Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Irving Berlin trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Irving Berlin wrote an estimated 1,500 songs in a career that ran from ragtime to the Kennedy era, and this quiz covers the whole of it: the immigrant boy from the Russian Empire who sang for pennies on the Bowery, the singing waiter who published his first song for 33 cents, the composer who could only play in F-sharp, and the man behind White Christmas, God Bless America, Easter Parade, Cheek to Cheek and There's No Business Like Show Business. Easy questions ask which holiday standard he wrote and who first sang it; harder ones dig into the transposing piano, the Broadway theatre he built, the heiress he eloped with, the Oscar he presented to himself and the royalties he gave to the Scouts. The questions are about the songs and their stories, not the lyrics, so it is a fair round for musical-theatre fans, Great American Songbook listeners and anyone who has watched Holiday Inn or Top Hat. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Berlin, his songs, shows and films, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Irving Berlin was born in 1888 in which country?
Russia
His family came from the shtetl of Tolochin, now in Belarus, though he was probably born in Tyumen, Siberia, where his cantor father was working.
Q 02What was Irving Berlin's birth name?
Israel Beilin
Immigration officials changed Beilin to Baline; the sheet music of his first song credited "I. Berlin" and the name stuck.
Q 03How old was Berlin when his family arrived at Ellis Island in 1893?
Five
They had sailed from Antwerp on the Red Star Line's SS Rhynland after fleeing pogroms.
Q 04What was Berlin's father's profession in the old country?
Cantor
In New York he could only find work at a kosher meat market and died when Irving was thirteen.
Q 05How much did Berlin get for the rights to his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907?
33 cents
He was working as a singing waiter at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown and wrote it with the house pianist Mike Nicholson.
Q 06What was Berlin's job at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown when he was 18?
Singing waiter
Between drinks he sang made-up "blue" parodies of hit songs and taught himself piano after closing time.
Q 07In which single musical key could Berlin play the piano?
F-sharp
Staying on the black keys, he used pianos with a transposing lever to shift into other keys, and dictated songs to a musical secretary.
Q 08Roughly how many songs is Berlin estimated to have written in his 60-year career?
1,500
They included the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films.
Q 09Which 1911 song was Berlin's first world-famous hit?
Alexander's Ragtime Band
Introduced by vaudeville contralto Emma Carus in Chicago, it revived the ragtime craze; Time's Richard Corliss noted it is really a march, not a rag.
Q 10Which husband-and-wife dance team starred in Berlin's 1914 revue Watch Your Step?
Vernon and Irene Castle
Variety called it the "first syncopated musical", and it contained his first counterpoint "double" song, Play a Simple Melody.
Q 11Berlin's first ballad, "When I Lost You", was written in response to what personal tragedy in 1912?
His bride died of typhoid on their honeymoon
Dorothy Goetz caught the fever in Havana and died six months into the marriage; the song sold more than a million copies.
Q 12Which song written for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues?
A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody
It later served as the theme of the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.
Q 13What was the name of the all-soldier revue Berlin wrote at Camp Upton in 1918?
Yip Yip Yaphank
Q 21What did Berlin give Ellin as a wedding present after her father reportedly disowned her?
The rights to the song "Always"
It guaranteed her an income for life; her father did not speak to them for nearly three years.
Q 22Berlin's song "Blue Skies" was performed by Al Jolson in which landmark 1927 film?
The Jazz Singer
Written after the birth of his first daughter, the song became a number one country hit for Willie Nelson 52 years later.
Q 23Which country singer took "Blue Skies" to number one in 1978, 52 years after it was written?
Willie Nelson
One newspaper announced his draft with the headline "Army Takes Berlin!"; the show raised $150,000 for a camp service centre.
Q 14Which song about hating reveille did Berlin perform in his 1918 revue and This Is the Army?
Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning
His daughter recalled a ten-minute standing ovation when he appeared in soldier's uniform to sing it on Broadway in 1942, aged in his mid-fifties.
Q 15Which famous song did Berlin write for his 1918 soldier revue but file away for twenty years?
God Bless America
Kate Smith finally introduced it on an Armistice Day broadcast in 1938, and it became a second national anthem.
Q 16Which singer introduced Berlin's patriotic anthem in 1938 and made it her signature song?
Kate Smith
Woody Guthrie disliked the song so much that he wrote This Land Is Your Land in response.
Q 17To whom did Berlin assign all royalties from his patriotic anthem of 1938?
The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
President Eisenhower gave him a special Congressional Gold Medal for the song in 1954.
Q 18Which folk singer wrote This Land Is Your Land in 1940 as a response to Berlin's anthem?
Woody Guthrie
His song was originally titled "God Blessed America for Me".
Q 19Which Broadway house did Berlin build with producer Sam Harris in 1921?
The Music Box
It was reportedly the only Broadway house built to showcase a songwriter's work, and its lobby now holds a Berlin exhibition.
Q 20Berlin wrote the song "Always" in 1925 when he fell in love with which heiress?
Ellin Mackay
Her father, telegraph magnate Clarence Mackay, opposed the match, so the couple eloped and married at the Municipal Building.
Count Basie and Benny Goodman had returned it to the top ten in 1946.
Q 24Which synth-pop artist took Puttin' on the Ritz to number 4 in 1982, when Berlin was 95?
Taco
The 1928 song had already been sung by Harry Richman, Clark Gable and Fred Astaire and used in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein.
Q 25Easter Parade began life in 1917 under what title?
Smile and Show Your Dimple
Berlin reworked the melody with new Easter words for the 1933 revue As Thousands Cheer, where Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb sang it.
Q 26In As Thousands Cheer (1933), each number was presented as what?
An item in a newspaper
"Heat Wave" was the weather forecast, and Ethel Waters sang "Supper Time", inspired by a headline about a lynching.
Q 27Which comedy team starred in Berlin's 1929 film musical The Cocoanuts?
The Marx Brothers
His 1940 show Louisiana Purchase satirised a Southern politician clearly modelled on Huey Long.
Q 28Berlin wrote "Cheek to Cheek" specifically for which star of the 1935 film Top Hat?
Fred Astaire
It spent five weeks at number one on Your Hit Parade and lost the Best Song Oscar to "Lullaby of Broadway".
Q 29Which 1942 film introduced White Christmas?
Holiday Inn
Bing Crosby had first sung it on his Kraft Music Hall radio show on Christmas Day 1941, weeks after Pearl Harbor.
Q 30Whose recording of White Christmas is regarded as the best-selling single of all time?
Bing Crosby
Guinness credits it with at least 50 million copies; it stayed at number one for ten weeks.