IRVING BERLIN - AUTOGRAPH CO-SIGNED BY: GERTRUDE NIESEN - HFSID 169646

IRVING BERLIN and GERTRUDE NIESEN
Album leaf signed by Berlin on one side, inscribed and signed by Niesen on verso
Signature: "Irving Berlin", 4¾x3¾ album leaf. Inscribed and signed on verso: "To Al/Gertrude Niesen". IRVING BERLIN (1888-1989), born Israel Isidore Baline in Tumen, Siberia, Russia, was such a force in American music that in 1924, when Berlin was just 37, songwriter Jerome Kern gave this assessment: "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." If the only song he ever wrote was "God Bless America", made famous by Kate Smith, Berlin would be an important part of American music. But Berlin wrote more than 900 songs, including the classics "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Always", "Easter Parade" and "Blue Skies", 19 musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam, and the scores of 18 movies, including Holiday Inn, which featured his 1942 Academy Award-winning song, "White Christmas". GERTRUDE NIESEN (1911-1975), a big band singer of the swing era, performed with the Artie Shaw Orchestra. She appeared in several film musicals the Irving Berlin-inspired This is the Army (1943). Niesen's biggest success, however, was co-starring with Jackie Gleason in the hit Broadway musical Follow the Girls (1944-1946). Her hit song from that show, "I Wanna Get Married," was re-issued in 1972, nearly three decades after her death. Soiled at edges. Frayed left edge from removal from a bound book,