A Toast to America’s Favorite Composer

It was an evening of accolades to the memory and talent of the late Irving Berlin, but it started out with pictures of young Samuel Goldwyn Jr. chucking pebbles in the direction of the late, great songwriter.

“That’s me, the skinny kid bawled out for throwing stones,” Goldwyn told the full house at the Mark Taper Forum on Monday night, after a home movie had revealed his prank on a long ago cruise to Alaska with the Berlin family.

The footage also revealed that Berlin couldn’t toss a fishing line quite as skillfully as he could spin out a song. Revelations about the man behind the music, particularly from Goldwyn and his lifelong friend, Berlin’s daughter Mary Ellin Barrett, added immeasurably to the charm of “Say It With Music,” the fifth annual Salon at the Taper, written and produced by Susan Clines.

Goldwyn’s fond and humorous reminiscence spoke of how long it was before he realized what Berlin was creating “banging away on the piano in the salon on that yacht, interfering with us children wanting to play pick-up-sticks.”

Barrett spoke of how interested her father was in her and her sisters and how generously he used the word “wonderful,” not just in his songs but also to them. “Unlike some children of the famous, I loved being my father’s daughter and had a marvelous time growing up,” she said.

Although she always knew her father wrote and sang songs, she said it wasn’t until his onstage appearance at the 1942 premiere of “This Is the Army,” when she heard “the cheers, and cheers and more cheers” that she understood what those songs meant to others. “It wasn’t the greatest voice, but he knew how to put over a song.”

So did the performers gathered, under the musical direction of Ron Abel, to celebrate the range of Berlin’s work, whether humorous like Alan Alda’s rendition of “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” evocative like Obba Babatunde’s moves on “Cheek to Cheek” to the accompaniment of Corky Hale’s harp, or simply romantic like Joe Williams’ delivery of “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

Later, at the post-performance reception on the fifth floor of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, songwriter Mike Stoller reflected that he couldn’t remember a time that he wasn’t aware of Berlin’s music because “my mother used to sing ‘Remember’ and I always cry when I hear it.”

The benefit evening for the Center Theatre Group, sponsored by cable television’s Ovation, the Arts Network, was dedicated to the memory of Nick Vanoff, a longtime Taper supporter.

Co-chairs for the evening were Veronica Hamel and Richard Kagan, who naturally found the evening romantic as they met at the second in this Salon series, the 1993 tribute to Oscar Hammerstein II.