ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What was the first song that Irving Berlin wrote, and what prompted him to write it?

Philip Harwood is a film historian and lecturer who currently teaches film studies and media studies as an adjunct lecturer in the Hutton House Lectures at Long Island University, CW Post campus. He also teaches at the 92nd Street Y and the JCC, both in Manhattan. He was Coordinator for Lifelong Learning at Queens College, where he also programmed the annual Summer Film Festival, and he taught at the New School for Social Research. His essay, To Be or Not to Be: Jack Benny in Hollywood 1940-1945, appears in the anthology Well! Reflections on the Life & Career of Jack Benny, published by Bear Manor Media in 2007.
Mr. Harwood recently gave a talk on Irving Berlin and The Hollywood Musical at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York, and later spoke with us about Berlin, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in American history, and whose music forms an important part of the Great American Songbook.