IRVING BERLIN is the world's foremost writer of popular songs and one of America's leading insomniacs. Fame, riches, marital happiness and honors from grateful governments have come to this slight, dark man of 63, but the one thing he lacks is sleep--to hear him tell it, anyway.

Once when he was a guest at the Palm Springs ranch of Movie Mogul Joseph M. Schenck, the desert air was riven around 3 a.m. by a blood-chilling series of screams and cries. Headed by the burly Schenck, who clutched a revolver, the bathrobed guests (among them Dramatist Moss Hart) hurried to the scene.

Instead of a triple strangling, they found that the ululations came from a St. Bernard dog that had jumped into the swimming pool and couldn't get out. After the dog had been rescued, Hart and Schenck noticed that Berlin was the only guest not present, and exchanged meaningful glances. Later that morning, when he arrived at the breakfast table, they looked at him inquiringly. "Yes, the same old story," Berlin said with a mournful nod. "Took three Nembutals last night and didn't catch a wink."

Irving Hoffman, Broadway columnist, caricaturist and character, once told him he looked as though he had slept well. Berlin frowned. "I did," he answered, "but I dreamed I didn't."

The reason Berlin can't sleep much at night may be that, as one of Manhattan's most chronic stayer-uppers (mostly with the bachelor Hoffman, who supplies him with the gossip of which he is so fond), he seldom uses nights for going to bed. This is only natural; the first half of his life was taken up with occupations that shunned the sun: waif on the Lower East Side, warbling ballads in saloons for small coins; singing waiter in a Bowery joint; song-plugger in the cabarets after theater hours; man-about-Times Square and minstrel who preferred writing his lays in the hours when solitude was easier to find.

Insomniac or not, Berlin is undeniably one of the most restless men in the U.S. not locked up in an institution. Joe Schenck once bet him $50 that he couldn't sit in the same chair for five minutes. Before the second minute had elapsed, Berlin was swiftly pacing the floor.

"How can we get that restless too?" the songwriters of Tin Pan Alley might well shout in chorus. Berlin has published some 850 songs, and 25 of these have been what Tin Pan Alley classifies as not just hits, but Tremendous Hits. White Christmas, for instance, has sold 3,000,000 copies of sheet music and 14 million records. In the words of the music business, it is a "standard," and automatically sells about 300,000 copies every Yuletide season. Presumably it will go on doing so until Christmas is abolished.

A couple of hundred other Berlin numbers have been what he, a relentless critic of his own work, admits were "successes," which means that they have coined money. More than 30 stage musicals and movies that he has composed songs for have achieved hit status. "The guy's simply dirty with smashes," Tin Pan Alley sighs with envy. Joe Schenck has put it more conservatively: "Irving never lost money for anybody."

It takes Americans now in their 50s, or upwards, to appreciate fully how long Irving Berlin has held his championship. God Bless America, Cheek to Cheek and This Is the Army, Mr. Jones he wrote only yesterday, so to speak, although each is at least a decade old. The sheet music of Alexander's Ragtime Band and When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam' was selling by the millions 40 years ago.

Berlin's genius lies in his gift for catching the emotional emanations proceeding from huge masses of his countrymen, then being able to express in words and music what they would love to have expressed for them. "Believe me, Irving Berlin can't write," the tunesmith, Harry Ruby, once assured a friend. "His songs are hits merely because he has a drag with 150 million people."

Berlin did nobly by the whole 150 million during the last war. His all-soldier revue, This Is the Army, raised $9 1/2 million for the Army Emergency Relief Fund and was joyfully attended by 2 1/2 million Americans in uniform here and overseas. Berlin gave not only his songs but 3 1/2 years of his time, doing everything in the show from helping shift scenery to singing solos in his tar-paper tenor. In recognition of his incalculable services as a morale builder, he was awarded the Medal for Merit, and France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Berlin has been helping to build U.S. morale for three generations. God Bless America's entire royalties he donated to the Boy and Girl Scouts. Net thus far: nearly $200,000. His songs--sweet, hot, sad, comic or stirring, but always honest in sentiment --have been so abundant it is scarcely possible to conceive of a time when he will stop making them.

Even his biography has entered American folklore. When, in 1926, this youngest of the eight children of a poor immigrant Russian rabbi and cantor named Baline married Ellin Mackay, the beautiful Postal Telegraph heiress, the entire U.S. press lowered its head, rolled its eyes and let out a thundering moo. The Berlins fled to Europe to dodge the slatherings. Although Berlin is not in the least self-conscious about his humble beginnings, and enjoys talking about them, he is fiercely protective of the privacy of his wife and three children (all daughters).

Soft-spoken and shy to the casual acquaintance, Berlin seems a simple man, but is actually as complex as a four-part fugue. Hollywood, a honeycomb of sharp traders, admires his astuteness almost as much as it does his musical talents. Until he gave up the game, Berlin was one of the best stud poker players in the country.

He likes hard candies; when he chews gum with his hat on, the hat moves. From his Bowery days, a deft user of chopsticks and an expert on Chinese food, he often strides into his kitchen and prepares ungodly messes of it at ungodly hours, then wonders why he has indigestion. He has an excellent knowledge of vintage wines, period furniture, interior decoration, and famous murder cases.

He took up drawing and painting and was thrilled, two summers ago, to meet Picasso on the Riviera. Picasso asked him how Stravinsky was. "I don't know," Berlin said. "I don't get close to many good musicians."

Although he leads, by far, all other American songwriters in endurance and output, Berlin cannot read music or set his own on paper. His songs are transcribed by his arranger, often over the phone while Berlin sings them. His piano playing would get him run out of any fraternity house in the land.

When he and Moss Hart were collaborating on their brilliant revue, As Thousands Cheer, Berlin played a new number for him. It sounded terrible. Hart asked him to play it again. It sounded even more terrible. Hart thought a moment, then asked him to play Always. One of Berlin's most successful ballads, Always, played by the maestro, was virtually unrecognizable. "I thought so," Hart said. The new number later turned out to be Heat Wave, one of the hits of the year.

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