Berlin, Ellin, 1903-1988

Ellin Berlin, the novelist wife of the songwriter Irving Berlin, died early yesterday at Doctors Hospital, to which she had been taken from her Beekman Place town house after the last of a series of strokes. She was 85 years old.

Mrs. Berlin, the last of whose four novels, ''The Best of Families,'' was published in 1970, was also a prolific short-story writer and contributed several articles to The New Yorker before her marriage to Mr. Berlin on Jan. 4, 1926. Mr. Berlin observed his 100th birthday last May 11.

Their marriage was one of the most sensational social events of the 1920's, for it united the famous songwriter, an Orthodox Jew, with the former Ellin Mackay, a Roman Catholic debutante who spurned her multimillionaire father's fortune for love.

The Municipal Court wedding came after several events that made it clear that Ellin Mackay, one of the great beauties of her time, was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill society heiress.

She had all but turned her back on the exclusive so-called 400, which ruled her mother's day, choosing the new ''cafe society.'' She said she preferred the ''dizzy twenties'' to the ''dull old days'' when she was one of New York's most celebrated debutantes. Abandoning 'Polite Society'

Miss Mackay wrote what her friends called her ''saucy but amusing'' opinions in articles for The New Yorker. In one article she defended her generation's abandonment of the Junior League and ''polite society'' for the gayer 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.''

That article shocked society and newspaper editorial writers, as did one that followed in The New Yorker dated Dec. 25, 1925, titled ''The Declining Function,'' in which she explained how, as a liberated young woman, she intended to seek her joys as she liked.

More portentous was her statement, ''Modern girls are conscious of their identity and they marry whom they choose, satisfied to satisfy themselves.'' Less than a month later she married the widowed Mr. Berlin, who was 15 years her senior and an immigrant Russian whose fame as a songwriter failed to impress the Mackay social circle.


The marriage so infuriated her father, Clarence Mackay, whose fortune was based in the Postal Telegragh Company, the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, mining and several other inherited interests, that he barred her from his home and threatened to disinherit her. They were not reconciled until five years later. Marriage of 62 Years

The marriage, during which Mr. Berlin wrote several songs just for her, including ''Always'' and ''The Song Is Ended,'' was a true love match and was to last 62 years.

Ellin Mackay was born March 22, 1903, on her father's $6 million estate in Roslyn, L.I. Her mother was the former Katherine Duer, a successful writer. An aunt, Alice Duer Miller, was to become the author of the long, popular World War II poem ''The White Cliffs of Dover.''

She was also a granddaughter of John W. Mackay, an Irish immigrant and one of the Nevada pioneers who made fortunes from the Comstock Lode. He parlayed his fortune into diversified business interests that made him a billionaire.

Miss Mackay was educated in private schools and took special courses at Barnard College. She was a debutante during the season of 1922-23, when her father gave her a ball at the Ritz-Carlton.

Mr. Mackay, who had been divorced in 1913, doted on little Ellin, and he took her on several trans-Atlantic crossings. Because of their close relationship, he was all the more unwilling to give his blessing to the ''unsuitable'' Mr. Berlin. In the first few years of her marriage, Mrs. Berlin put aside her budding writing career to have a family. Their only son, Irving Berlin Jr., died in infancy, and they had three daughters. Short Stories and Novels

In 1933 she began contributing short stories to The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies' Home Journal and other popular magazines. Her first novel, ''Land I Have Chosen,'' was published in 1944. Depicting the evils of Nazi Germany, the novel was sold to the movies for $150,000, then a record. Her other novels were ''Lace Curtain,'' 1948; ''Silver Platter,'' a 1957 semifictional account of her Nevada pioneer forebears, and ''The Best of Families.''


Mrs. Berlin was re-baptized in the Catholic faith in the 1930's, and throughout her life she worshiped at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where a funeral will be held at 2 P.M. Tuesday. She was a major supporter of the Girl Scout movement.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Berlin 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, L.I.; nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.