December 2, 1929: Irving Berlin Publishes “Puttin’ On the Ritz”

December 2, 1929: Irving Berlin first publishes his song "Puttin' On the Ritz." The title was an expression that Harlemites of the time coined, meaning to dress nice, and takes its name from the Ritz Hotel in London, which may also have produced the adjective "ritzy.: The following year, a film with the title was released, and Harry Richman sang it in front of Hollywood's 1st interracial ensemble.

It's also been sung in films by Clark Gable (complete with white tie and tails) in Idiot's Delight in 1939, Fred Astaire in Blue Skies in 1946, and, for comedic effect, Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein in 1974.

In 1982, Indonesian-Dutch singer Taco Ockerse (using only his first name) released the most recent hit version. It reached Number 4 in the U.S. Irving Berlin was then 95 years old, making him the oldest living songwriter to have a song he wrote enter the Top 10. Unfortunately, Taco's original video for it had blackface performers, and had to be re-shot.

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December 2, 1929 was a Monday. Sportswriter Dan Jenkins was born.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had a day off. So there were no scores on this historic day.

July 30, 1942: Bing Crosby Releases "White Christmas"

July 30, 1942: Bing Crosby releases "White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin. It becomes the most famous secular Christmas song of all time, and sells more copies than any single record in history.

Like a song written a few years later, "The Christmas Song" (a.k.a. "Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire"), it was written in Los Angeles during a Summer. Berlin was Jewish, but he told his secretary, "I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote."

On December 25, 1941, just 18 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, Crosby sang the song on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall. He recorded it for Decca Records in Los Angeles, with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers, on May 29, 1942. It was released on July 30, and included in his next film, Holiday Inn, which premiered on September 4. (The hotel chain of the same name was started 10 years later.)

Israel Baline had grown up in New York in the 1890s, and made his professional name (Irving Berlin) in New York, and had remembered snow falling during the Christmas season, and that everyone seemed to be happier at that time. So he wrote:

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

just like the ones I used to know

where the treetops glisten

and children listen

to hear sleigh bells in the snow.

On a personal note: I grew up in New Jersey, a short ride from Midtown Manhattan. From the 1970s onward, the weather tendency has been to not have the Winter's 1st big snowfall until after the New Year. We've had 2 pre-Halloween blizzards, and one blizzard actually on Thanksgiving Day. But as far back as I can remember, we've only had snow on the ground on December 24 and 25 maybe 6 or 7 times. Occasionally, we'd get a snow flurry on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, which was nice, but rarely does it stick. We're just a little too far south to get that "postcard-perfect" "White Christmas" so often associated with New England, further north. More often, it rains, and we get a wet Christmas.

The timing was just right for the song: World War II was underway, and millions of servicemen were away from home, many of them for the 1st time -- but not yet sent overseas, so they could still buy American records, listen to American radio, and visit American movie theaters, thus hearing the song through all 3 media.

By Halloween, October 31, 1942, "White Christmas" was already the Number 1 song in in America. It remained Number 1 all through the holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, all the way until January 16, 1943, when it was replaced on top of the charts by "There Are Such Things" by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

As Ronald Lankford wrote in a book about Christmas songs: "During the 1940s, 'White Christmas' would set the stage for a number of classic American holiday songs steeped in a misty longing for yesteryear... The popular culture industry had not viewed the themes of home and hearth, centered on the Christmas holiday, as a unique market."

Dave Marsh and Steve Propes wrote, "'White Christmas' changed Christmas music forever, both by revealing the huge potential market for Christmas songs and by establishing the themes of home and nostalgia that would run through Christmas music evermore."

"White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Bing's version hit the Top 10 again during the Christmas seasons of 1945 and 1946. His original 1942 recording was damaged through overuse, so he recorded it again on March 19, 1947, with all of the same people, to make it sound as similar as possible.

In 1954, Crosby and Danny Kaye starred in a film titled White Christmas, and sang the song in it. It tells the story of a pair of World War II veterans-turned-entertainers, and their girlfriends (played by singer Rosemary Clooney and dancer Vera-Ellen, respectively), trying to reunite their old Army unit to save the Vermont hotel run by their former Sergeant.

In 1955, the Clyde McPhatter version of The Drifters had the first rock-and-roll version of the song, bringing the dichotomy of black men singing "White Christmas." In 1963, Darlene Love's version opened A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records. It includes a brief midsong monologue, reflecting the fact that, like the Bing original, her version was recorded in Los Angeles:

The sun is shining.
The grass is green.
The orange and palm trees sway.
There's never been such a day in old L.A.
But it's December the 24th
and I'm longing to be up north
so I can have my very own white Christmas.

So, San Francisco? Well, maybe Lake Tahoe or the adjacent Olympic Valley (formerly known as Squaw Valley), where the 1960 Winter Olympics were held.

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July 30, 1942 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played:

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 9-2 at Ebbets Field. Pete Reiser went 3-for-5.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at League Park in Cleveland. Ted Williams, on his way to the Triple Crown, hit a home run. After the season, he would enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps.

* A doubleheader was split at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 11-5. The Philadelphia Athletics won the 2nd game, 7-6.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. (The ballpark was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953.)

* And the Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 11-6 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. (The ballpark was renamed Busch Stadium in 1953.)

April 5, 1939: Kate Smith's Recording of "God Bless America" Is Released

Kate Smith, The Spectrum, May 19, 1974

April 5, 1939: Columbia Records releases Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America." It becomes her signature song, and, behind the official "The Star-Spangled Banner," America's secondary National Anthem.

Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Belarus, then in the Russian Empire, wrote the song in 1918, while serving in the U.S. Army for World War I, for a musical revue titled Yip, Yip, Yaphank, but decided it didn't fit in with the rest of the show, and put it aside.

In 1938, with the Nazi threat rising, Berlin felt it was time to use the song. Kate Smith sang it on an Armistice Day broadcast on November 11. That broadcast was on CBS, which also owned Columbia Records, for whom she recorded. She recorded the song, and it was released.

Millions of Americans took to the song as an example of patriotism in World War II. Millions of others did not. Woody Guthrie, a folksinger with leftist leanings, wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a response in 1940. And the Ku Klux Klan, a white Protestant supremacist organization that hated Catholics and Jews as much as it hated black people, denounced the song because of its Jewish origin.

In 1943, the musical film This Is the Army was released, with all Berlin songs, including Smith singing "God Bless America," and Berlin himself singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning." Years later, after Smith had switched from CBS to NBC, she sang the song on her TV shows on that network.

On December 11, 1969, instead of a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers played Smith's recording of "God Bless America" before their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flyers won, 6-3.

Hockey, as much as -- and sometimes, it seems, more than -- any other sport, is laden with superstitious people. The Flyers took the win as a good sign, and began to use Smith's recording before games they thought were big enough to need good luck.

Eventually, they invited her to sign it live at The Spectrum. She had never attended a hockey game before, but she loved it, even the fact that "The Broad Street Bullies" did a lot of fighting. They were 36-3-1 before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, on May 19, 1974. The Flyers had the chance to wrap the Cup up against the Boston Bruins that day, and didn't want to go back to the Boston Garden for a Game 7, so they invited their good luck charm Smith, by then 67 years old and 30 years past her peak, to sing it live, and she did.

The ovation was huge. To counteract her good luck, the Bruins' 2 best players, Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, skated over to her, and gave her a big bouquet of flowers. It was a nice gesture, but it didn't work: A goal by Rick MaLeish at 14:48 of the 1st period held up, and the Flyers won, 1-0.

Kate Smith made her final public performance on May 23, 1985, before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals, when the Flyers lost to the Edmonton Oilers, and lost the series in 5 games. She died the next year, at the age of 79. The year after that, the team erected a statue of her outside The Spectrum. On one side was a plaque telling her life story; on the other, a plaque with the lyrics of "God Bless America."

When the Flyers and the NBA's 76ers moved from The Spectrum to what's now named the Wells Fargo Center in 1996, the Smith statue, the Dornhoefer goal statue, and a statue of 76ers legend Julius "Dr. J" Erving were moved to the new arena. A statue of Clarke and Parent holding the Cup is also now outside the new arena, as is one of earlier Philadelphia basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.

The Smith statue was covered and then removed in April 2019, due to criticism of lyrics in some of Smith's earlier songs that were perceived as racist. This may have been unfair, as some of those songs had also been sung by black singers. Smith's recording of "God Bless America" has not been played before Flyers home games since. The Flyers' record in such games is 100 wins, 29 losses and 5 ties, for a winning percentage of .765.

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April 5, 1939 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that the Library of Congress opened its annex building, now named the John Adams Building. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the Stanley Cup Playoffs were between the Semifinals and the Finals. So there were no scores on this historic day. The Boston Bruins went on to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Cup.