Irving Berlin & wife Ellen Mackay, 1920s
In 1912, Berlin married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of the songwriter E. Ray Goetz. She died six months later of typhoid fever, which she contracted during their honeymoon in Havana. The song he wrote to express his grief, “When I Lost You,” was his first ballad.
In the 1920s, he fell in love with a young heiress, Ellin Mackay, the daughter of Clarence Mackay, the socially prominent head of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company. Because Berlin was Jewish and she was Catholic, 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.
Berlin wooed her over the airwaves with his songs, “Remember” and “Always.” His biographer, Philip Furia, writes that “even before Ellin returned from Europe, newspapers rumored they were engaged, and Broadway shows featured skits of the lovelorn songwriter….” During the week after her return, both she and Berlin were “besieged by reporters, sometimes fifty at a time.” Variety reported that her father had vowed their marriage “would only happen ‘over my dead body.’”[34] As a result they decided to elope and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the Municipal Building away from media attention. [wikipedia text]