OBITUARIES : Ellin Berlin; Author, Wife of Songwriter

Ellin Berlin, the novelist wife of songwriter Irving Berlin, died Friday after the last of a series of strokes. She was 85.

Her marriage to Berlin on Jan. 4, 1926, drew headlines as the famous songwriter, an Orthodox Jew, wed the former Ellin Mackay, a Roman Catholic debutante who spurned her multimillionaire father’s fortune for love.

When her father reportedly threatened to disinherit his daughter, Berlin reportedly replied, “In that case, I’ll probably have to make her a wedding gift of a couple of million dollars.”

Her father later gave his blessing to the marriage.

Mrs. Berlin died at Doctors Hospital, where she was taken from her Manhattan home.

The last of her four novels, “The Best of Families,” was published in 1970. She was also a prolific short-story writer.

A Wilder Life

In one article for The New Yorker, she defended her generation’s abandonment of the Junior League and “polite society” for the wilder life of cabarets and dancing the Charleston.

“It is not because fashionable young ladies are picturesquely depraved that they go to cabarets,” she wrote. “They go to find privacy.”

During 62 years of marriage, Berlin wrote several songs just for his wife, including “Always” and “The Song Is Ended.”

Mrs. Berlin was born on her father’s $6-million estate in Roslyn on Long Island. She and Berlin had three daughters. Mrs. Berlin was a major supporter of the Girl Scout movement.

She is survived by her daughters, Mary Ellin Barrett of New York; Linda Louise Emmett of Paris and Elizabeth Irving Peters of New York; a brother, John W. Mackay of Locust Valley, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

A funeral was scheduled for Tuesday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.