and discussed the Worldwide Attack Matrix.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward believed the Bush administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the war. During an appearance on "Larry King Live", he was asked by a telephone caller, "Suppose we go to war and go into Iraq and there are no weapons of mass destruction", Woodward responded "I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There's just too much there." Woodward later admitted his error saying, "I think I dropped the ball here. I should have pushed much, much harder on the skepticism about the reality of WMD; in other words, [I should have] said, 'Hey, look, the evidence is not as strong as they were claiming.'"


title: Bob Woodward

text: In 2008, as a part of the Talks at Google series, Woodward, who was interviewed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said that he had a fourth book in his "Bush at War" series in the making. He then added jokingly that his wife had told him that she would kill him if he decides to write a fifth in the series.


title: Bob Woodward

text: On November 14, 2005, Woodward gave a two-hour deposition to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. He testified that a senior administration official told him in June 2003 that Iraq war critic Joe Wilson's wife (later identified as Valerie Plame), worked for the CIA as a WMD analyst, not as an undercover operative. Woodward appears to have been the first reporter to learn about her employment (albeit not her name) from a government source. The deposition was reported in "The Washington Post" on November 16, 2005, and was the first time Woodward revealed publicly that he had any special knowledge about the case. Woodward testified the information was given to him in a "casual" and "offhand" manner, and said that he does not believe it was part of any coordinated effort to "out" Plame as a CIA employee. Later, Woodward's source identified himself. It was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy and an internal critic of the Iraq War and the White House inner circle.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward said the revelation came at the end of a long, confidential background interview for his 2004 book "Plan of Attack". He did not reveal the official's disclosure at the time because it did not strike him as important. Later, he kept it to himself because it came as part of a confidential conversation with a source.


title: Bob Woodward

text: In his deposition, Woodward also said that he had conversations with Scooter Libby after the June 2003 conversation with his confidential administration source, and testified that it is possible that he might have asked Libby further questions about Joe Wilson's wife before her employment at the CIA and her identity were publicly known.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward apologized to Leonard Downie Jr., editor of "The Washington Post", for not informing him earlier of the June 2003 conversation. Downie accepted the apology and said even had the paper known it would not have changed its reporting.


title: Bob Woodward

text: New York University professor Jay Rosen severely criticized Woodward for allegedly being co-opted by the Bush White House and also for not telling the truth about his role in the Plame affair, writing: "Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted. Part of what remains to be uncovered is how Woodward was played by the Bush team, and what they thought they were doing by leaking to him, as well as what he did with the dubious information he got."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Although Woodward is no longer employed by the "Post," Woodward has continued to write books and report stories for "The Washington Post", and has the title of associate editor at the paper, which was described by "Post" media columnist Margaret Sullivan as honorific with no regular responsibilities. He focuses on the presidency, intelligence, and Washington institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court, The Pentagon, and the Federal Reserve. He also wrote the book "Wired", about the Hollywood drug culture and the death of comic John Belushi.


title: Bob Woodward

text: On February 22, 2013, shortly before the United States federal budget sequester took effect, "The Washington Post" published a column by Woodward in which he criticized the Obama administration for their statements in 2012 and 2013 that the sequester had been proposed by Republicans in Congress; Woodward said his research showed that the sequester proposal had originated with the White House. Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed, "The sequester was something that was discussed, and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward."


title: Bob Woodward

text: On February 27, Woodward told "Politico" that before the column was published, Woodward had called a senior White House official, later identified by reporters as economic adviser Gene Sperling, to discuss the piece, and that the official had "yelled at [Woodward] for about a half-hour" before sending him a page-long email that included the sentence, "I think you will regret staking out that claim." In "Politico" reporting, Woodward's focus on that line was described as "making clear he saw [that sentence] as a veiled threat", although Woodward did not use the word "threat" or "threatened". Several other sources also indicated that Woodward had expressed the line as an intended threat.


title: Bob Woodward

text: The next day, "Politico" published the complete email exchange between Woodward and Sperling. Sperling's statements leading up to the "regret" line read: "But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim." The White House subsequently released a statement that "of course no threat was intended...The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more." Upon release of the emails, several conservative commentators indicated they no longer agreed with characterizing the "regret" statement as a threat.


title: Bob Woodward

text: In a February 28 Fox News Channel interview, Woodward said he had never used the word "threat" but said Sperling's conduct was "not the way to operate in a White House". He also said: "I've been flooded with emails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works, they are trying to control and they don't want to be challenged or crossed". "National Journal" editor Ron Fournier, conservative "Washington Post" columnist Jennifer Rubin, and Fox News contributor and former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis expressed support for Woodward; Fournier and Davis described similar experiences with Obama administration officials.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Although not a recipient in his own right, Woodward made contributions to two Pulitzer Prizes won by "The Washington Post". First, he and Bernstein were the lead reporters on Watergate and the "Post" won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973. He was also the main reporter for the "Post"s coverage of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The "Post" won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for 10 of its stories on the subject.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward himself has been a recipient of nearly every major American journalism award, including the Heywood Broun award (1972), Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting (1972 and 1986), Sigma Delta Chi Award (1973), George Polk Award (1972), William Allen White Medal (2000), and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on the Presidency (2002). In 2012, Colby College presented Woodward with the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism as well as an honorary doctorate.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward has authored or co-authored 20 nonfiction books in the past 35 years. All 18 have been national bestsellers and 12 of them have been No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers—more No. 1 national nonfiction bestsellers than any contemporary author.


title: Bob Woodward

text: In his 1995 memoir, "A Good Life," former "Post" Executive Editor Ben Bradlee singled out Woodward in the foreword. "It would be hard to overestimate the contributions to my newspaper and to my time as editor of that extraordinary reporter, Bob Woodward—surely the best of his generation at investigative reporting, the best I've ever seen... And Woodward has maintained the same position on top of journalism's ladder ever since Watergate." In 1995, Woodward also received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.


title: Bob Woodward

text: David Gergen, who had worked in the White House during the Richard Nixon and three subsequent administrations, said in his 2000 memoir, "Eyewitness to Power", of Woodward's reporting, "I don't accept everything he writes as gospel—he can get details wrong—but generally, his accounts in both his books and in the Post are remarkably reliable and demand serious attention. I am convinced he writes only what he believes to be true or has been reliably told to be true. And he is certainly a force for keeping the government honest."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Fred Barnes of the "Weekly Standard" called Woodward "the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever." In 2003, Al Hunt of "The Wall Street Journal" called Woodward "the most celebrated journalist of our age." In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time."


title: Bob Woodward

text: In 2014, Robert Gates former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, said that he wished he'd recruited Woodward into the CIA, saying, "He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn't be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward often uses unnamed sources in his reporting for the "Post" and in his books. Using extensive interviews with firsthand witnesses, documents, meeting notes, diaries, calendars, and other documentation, Woodward attempts to construct a seamless narrative of events, most often told through the eyes of the key participants.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Nicholas von Hoffman has made the criticism that "arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used", while Michael Massing believes Woodward's books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Joan Didion published a comprehensive criticism of Woodward in a lengthy September 1996 essay in "The New York Review of Books". Though "Woodward is a widely trusted reporter, even an American icon", she says that he assembles reams of often irrelevant detail, fails to draw conclusions, and make judgments. "Measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" from his books after Watergate from 1979 to 1996, she said. She said the books are notable for "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." She ridicules "fairness" as "a familiar newsroom piety, the excuse in practice for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking." All this focus on what people said and thought—their "decent intentions"—circumscribes "possible discussion or speculation", resulting in what she called "political pornography".


title: Bob Woodward

text: The "Post" Richard Harwood defended Woodward in a September 6, 1996, column, arguing that Woodward's method is that of a reporter—"talking to people you write about, checking and cross-checking their versions of contemporary history," and collecting documentary evidence in notes, letters, and records."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Commentator David Frum has said that Washington officials can learn something about the way Washington works from Woodward's books: "From his books, you can draw a composite profile of the powerful Washington player. That person is highly circumspect, highly risk averse, eschews new ideas, flatters his colleagues to their face (while trashing them to Woodward behind their backs), and is always careful to avoid career-threatening confrontation. We all admire heroes, but Woodward's books teach us that those who rise to leadership are precisely those who take care to abjure heroism for themselves."


title: Bob Woodward

text: Despite these criticisms and challenges, Woodward has been praised as an authoritative and balanced journalist. "The New York Times Book Review" said in 2004 that "No reporter has more talent for getting Washington's inside story and telling it cogently."


title: Bob Woodward

text: As of 2008, Woodward was giving speeches on the "lecture circuit" to industry lobbying groups, such as the American Bankruptcy Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and the Mortgage Bankers Association. Woodward was commanding speaking fees "rang[ing] from $15,000 to $60,000" and donating them to his personal foundation, the Woodward Walsh Foundation, which donated to charities including Sidwell Friends School. "Washington Post" policy prohibits "speaking engagements without permission from department heads" but Woodward insisted that the policy is "fuzzy and ambiguous".


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward also lectures at colleges and universities. He gave the 2001 Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecture at Central Connecticut State University, and has spoken at the University of Arkansas, University of Alabama, Eastern Connecticut State University, West Texas A&M University, and Oklahoma City Community College. Following the publication in 2018 of "Fear: Trump in the White House", he spoke to an overflow crowd of students, faculty, and guests at Virginia Commonwealth University. His May 4, 2019 speech at Kent State University contained the startling revelation of previously unreleased audiotape on which then-president Richard Nixon can be heard lauding the 1970 shooting of four students for its effect on those who disagreed with him.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward has been married three times. His first marriage (1966–1969) was to his high school sweetheart Kathleen Middlekauff, now an English professor. His second marriage (1974–1979) was to Frances Kuper. In 1989, he married for a third time to Elsa Walsh (b. August 25, 1957), a writer for "The New Yorker" and the author of "Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women".


title: Bob Woodward

text: His oldest daughter, Tali, is also a journalist. She directed a graduate program in journalism at Columbia University for six years before becoming an editor for "The Trace".


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward was portrayed by Robert Redford in "All the President's Men" (1976), J. T. Walsh in "Wired" (1989), Will Ferrell in "Dick" (1999), Julian Morris in "" (2017), and Spencer Garrett in "The Front Runner" (2018).


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward co-wrote the 1986 NBC made-for-TV film "Under Siege" about a series of terrorist attacks in the United States. The film's other co-writers include Christian Williams, Richard Harwood, and Alfred Sole.


title: Bob Woodward

text: Woodward again collaborated with Williams when they were story writers for the 1989 TNT TV miniseries adaptation of "The Nightmare Years" about American journalist William L. Shirer stationed in pre-World War II Nazi Germany. The miniseries' screenplay was written by Ian Curteis.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; ; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights, and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", in 1911. He also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. For much of his career Berlin could not read sheet music, and was such a limited piano player that he could only play in the key of F-sharp; he used his custom piano equipped with a transposing lever when he needed to play in keys other than F-sharp.


title: Irving Berlin

text: "Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania". Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his stated aim being to "reach the heart of the average American," whom he saw as the "real soul of the country". In doing so, said Walter Cronkite, at Berlin's 100th birthday tribute, he "helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives".


title: Irving Berlin

text: He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him famous before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Easter Parade", "Puttin' on the Ritz", "Cheek to Cheek", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)", and "There's No Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1943 film "This Is the Army", with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin's songs have reached the top of the charts 25 times and have been extensively re-recorded by numerous singers including The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, Tiny Tim, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Cher, Diana Ross, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan, Ruth Etting, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, Rudy Vallée, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Doris Day, Jerry Garcia, Taco, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Buble, Lady Gaga, and Christina Aguilera.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101. Composer Douglas Moore sets Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters, and includes him instead with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg, as a "great American minstrel"—someone who has "caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what we believe." Composer George Gershwin called him "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived", and composer Jerome Kern concluded that "Irving Berlin has no "place" in American music—he "is" American music."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin was born Israel Beilin on May 11, 1888, in the Russian Empire. Although his family came from the shtetl of Tolochin (today in Belarus), Berlin later learned that he was probably born in Tyumen, Siberia, where his father, an itinerant cantor, had taken his family. He was one of eight children of Moses (1848–1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).


title: Irving Berlin

text: From Tyumen, the family returned to Tolochin, and from there, they travelled to Antwerp and left the old continent aboard the SS "Rhynland" from the Red Star Line. On September 14, 1893, the family arrived at Ellis Island in New York City. When they arrived, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and five sisters until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into the city. After their arrival, the name "Beilin" was changed to "Baline".


title: Irving Berlin

text: According to biographer Laurence Bergreen, as an adult Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years in Russia except for one: "he was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground. By daylight the house was in ashes." As an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he knew no other life.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, escaping discrimination, poverty and brutal pogroms. Other such families included those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Jack Yellen, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM), and the Warner brothers.


title: Irving Berlin

text: After their arrival in New York City, the Baline family lived briefly in a basement flat on Monroe Street, and then moved to a three-room tenement at 330 Cherry Street. His father, unable to find comparable work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side to support his family. He died a few years later when Irving was thirteen years old.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Now, with only a few years of schooling, eight-year-old Irving began helping to support his family. He became a newspaper boy, hawking "The Evening Journal." One day while delivering newspapers, according to Berlin's biographer and friend, Alexander Woollcott, he stopped to look at a ship departing for China and became so entranced that he did not see a swinging crane, which knocked him into the river. When he was fished out after going down for the third time, he was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies he earned that day.


title: Irving Berlin

text: His mother took a job as a midwife, and three of his sisters worked wrapping cigars, common for immigrant girls. His older brother worked in a sweatshop assembling shirts. Each evening, when the family came home from their day's work, Bergreen writes, "they would deposit the coins they had earned that day into Lena's outspread apron."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Music historian Philip Furia writes that when "Izzy" began to sell newspapers in the Bowery, he was exposed to the music and sounds coming from saloons and restaurants that lined the crowded streets. Young Berlin sang some of the songs he heard while selling papers, and people would toss him some coins. He confessed to his mother one evening that his newest ambition in life was to become a singing waiter in a saloon.


title: Irving Berlin

text: However, before Berlin was fourteen his meager income was still adding less than his sisters' to the family's budget, which made him feel worthless. He then decided to leave home and join the city's ragged army of other young immigrants. He lived in the Bowery, taking up residence in one of the lodging houses that sheltered the thousands of other homeless boys in the Lower East Side. Bergreen describes them as being uncharitable living quarters, "Dickensian in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to ordinary human beings."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Having left school around the age of thirteen, Berlin had few survival skills and realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only ability was acquired from his father's vocation as a singer, and he joined with several other youngsters who went to saloons on the Bowery and sang to customers. Itinerant young singers like them were common on the Lower East Side. Berlin would sing a few of the popular ballads he heard on the street, hoping people would pitch him a few pennies. From these seamy surroundings, he became streetwise, with real and lasting education. Music was his only source of income and he picked up the language and culture of the ghetto lifestyle.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin learned what kind of songs appealed to audiences, writes Bergreen: "well-known tunes expressing simple sentiments were the most reliable." He soon began plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in Union Square and in 1906, when he was 18, got a job as a singing waiter at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown. Besides serving drinks, he sang made-up "blue" parodies of hit songs to the delight of customers.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Biographer Charles Hamm writes that in Berlin's free time after hours, he taught himself to play the piano. Never having had lessons, after the bar closed for the night, young Berlin would sit at a piano in the back and begin improvising tunes. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", written in collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist Mike Nicholson, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights. The sheet music to the published song presented his name as "I. Berlin".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin continued writing and playing music at Pelham Cafe and developing an early style. He liked the words to other people's songs but sometimes the rhythms were "kind of boggy," and he might change them. One night he delivered some hits composed by his friend, George M. Cohan, another kid who was getting known on Broadway with his own songs. When Berlin ended with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy", notes Whitcomb, "everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little fellow."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Max Winslow (c. 1883–1942), a staff member at music publisher Harry Von Tilzer Company, noticed Berlin's singing on many occasions and became so taken with his talent that he tried to get him a job with his firm. Von Tilzer said that Max claimed to have "discovered a great kid," and raved about him so much that Von Tilzer hired Berlin.


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1908, when he was 20, Berlin took a new job at a saloon named Jimmy Kelly's in the Union Square neighborhood. There, he was able to collaborate with other young songwriters, such as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi, and George A. Whiting. In 1909, the year of the premiere of Israel Zangwill's "The Melting Pot", he got another big break as a staff lyricist with the Ted Snyder Company.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin rose as a songwriter in Tin Pan Alley and on Broadway. In 1911, Emma Carus introduced his first world-famous hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", followed by a performance from Berlin himself at the Friars' Frolic of 1911. He became an instant celebrity, and the featured performer later that year at Oscar Hammerstein's vaudeville house, where he introduced dozens of other songs. The "New York Telegraph" described how two hundred of his street friends came to see "their boy" onstage: "All the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his coat while tears ran down his cheeks—in a vaudeville house!"


title: Irving Berlin

text: Richard Corliss, in a "Time" profile of Berlin, described "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as a march, not a rag, "its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and "Swanee River". The tune revived the ragtime fervor that Scott Joplin had begun a decade earlier, and made Berlin a songwriting star. From its first and subsequent releases, the song was near the top of the charts as others sang it: Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937; no. 1 by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; Johnny Mercer in 1945; Al Jolson, in 1947 and Nellie Lutcher in 1948. Add Ray Charles's big-band version in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in just under a half century.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Initially the song was not recognized as a hit, however; Broadway producer Jesse Lasky was uncertain about using it, although he did include it in his "Follies" show. It was performed as an instrumental but did not impress audiences, and was soon dropped from the show's score. Berlin regarded it as a failure. He then wrote lyrics to the score, played it again in another Broadway Review, and this time "Variety" news weekly called it "the musical sensation of the decade". Composer George Gershwin, foreseeing its influence, said it was "the first real American musical work," adding, "Berlin had shown us the way; it was now easier to attain our ideal."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin was "flabbergasted" by the sudden international popularity of the song, and wondered why it became a sudden hit. He decided it was partly because the lyrics, "silly though it was, was fundamentally right...[and] the melody... started the heels and shoulders of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking." In 1913, Berlin was featured in the London revue Hello Ragtime, where he introduced "That International Rag", a song he had written for the occasion.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Furia writes that the international success of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" gave ragtime "new life and sparked a national dance craze". Two dancers who expressed that craze were Vernon and Irene Castle. In 1914, Berlin wrote a ragtime revue, "Watch Your Step", which starred the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical revue became Berlin's first complete score with songs that "radiated musical and lyrical sophistication". Berlin's songs signified modernism, and they signified the cultural struggle between Victorian gentility and the "purveyors of liberation, indulgence, and leisure," says Furia. The song "Play a Simple Melody" became the first of his famous "double" songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed against one another.


title: Irving Berlin

text: "Variety" called "Watch Your Step" the "first syncopated musical", where the "sets and the girls were gorgeous". Berlin was then twenty-six, and the success of the show was riding on his name alone. "Variety" said the show was a "terrific hit" from its opening night. It compared Berlin's newfound status as a composer with that of the Times building: "That youthful marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in "Watch Your Step", firstly that he is not alone a rag composer, and that he is one of the greatest lyric writers America has ever produced."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Berlin's family was forced to leave, flung itself into "the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania". For example, Prince Felix Yusupov, a recent Oxford undergraduate of Russian noble lineage and heir to the largest estate in Russia, was described by his dance partner as "wriggling around the ballroom like a demented worm, screaming for 'more ragtime and more champagne.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Some of the songs Berlin created came out of his own sadness. For instance, in 1912 he married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz. She died six months later of typhoid fever contracted during their honeymoon in Havana. The song he wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You", was his first ballad. It was an immediate popular hit and sold more than a million copies.


title: Irving Berlin

text: He began to realize that ragtime was not a good musical style for serious romantic expression, and over the next few years adapted his style by writing more love songs. In 1915 he wrote the hit "I Love a Piano", a comical and erotic ragtime love song.


title: Irving Berlin

text: By 1918 he had written hundreds of songs, mostly topical, which enjoyed brief popularity. Many of the songs were for the new dances then appearing, such as the grizzly bear, chicken walk, or foxtrot. After a Hawaiian dance craze began, he wrote "That Hula-Hula", and then did a string of Southern songs, such as "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam". During this period, he was creating a few new songs every week, including songs aimed at the various immigrant cultures arriving from Europe. On one occasion, Berlin, whose face was still not known, was on a train trip and decided to entertain the fellow passengers with some music. They asked him how he knew so many hit songs, and Berlin modestly replied, "I wrote them."


title: Irving Berlin

text: An important song that Berlin wrote during his transition from writing ragtime to lyrical ballads was "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", which became one of Berlin's "first big guns", says historian Alec Wilder. The song was written for Ziegfeld's "Follies of 1919" and became the musical's lead song. Its popularity was so great that it later became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and the theme song in the 1936 film "The Great Ziegfeld". Wilder puts it on the same level as Jerome Kern's "pure melodies", and in comparison with Berlin's earlier music, says it is "extraordinary that such a development in style and sophistication should have taken place in a single year".


title: Irving Berlin

text: On April 1, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would enter World War I, Berlin felt that Tin Pan Alley should do its duty and support the war with inspirational songs. Berlin wrote the song "For Your Country and My Country", stating that "we must speak with the sword not the pen to show our appreciation to America for opening up her heart and welcoming every immigrant group." He also co-wrote a song aimed at ending ethnic conflict, "Let's All Be Americans Now".


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the United States Army, and his induction became headline news, with one paper headline reading, "Army Takes Berlin!" But the Army wanted Berlin, now aged 30, to do what he knew best: write songs. While stationed with the 152nd Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, he then composed an all-soldier musical revue titled "Yip Yip Yaphank", written to be patriotic tribute to the United States Army. By the following summer, the show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of hits, including "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", which he performed himself.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, he would introduce twenty years later: "God Bless America".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin returned to Tin Pan Alley after the war and in 1921 created a partnership with Sam Harris to build the Music Box Theater. He maintained an interest in the theater throughout his life, and even in his last years was known to call the Shubert Organization, his partner, to check on the receipts. In its early years, the theater was a showcase for revues by Berlin. As theater owner, producer and composer, he looked after every detail of his shows, from the costumes and sets to the casting and musical arrangements.


title: Irving Berlin

text: According to Berlin biographer David Leopold, the theater, located at 239 West 45th St., was the only Broadway house built to accommodate the works of a songwriter. It was the home of Berlin's "Music Box Revue" from 1921 to 1925 and "As Thousands Cheer" in 1933 and today includes an exhibition devoted to Berlin in the lobby.


title: Irving Berlin

text: By 1926, Berlin had written the scores to two editions of the "Ziegfeld Follies" and four "Music Box Revues". Berlin's "Music Box Revues" spanned the years of 1921–1926, premiering songs such as "Say It With Music", "Everybody Step", and "Pack Up Your Things and Go to the Devil". "Life magazine" called him the "Lullaby Kid", noting that "couples at country-club dances grew misty-eyed when the band went into "Always", because they were positive that Berlin had written it just for them. When they quarreled and parted in the bitter-sweetness of the 1920s, it was Berlin who gave eloquence to their heartbreak by way of "What'll I Do" and "Remember" and "All Alone".


title: Irving Berlin

text: This ballad of love and longing was a hit record for Paul Whiteman and had several other successful recordings in 1924. Twenty-four years later, the song went to no. 22 for Nat King Cole and no. 23 for Frank Sinatra.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Written when he fell in love with Ellin Mackay, who later became his wife. The song became a hit twice (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen) in its first incarnation. There were four more hit versions in 1944–45. In 1959, Sammy Turner took the song to no. 2 on the R&B chart. It became Patsy Cline's postmortem anthem and hit no. 18 on the country chart in 1980, 17 years after her death, and a tribute musical called "Always... Patsy Cline", played a two-year Nashville run that ended in 1995. Leonard Cohen included a cover of this song on his 1992 release "The Future (Leonard Cohen album)".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Written after his first daughter's birth, he distilled his feelings about being married and a father for the first time: "Blue days, all of them gone; nothing but blue skies, from now on." The song was introduced by Belle Baker in "Betsy", a Ziegfeld production. It became a hit recording for Ben Selvin and one of several Berlin hits in 1927. It was performed by Al Jolson in the first feature sound film, "The Jazz Singer", that same year. In 1946, it returned to the top 10 on the charts with Count Basie and Benny Goodman. In 1978, Willie Nelson made the song a no. 1 country hit, 52 years after it was written.


title: Irving Berlin

text: An instant standard with one of Berlin's most "intricately syncopated choruses", this song is associated with Fred Astaire, who sang and danced to it in the 1946 film "Blue Skies". The song was written in 1928 with a separate set of lyrics and was introduced by Harry Richman in a 1930 film of the same name. In 1939, Clark Gable sang it in the movie "Idiot's Delight". In 1974 it was featured in the movie "Young Frankenstein" by Mel Brooks, and was a no. 4 hit for synth-pop artist Taco in 1983. In 2012 it was used for a flash mob wedding event in Moscow.


title: Irving Berlin

text: This waltz-time song was a hit for Rudy Vallée in 1929, and in 1937, updated to a four-quarter-time swing arrangement, was a top hit for Tommy Dorsey. It was on the charts at no. 13 in 1953 for The Four Tunes and at no. 15 for the Bachelors in 1965, 36 years after its first appearance.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Rudy Vallée performed it on his radio show, and the song was a hit for George Olsen, Connee Boswell (she was still known as Connie), and Ozzie Nelson's band. Aretha Franklin produced a single of the song in 1963, 31 years later. Furia notes that when Vallée first introduced the song on his radio show, the "song not only became an overnight hit, it saved Vallée's marriage: The Vallées had planned to get a divorce, but after Vallée sang Berlin's romantic lyrics on the air, "both he and his wife dissolved in tears" and decided to stay together.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Performed by Dick Powell in the 1937 film "On the Avenue". Later it had four top-12 versions, including by Billie Holiday and Les Brown, who took it to no. 1.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The song was written by Berlin twenty years earlier, but he filed it away until 1938 when Kate Smith needed a patriotic song to mark the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day, celebrating the end of World War I. Its release near the end of the Depression, which had by then gone on for nine years, enshrined a "strain of official patriotism intertwined with a religious faith that runs deep in the American psyche," stated "The New York Times".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin's daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, states that the song was actually "very personal" for her father, and was intended as an expression of his deep gratitude to the nation for merely "allowing" him, an immigrant raised in poverty, to become a successful songwriter. "To me," said Berlin, "'God Bless America' was not just a song but an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am." The "Economist" magazine writes that "Berlin was producing a deep-felt paean to the country that had given him what he would have said was everything."


title: Irving Berlin

text: It quickly became a second National Anthem after America entered World War II a few years later. Over the decades it has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties. In 1954, Berlin received a special Congressional Gold Medal from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The song was heard after September 11, 2001, as U.S. senators and congressmen stood on the capitol steps and sang it after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It is often played by sports teams such as major league baseball. The Philadelphia Flyers hockey team started playing it before crucial contests. When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team pulled off the "greatest upset in sports history," referred to as the "Miracle on Ice", the players spontaneously sang it as Americans were overcome by patriotism.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Though most of his works for the Broadway stage took the form of revues—collections of songs with no unifying plot—he did write a number of book shows. "The Cocoanuts" (1929) was a light comedy with a cast featuring, among others, the Marx Brothers. "Face the Music" (1932) was a political satire with a book by Moss Hart, and "Louisiana Purchase" (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician obviously based on the exploits of Huey Long. "As Thousands Cheer" (1933) was a revue, also with book by Moss Hart, with a theme: each number was presented as an item in a newspaper, some of them touching on issues of the day. The show yielded a succession of hit songs, including "Easter Parade" sung by Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb, "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather forecast), "Harlem on My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about racial violence inspired by a newspaper headline about a lynching, sung by Ethel Waters. She once said about the song, "If one song can tell the whole tragic history of a race, 'Supper Time' was that song. In singing it I was telling my comfortable, well-fed, well-dressed listeners about my people...those who had been slaves and those who were now downtrodden and oppressed."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin loved his country, and wrote many songs reflecting his patriotism. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau requested a song to inspire Americans to buy war bonds, for which he wrote "Any Bonds Today?" He assigned all royalties to the United States Treasury Department. He then wrote songs for various government agencies and likewise assigned all profits to them: "Angels of Mercy" for the American Red Cross; "Arms for the Love of America", for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department; and "I Paid My Income Tax Today", again to Treasury.


title: Irving Berlin

text: When the United States joined World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Berlin immediately began composing a number of patriotic songs. His most notable and valuable contribution to the war effort was a stage show he wrote called "This Is The Army". It was taken to Broadway and then on to Washington, D.C. (where President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended). It was eventually shown at military bases throughout the world, including London, North Africa, Italy, Middle East, and Pacific countries, sometimes in close proximity to battle zones. Berlin wrote nearly three dozen songs for the show which contained a cast of 300 men. He supervised the production and traveled with it, always singing "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". The show kept him away from his family for three and a half years, during which time he took neither salary nor expenses, and turned over all profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The play was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1943, directed by Michael Curtiz, co-starring Joan Leslie and Ronald Reagan, who was then an army lieutenant. Kate Smith also sang "God Bless America" in the film with a backdrop showing families anxious over the coming war. The show became a hit movie and a morale-boosting road show that toured the battlefronts of Europe. The shows and movie combined raised more than $10 million for the Army, and in recognition of his contributions to troop morale, Berlin was awarded the Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman. His daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, who was 15 when she was at the opening-night performance of "This is the Army" on Broadway, remembered that when her father, who normally shunned the spotlight, appeared in the second act in soldier's garb to sing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", he was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted 10 minutes. She adds that he was in his mid-50s at the time, and later declared those years with the show were the "most thrilling time of his life".


title: Irving Berlin

text: The grueling tours Berlin did performing "This Is The Army" left him exhausted, but when his longtime close friend Jerome Kern, who was the composer for "Annie Get Your Gun", died suddenly, producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II persuaded Berlin to take over composing the score.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music and lyrics were written by Berlin, with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields, and directed by Joshua Logan. At first Berlin refused to take on the job, claiming that he knew nothing about "hillbilly music", but the show ran for 1,147 performances and became his most successful score. It is said that the showstopper song "There's No Business Like Show Business" was almost left out of the show altogether because Berlin mistakenly thought that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't like it. However, it became the "ultimate uptempo show tune".


title: Irving Berlin

text: On the origin of another of the play's leading songs, Logan described how he and Hammerstein privately discussed wanting another duet between Annie and Frank. Berlin overheard their conversation, and although the show was to go into rehearsal within days, he wrote the song "Anything You Can Do" a few hours later.


title: Irving Berlin

text: One reviewer commented about the play's score, that "its tough wisecracking lyrics are as tersely all-knowing as its melody, which is nailed down in brassy syncopated lines that have been copied—but never equaled in sheer melodic memorability—by hundreds of theater composers ever since." Singer and musicologist Susannah McCorkle writes that the score "meant more to me than ever, now that I knew that he wrote it after a grueling world tour and years of separation from his wife and daughters." Historian and composer Alec Wilder says that the perfection of the score, when compared to his earlier works, was "a profound shock".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Apparently the "creative spurt" in which Berlin turned out several songs for the score in a single weekend was an anomaly. According to his daughter, he usually "sweated blood" to write his songs. "Annie Get Your Gun" is considered to be Berlin's best musical theatre score not only because of the number of hits it contains, but because its songs successfully combine character and plot development. The song "There's No Business Like Show Business" became "Ethel Merman's trademark".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin's next show, "Miss Liberty" (1949), was disappointing, but "Call Me Madam" (1950), starring Ethel Merman as Sally Adams, a Washington, D.C., socialite, loosely based on the famous Washington hostess Perle Mesta, fared better, giving him his second-greatest success. Berlin made two attempts to write a musical about his friend, the colorful Addison Mizner, and Addison's con-man brother Wilson. The first was the uncompleted "The Last Resorts" (1952); a manuscript of Act I is in the Library of Congress. "Wise Guy" (1956) was completed but never produced, although songs have been published and recorded on "The Unsung Irving Berlin" (1995). After a failed attempt at retirement, in 1962, at the age of 74, he returned to Broadway with "Mr. President". Although it ran for eight months, (with the premiere attended by President John F. Kennedy), it was not one of his successful plays.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Afterwards, Berlin officially announced his retirement and spent his remaining years in New York. He did, however, write one new song, "An Old-Fashioned Wedding", for the 1966 Broadway revival of "Annie Get Your Gun" starring Ethel Merman. Though he lived 23 more years, this would be one of Berlin's final published compositions.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin maintained a low profile through the last decades of his life, almost never appearing in public after the late 1960s, even for events held in his honor. However, he continued to maintain control of his songs through his own music publishing company, which remained in operation for the rest of his life.


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1927, his song "Blue Skies", was featured in the first feature-length talkie, "The Jazz Singer", with Al Jolson. Later, movies such as "Top Hat" (1935) became the first of a series of distinctive film musicals by Berlin starring performers Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, and Alice Faye. "Top Hat" featured a brand new score, as did several more, including "Follow the Fleet" (1936), "On the Avenue" (1937), "Carefree" (1938), and "Second Fiddle" (1939). Starting with "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938), he often blended new songs with existing ones from his catalog. He continued this process with the films "Holiday Inn" (1942), "Blue Skies" (1946) and "Easter Parade" (1948), with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and "There's No Business Like Show Business" (1954).


title: Irving Berlin

text: The 1942 film "Holiday Inn" introduced "White Christmas", one of the most recorded songs in history. First sung in the film by Bing Crosby (along with Marjorie Reynolds, whose voice was dubbed by Martha Mears), it has sold over 50 million records and stayed no. 1 on the pop and R&B charts for 10 weeks. Crosby's version is the best-selling single of all time. Music critic Stephen Holden credits this partly to the fact that "the song also evokes a primal nostalgia—a pure childlike longing for roots, home and childhood—that goes way beyond the greeting imagery."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Richard Corliss also notes that the song was even more significant having been released soon after America entered World War II: [it] "connected with... GIs in their first winter away from home. To them it voiced the ache of separation and the wistfulness they felt for the girl back home, for the innocence of youth..." Poet Carl Sandburg wrote, "We have learned to be a little sad and a little lonesome without being sickly about it. This feeling is caught in the song of a thousand jukeboxes and tune whistled in streets and homes. "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. When we sing that we don't hate anybody. And there are things we love that we're going to have sometimes if the breaks are not too bad against us. Way down under this latest hit of his, Irving Berlin catches us where we love peace."


title: Irving Berlin

text: "White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original Song, one of seven Oscar nominations he received during his career. In subsequent years, it was re-recorded and became a top-10 seller for numerous artists: Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Ernest Tubb, The Ravens and The Drifters. It would also be the last time a Berlin song went to no. 1 upon its release.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin is the only Academy Award presenter and Academy Award winner to open the "envelope" and read his or her own name (for "White Christmas"). This result was so awkward for Berlin (since he had to present the Oscar to himself) that the Academy changed the rules of protocol the following year to prevent this situation from arising again.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Talking about Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", composer–lyricist Garrison Hintz stated that although songwriting can be a complicated process, its final result should sound simple. Considering the fact that "White Christmas" has only eight sentences in the entire song, lyrically Mr. Berlin achieved all that was necessary to eventually sell over 100 million copies and capture the hearts of the American public at the same time.


title: Irving Berlin

text: According to Saul Bornstein (a.k.a. Sol Bourne, Saul Bourne), Berlin's publishing company manager, "It was a ritual for Berlin to write a complete song, words and music, every day." Berlin said that he "did not believe in inspiration," and felt that although he might be gifted in certain areas, his most successful compositions were the "result of work". He said that he did most of his work under pressure. He would typically begin writing after dinner and continue until 4 or 5 in the morning. "Each day I would attend rehearsals," he said, "and at night write another song and bring it down the next day."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Not always certain about his own writing abilities, he once asked a songwriter friend, Victor Herbert, whether he should study composition. "You have a natural gift for words and music," Mr. Herbert told him. "Learning theory might help you a little, but it could cramp your style." Berlin took his advice. Herbert later became a moving force behind the creation of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 1914, Berlin joined him as a charter member of the organization that has protected the royalties of composers and writers ever since. In 1920, Irving Berlin became a member of SACEM, the French Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers.


title: Irving Berlin

text: In later years, Berlin emphasized his conviction, saying that "it's the lyrics that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what makes it last." He played almost entirely in the key of F sharp so that he could stay on the black keys and owned three transposing pianos so as to change keys by moving a lever. Though Berlin eventually learned how to produce written music, he never changed his method of dictating songs to a "musical secretary".


title: Irving Berlin

text: As a result, Wilder says that many admirers of the music of Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter were unlikely to consider Berlin's work in the same category because they forgot or never realized that Berlin wrote many popular tunes, such as "Soft Lights and Sweet Music", "Supper Time", and "Cheek to Cheek". Some are even more confused because he also wrote more romantic melodies, such as "What'll I Do?" and "Always". Wilder adds that "in his lyrics as in his melodies, Berlin reveals a constant awareness of the world around him: the pulse of the times, the society in which his is functioning. There is nothing of the hothouse about his work, urban though it may be."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Composer Jerome Kern recognized that the essence of Irving Berlin's lyrics was his "faith in the American vernacular" and was so profound that his best-known songs "seem indivisible from the country's history and self-image". Kern, along with George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Cole Porter, brought together Afro-American, Latin American, rural pop, and European operetta.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin, however, did not follow that method. Instead, says music critic Stephen Holden, Berlin's songs were always simple, "exquisitely crafted street songs whose diction feels so natural that one scarcely notices the craft...they seem to flow straight out of the rhythms and inflections of everyday speech." It led composer George Gershwin to claim that he learned from Berlin that ragtime, which later became jazz, "was the only musical idiom in existence that could aptly express America".


title: Irving Berlin

text: Among Berlin's contemporaries was Cole Porter, whose music style was often considered more "witty, sophisticated, [and] dirty," according to musicologist Susannah McCorkle. Of the five top songwriters, only Porter and Berlin wrote both their own words and music. However, she notes that Porter, unlike Berlin, was a Yale-educated and wealthy Midwesterner whose songs were not successful until he was in his thirties. She notes further that it was "Berlin [who] got Porter the show that launched his career."


title: Irving Berlin

text: In February 1912, after a brief whirlwind courtship, he married 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz of Buffalo, New York, the sister of one of Berlin's collaborators, E. Ray Goetz. During their honeymoon in Havana, she contracted typhoid fever, and doctors were unable to treat her illness when she returned to New York. She died July 17 of that year. Left with writer's block for months after Goetz's death, he eventually wrote his first ballad, "When I Lost You", to express his grief.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Years later in the 1920s, he fell in love with a young heiress, Ellin Mackay, a daughter of Clarence Mackay, the socially prominent head of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company, and an author in her own right. Because Berlin was Jewish and she was a Catholic of Irish descent, their life was followed in every possible detail by the press, which found the romance of an immigrant from the Lower East Side and a young heiress a good story.


title: Irving Berlin

text: They met in 1924, and her father opposed the match from the start. He went so far as to send her off to Europe to find other suitors and forget Berlin. However, Berlin wooed her with letters and songs over the airwaves such as "Remember" and "All Alone", and she wrote him daily. Biographer Philip Furia writes that newspapers rumored they were engaged before she returned from Europe, and some Broadway shows even performed skits of the "lovelorn songwriter". After her return, she and Berlin were besieged by the press, which followed them everywhere. "Variety" reported that her father vowed that their marriage "would only happen 'over my dead body.'" As a result, they decided to elope and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the Municipal Building away from media attention.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The wedding news made the front page of "The New York Times". The marriage took her father by surprise, and he was stunned upon reading about it. The bride's mother, however, who was at the time divorced from Mackay, wanted her daughter to follow the dictates of her own heart. Berlin had gone to her mother's home before the wedding and had obtained her blessing.


title: Irving Berlin

text: There followed reports that the bride's father disowned his daughter because of the marriage. In response, Berlin gave the rights to "Always", a song still played at weddings, to her as a wedding present. Ellin was thereby guaranteed a steady income regardless of what might happen with the marriage. For nearly three years Mackay refused to speak to the Berlins, but they reconciled after the death of the Berlins' son, Irving Berlin Jr., on Christmas Day in 1928, less than one month after he was born.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Their marriage remained a love affair and they were inseparable until she died in July 1988 at the age of 85. They had four children during their 63 years of marriage: Mary Ellin Barrett in 1926; Irving Berlin Jr., who died in infancy in 1928; Linda Louise Emmet in 1932; Elizabeth Irving Peters in 1936.


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1916, in the earlier phase of Berlin's career, producer and composer George M. Cohan, during a toast to the young Berlin at a Friar's Club dinner in his honor, said, "The thing I like about Irvie is that although he has moved up-town and made lots of money, it hasn't turned his head. He hasn't forgotten his friends, he doesn't wear funny clothes, and you will find his watch and his handkerchief in his pockets, where they belong."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Furia says that throughout Berlin's life he often returned on foot to his old neighborhoods in Union Square, Chinatown, and the Bowery. He never forgot those childhood years when he "slept under tenement steps, ate scraps, and wore secondhand clothes," and described those years as hard but good. "Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life," he said. He used to visit "The Music Box Theater", which he founded and which still stands at 239 West 45th St. From 1947 to 1989, Berlin's home in New York City was 17 Beekman Place.


title: Irving Berlin

text: George Frazier of "Life" magazine found Berlin to be "intensely nervous," with a habit of tapping his listener with his index finger to emphasize a point, and continually pressing his hair down in back" and "picking up any stray crumbs left on a table after a meal". While listening, "he leans forward tensely, with his hands clasped below his knees like a prizefighter waiting in his corner for the bell... For a man who has known so much glory," writes Frazier, "Berlin has somehow managed to retain the enthusiasm of a novice."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin's daughter wrote in her memoir that her father was a loving, if workaholic, family man who was "basically an upbeat person, with down periods". In his final decades he retreated from public life. As such, he did not attend the televised 100th birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall. Her parents liked to celebrate every single holiday with their children, and "They seemed to understand the importance, particularly in childhood, of the special day, the same every year, the special stories, foods, and decorations and that special sense of well-being that accompanies a holiday." Although he did comment to his daughter about her mother's lavish Christmas spending, "I gave up trying to get your mother to economize. It was easier just to make more money."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, but he supported the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower, and his song "I Like Ike" featured prominently in the Eisenhower campaign. In his later years he also became more conservative in his views on music. According to his daughter, "He was consumed by patriotism." He often said, "I owe all my success to my adopted country" and once rejected his lawyers' advice of investing in tax shelters, insisting, "I "want" to pay taxes. I love this country."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin was a Freemason, and was a member of Munn Lodge no. 190, New York City, the Scottish Rite Valley of New York City, and Mecca Shrine Temple.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin was a staunch advocate of civil rights. Berlin was honored in 1944 by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for "advancing the aims of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict". His 1943 production "This Is The Army", was the first integrated division army unit in the United States. In 1949, the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) honored him as one of the twelve "most outstanding Americans of Jewish faith". While he was ethnically and culturally Jewish, he was religiously agnostic. Berlin's Civil Rights Movement support also made him a target of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who continuously investigated him for years.


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin died in his sleep at his 17 Beekman Place town house in Manhattan on September 22, 1989, of a heart attack and other natural causes at the age of 101. He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.


title: Irving Berlin

text: On the evening following the announcement of his death, the marquee lights of Broadway playhouses were dimmed before curtain time in his memory. President George H. W. Bush said Berlin was "a legendary man whose words and music will help define the history of our nation". Just minutes before the President's statement was released, he joined a crowd of thousands to sing Berlin's "God Bless America" at a luncheon in Boston. Former President Ronald Reagan, who costarred in Berlin's 1943 musical "This Is the Army," said, "Nancy and I are deeply saddened by the death of a wonderfully talented man whose musical genius delighted and stirred millions and will live on forever."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Morton Gould, the composer and conductor who was president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), of which Berlin was a founder, said, "What to me is fascinating about this unique genius is that he touched so many people in so many age groups over so many years. He sounded our deepest feelings—happiness, sadness, celebration, loneliness." Ginger Rogers, who danced to Berlin tunes with Fred Astaire, told The Associated Press upon hearing of his death that working with Berlin had been "like heaven".


title: Irving Berlin

text: "The New York Times", after his death in 1989, wrote, "Irving Berlin set the tone and the tempo for the tunes America played and sang and danced to for much of the 20th century." An immigrant from Russia, his life became the "classic rags-to-riches story that he never forgot could have happened only in America". During his career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs and was a legend by the time he turned 30. He went on to write the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated for Academy Awards on eight occasions. Music historian Susannah McCorkle writes that "in scope, quantity, and quality his work was amazing." Others, such as Broadway musician Anne Phillips, says simply that "the man is an American institution."


title: Irving Berlin

text: During his six-decade career, from 1907 to 1966, he produced sheet music, Broadway shows, recordings, and scores played on radio, in films and on television, and his tunes continue to evoke powerful emotions for millions around the world. He wrote songs like "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Cheek to Cheek", "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Blue Skies" and "Puttin' On the Ritz". Some of his songs have become holiday anthems, such as "Easter Parade", "White Christmas" and "Happy Holiday". "White Christmas" alone sold over 50 million records, the top single selling song in recording history, won an ASCAP and an Academy Award, and is one of the most frequently played songs ever written.


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1938, "God Bless America" became the unofficial national anthem of the United States, and on September 11, 2001, members of the House of Representatives stood on the steps of the Capitol and solemnly sang "God Bless America" together. The song again became popular shortly after 9/11, when Celine Dion recorded it as the title track of a 9/11 benefit album. The following year, the Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of Berlin. By then, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of New York had received more than $10 million in royalties from "God Bless America" as a result of Berlin's donation of royalties. According to music historian Gary Giddins, "No other songwriter has written as many anthems... No one else has written as many pop songs, period... [H]is gift for economy, directness, and slang, presents Berlin as an obsessive, often despairing commentator on the passing scene."


title: Irving Berlin

text: In 1934, "Time" put him on its cover and inside hailed "this itinerant son of a Russian cantor" as "an American institution". And again, in 1943, the same magazine described his songs as follows:


title: Irving Berlin

text: They possess a permanence not generally associated with Tin Pan Alley products and it is more than remotely possible that in days to come Berlin will be looked upon as the Stephen Foster of the 20th century.


title: Irving Berlin

text: At various times, his songs were also rallying cries for different causes: He produced musical editorials supporting Al Smith and Dwight Eisenhower as presidential candidates, he wrote songs opposing Prohibition, defending the gold standard, calming the wounds of the Great Depression, and helping the war against Hitler, and in 1950 he wrote an anthem for the state of Israel. Biographer David Leopold adds that "We all know his songs... they are all part of who we are."


title: Irving Berlin

text: Berlin inadvertently influenced American law when his publishing group sued "Mad Magazine" for copyright infringement in 1961. The humor magazine had published a collection of parody lyrics which it said could be "sung to the tune of" many popular songs. Berlin objected, and "Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc." would ultimately become a landmark case. "Mad" prevailed at every stage. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled largely in favor of "Mad" in 1963, but Judge Charles Metzner decided that two of the 25 disputed parodies - "Always" (sung to the tune of "Always") and "There's No Business Like No Business" (sung to the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business") - would require a trial because they relied on the same verbal hooks ("always" and "business") as the originals.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The music publishers pressed on. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals not only upheld the pro-"Mad" decision in regard to the 23 songs, it adopted an approach that was broad enough to strip the publishers of their limited victory regarding the remaining two songs. Writing a unanimous opinion for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Circuit Judge Irving Kaufman observed, "We doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter." The publishers again appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, allowing the decision to stand. The precedent-setting 1964 ruling established the rights of parodists and satirists to mimic the meter of popular songs.


title: Irving Berlin

text: At his 100th-birthday celebration in May 1988, violinist Isaac Stern said, "The career of Irving Berlin and American music were intertwined forever—American music was born at his piano," while songwriter Sammy Cahn pointed out: "If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable... [Y]ou couldn't have a holiday without his permission." Composer Douglas Moore added:


title: Irving Berlin

text: It's a rare gift which sets Irving Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters. It is a gift which qualifies him, along with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg, as a great American minstrel. He has caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what we believe.


title: Irving Berlin

text: ASCAP's records show that 25 of Berlin's songs reached the top of the charts and were re-recorded by dozens of famous singers over the years, such as Eddie Fisher, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Diana Ross, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1924, when Berlin was 36, his biography, "The Story of Irving Berlin", was being written by Alexander Woollcott. In a letter to Woollcott, Jerome Kern offered what one writer said "may be the last word" on the significance of Irving Berlin:


title: Irving Berlin

text: Irving Berlin has no "place" in American music—he "is" American music. Emotionally, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time and, in turn, gives these impressions back to the world—simplified, clarified and glorified.


title: Irving Berlin

text: I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert. But apart from his genuine talent for song-writing, Irving Berlin has had a greater influence upon American music than any other one man. It was Irving Berlin who was the very first to have created a real, inherent American music... Irving Berlin was the first to free the American song from the nauseating sentimentality which had previously characterized it, and by introducing and perfecting ragtime he had actually given us the first germ of an American musical idiom; he had sown the first seeds of an American music.


title: Irving Berlin

text: The following list includes scores mostly produced by Berlin. Although some of the plays using his songs were later adapted to films, the list will not include the film unless he was the primary composer.


title: Overlord (season 4)

text: "Overlord" is an anime series based on the light novel series of the same name written by Kugane Maruyama and illustrated by so-bin. On May 8, 2021, a fourth season was announced with the staff and cast members returning to reprise their roles. It aired from July 5 to September 27, 2022. The opening theme is "HOLLOW HUNGER" by OxT while the ending theme is "No Man's Dawn" by Mayu Maeshima. On July 18, 2022, Crunchyroll announced an English dub for the fourth season, which began streaming on July 19.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Cruciferous vegetables are vegetables of the family Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae) with many genera, species, and cultivars being raised for food production such as cauliflower, cabbage, kale, garden cress, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, mustard plant and similar green leaf vegetables. The family takes its alternative name (Cruciferae, New Latin for "cross-bearing") from the shape of their flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Ten of the most common cruciferous vegetables eaten by people, known colloquially in North America as cole crops and in the UK, Ireland and Australia as brassicas, are in a single species ("Brassica oleracea"); they are not distinguished from one another taxonomically, only by horticultural category of cultivar groups. Numerous other genera and species in the family are also edible. Cruciferous vegetables are one of the dominant food crops worldwide. They are high in vitamin C and soluble fiber and contain multiple nutrients and phytochemicals.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Extensive selective breeding has produced a large variety of cultivars, especially within the genus "Brassica". One description of genetic factors involved in the breeding of "Brassica" species is the Triangle of U.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Further relationships inside the family Brassicaceae can be described by tribes, a grouping of genera (see ). "Armoracia", "Barbarea", and "Nasturtium" belong to the tribe Cardamineae; "Brassica", "Sinapis", "Diplotaxis", "Eruca", and "Raphanus" belong to Brassiceae; "Lepidium" belongs in Lepidieae; and finally "Wasabia" ("Eutrema") belongs in Eutremeae.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: According to an umbrella review of 41 systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 303 observational studies, there is suggestive evidence for beneficial associations in gastric cancer, lung cancer, endometrial cancer, and all-cause mortality.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Cruciferous vegetables contain glucosinolates, which are under research for their potential to affect cancer. Glucosinolates are hydrolyzed to isothiocyanates (ITCs) by myrosinase. ITCs are being investigated for their chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic effects.


title: Cruciferous vegetables

text: Alliaceous and cruciferous vegetable consumption may induce glutathione S-transferases, uridine diphosphate-glucuronosyl transferases, and s all of which are potentially involved in detoxification of carcinogens such as aflatoxin. High consumption of cruciferous vegetables has potential risk from allergies and interference with drugs such as warfarin and genotoxicity.