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Ethel Merman

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Ethel Merman (January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was a Tony Award- and Grammy Award-winning American star of stage and film musicals, well known for her powerful voice, often hailed by critics as "The Grande Dame of the Broadway stage".

Biography

Early life

Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in her maternal grandmother's house at 359 4th Avenue, Astoria, Queens, New York. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant, and her mother, Agnes (née Gardner), was a school teacher. Merman's father was German American and Lutheran, and her mother was Scottish American and Presbyterian; she was baptized Episcopalian. She attended PS 6 on Steinway Street in Astoria. She used to stand outside the Famous Players-Lasky Studios and wait to see her favorite Broadway star, Alice Brady. Ethel loved to sing songs like "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" while her adoring father accompanied her on the piano. William Cullen Bryant High School in Astoria named its auditorium Ethel Merman Theater.

Performance style

Merman was known for her powerful, belting mezzo-soprano – alto voice, precise enunciation, and pitch. Because stage singers performed without microphones when she began singing professionally, she had great advantages in show business, despite the fact that she never received any singing lessons. In fact, Broadway lore holds that George Gershwin warned her never to take a singing lesson after seeing her opening reviews for Girl Crazy. Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics for Merman's Gypsy, remembered that she could become "mechanical" after a while. "She performed the dickens out of the show when the critics were there," he said. He added, "or if she thought there was a celebrity in the audience. So we used to spread a rumor that Frank Sinatra was out front. That whoever, Judy Garland was out front. I'll tell you one thing [Merman] did do, she steadily upstaged everybody. Every night, she would be about one more foot upstage, so finally they were all playing with their backs to the audience. I don't think it was conscious. Ethel was not big on brains. But she sure knew her way around a stage, and it was all instinctive.

Career

Merman began singing while working as a secretary for the B-K Booster (automobile) Vacuum Brake Company in Queens. She eventually became a full time vaudeville performer and played the pinnacle of vaudeville, the Palace Theatre in New York City. She had already been engaged for Girl Crazy, a musical with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, which also starred a very young Ginger Rogers (19 years old) in 1930. Although third billed, her rendition of "I Got Rhythm" in the show was popular, and by the late 1930s, she had become the first lady of the Broadway musical stage. Many consider her the leading Broadway musical performer of the Twentieth Century, with her signature song being "There's No Business Like Show Business" (from Annie Get Your Gun).

Merman starred in five Cole Porter musicals, among them Anything Goes in 1934, where she introduced "I Get a Kick Out of You", "Blow Gabriel Blow", and the title song. Her next musical with Porter was Red, Hot and Blue, in which she co-starred with Bob Hope and Jimmy Durante and introduced "It's Delovely" and "Down in the Depths (on the 90th floor)". In 1939's DuBarry Was a Lady, Porter provided Merman with a "can you top this" duet with Bert Lahr, "Friendship". Like "You're the Top" in Anything Goes, this kind of duet became one of her signatures. Porter's lyrics also helped showcase her comic talents in duets in Panama Hattie ("Let's Be Buddies", "I've Still Got My Health"), and Something for the Boys ("By the Mississinewah", "Hey Good Lookin'").

Irving Berlin supplied Merman with equally memorable duets, including counterpoint songs "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" with Bruce Yarnell, written for the 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, and "You're Just in Love" with Russell Nype in Call Me Madam. Merman won the 1951 Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance as Sally Adams in Call Me Madam. She reprised her role in the lively Walter Lang film version.

Perhaps Merman's most revered performance was in Gypsy as Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Rose. Merman introduced "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Some People" and ended the show with the wrenching "Rose's Turn". Critics and audiences saw her creation of Madame Rose as the performance of her career. She did not get the role in the movie version, however, which went to movie actress Rosalind Russell, and an infuriated Merman was quoted as saying: "There's a name for women like her but it's seldom used in society outside [of] a kennel." (Since this is a line from the film The Women, in which Russell appeared, the story may be apocryphal.) She also insulted Russell's husband, Freddie Brisson, by calling him the "Lizard of Roz". [citation needed] Merman decided to take Gypsy on the road and trumped the motion picture as a result.

Merman lost the Tony Award to Mary Martin, who was playing Maria in The Sound of Music. "How can you buck a nun?" mused Merman. The competitiveness notwithstanding, Merman and Martin were friends off stage and starred in a legendary musical special on television.

Merman retired from Broadway in 1970, when she appeared as the last Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, a show initially written for her. No longer willing to "take the veil," as she described being in a Broadway role, Merman preferred to act in television specials and movies. Despite having a reputation for a salty tongue and having introduced ribald Cole Porter lyrics, Merman was known to dislike 1970s theatre fare like Oh! Calcutta! for being lewd.

Merman's film career was not as distinguished as her stage roles. Though she reprised her roles in Anything Goes and Call Me Madam, film executives would not select her for Annie Get Your Gun or Gypsy. Some critics state the reason for losing the roles was that her outsized stage persona did not fit well on the screen. Others have said that after her behavior on the set of Twentieth-Century Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business, Jack Warner refused to have her in any of his motion pictures, thereby causing her to lose the role of Rose in Gypsy, though some believe Rosalind Russell's husband and agent, Freddie Brisson, negotiated the rights away from Merman for his wife. Nonetheless, Stanley Kramer decided to cast her as the battle-axe Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of Milton Berle, in the madcap It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Merman's last movie role was a self-parody in the comedy movie Airplane!, appearing as a soldier, Lieutenant Hurwitz. Hurwitz is suffering from shell shock and thinks he is Ethel Merman. Merman sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses", while the nurses drag her back to bed and give her a sedative. In 1979, she recorded the infamous The Ethel Merman Disco Album, with many of her signature show-stoppers set to a disco beat.

Personal life

Merman was married and divorced four times:

  • 1) Bill Smith, theatrical agent
  • 2) Robert Levitt, a newspaper executive. Merman had two children with Levitt, and they divorced in 1952.
  • 3) Robert Six, an airline executive (1953 – 1960)
  • 4) Ernest Borgnine, the actor, in 1964. They announced the impending nuptials at P.J. Clarke's, a legendary night spot in New York, but Merman filed for divorce after just 32 days. Johnny Carson soon quipped on his Tonight Show, "And they said it wouldn't last!"

Merman co-wrote two volumes of memoirs, Who Could Ask for Anything More in 1955 and Merman in 1978. In a radio interview, Merman commented on her many marriages, saying that "We all make mistakes, that's why they put rubbers on pencils, and that's what I did. I made a few loo-loos! In the latter book, the chapter entitled "My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine" consists of one blank page.

Merman was pre-deceased by one of her two children, daughter Ethel Levitt (known as "Ethel, Jr." and "Little Bit"). In 1983, as she was preparing to go to Los Angeles to appear at the Oscars that year, Merman collapsed. Although the original physician assessment was that Merman had suffered a stroke, tests later revealed an inoperable brain tumor. The severity of her condition was kept out of the press, and only a few close friends were allowed to visit. As her condition deteriorated, she was cared for by her son, Bobby. She died February 15, 1984--less than a month after her 76th birthday.

On February 20, 1984, Ethel's son, Robert Levitt, Jr., held his mother's ashes as he rode down Broadway. He passed the Imperial, the Broadway and the Majestic theatres, where Merman had performed all her life. A minute before the curtains of these theatres opened that night, all of the Broadway marquees dimmed their lights in remembrance of her. It was Robert's sentimental gesture that led to the legend that Merman's ashes were "scattered over Broadway," a rather unusual plan and an illegal method of disposing of human remains.

Merman in popular culture

Merman is mentioned in the Broadway musical The Producers. During the song "Springtime for Hitler", Hitler sings "Heil myself, Watch my show! I'm the German Ethel Merman, don't ya know!"

Merman was also mentioned by Nellie McKay in her song "Change The World". McKay sings, "God, I'm so German, have to have a plan. Please, Ethel Merman, help me out this jam."

Merman had a cameo appearance in the movie Airplane! when a combat veteran suffering from "severe shell-shock" believed he was Ethel Merman. During the course of the joke she sat up in bed and sang a few bars of "Everything's Coming Up Roses".

The British Psychobillyband The Meteors recorded an instrumental called "Return Of The Ethel Merman" for their 1986 album "Sewertime Blues".

Merman is mentioned a lot in the musical series Forbidden Broadway making fun of the wireless microphones and soft singing used in The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical).

In the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam, Army radio disc jockey Adrian Cronauer (played by Robin Williams) alluded to Merman's distinctive, brassy style and powerful voice during one of his improvised comic news bulletins. "Ethel Merman has been used to jam Russian radar systems. {belting in imitation of Merman} 'I've got a feeling that love is here to stay!' When asked for a reply, the Russians said 'Vat de hell vas dat?'"

A San Francisco Female Impersonator named Mark Sargent has a successful act called "The Ethel Merman Experience" where Mr. Sargent performs popular rock and roll songs 'in the style of Ethel Merman' while in drag dressed as Ethel Merman. Ethel Merman Experience page Ethel Merman Experience video clip

A blooper recording announced "the robust voice of Ethel Murmur"!

Audible samples of Ethel Merman

Courtesy of NPR Windows Media Player Required

Theatre performances

Filmography

Television performances

References

Thomas, Bob (1985). I Got Rhythm!The Ethel Merman Story. New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-399-13041-1.

External links



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Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 07:06:38 PDT (GMT -0700)
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