Authors: Boze Hadleigh
Although she lived well into the age of microphones, Ethel Merman declined to soften, lower, or alter her singing style. She advised one pro-mike producer who said, “You don’t have to belt,” “That’s not what I’m all about. What I do is me. That’s what I am.”
D
ESPITE HER NATURAL COMPETITIVENESS
, Merman sometimes encouraged young performers, usually male ones. She comforted an actor-dancer in
Gypsy
who was nervous before opening, “Honey, if they could do what you do, they’d be up here.”
However, with females of all ages there was an invariable one-upmanship. For instance, at the home of some friends, the family grouped for a photo with “Aunt” Ethel, who often doted on their son. But when their little daughter Trudy stood in front of Merman, the star tartly ordered, “Back up, honey. Nobody upstages your Aunt Ethel.”
Give-and-take came hard to Merman. Despite her wealth, she was notorious for giving cheap gifts for birthdays and Christmas. And though occasionally she agreed to perform for charity, she expected first-class treatment all the way In 1977 she and Mary Martin headlined a benefit for the Theatre and Music Collection of the Museum of the City of New York.
Both had starred in
Hello, Dolly!
and were to wear the famous down-the-staircase red gown. When the producer suggested borrowing the gowns from the David Merrick office, Merman told her, “Are you kidding? You’re asking Mary and me to wear secondhand outfits? We’re stars. You’ll have to make new costumes.” In spite of the plea that expenses were being kept to a minimum, Ethel got her way, with $2,500 added to the charity’s budget.
Then the producer explained that to get to rehearsals, “The museum has a taxi service that will be at your disposal.” Merman cried, “A taxi service! Whaddya think we are, a couple of chorus girls? Get us limos.” The limousines upped the budget by a further $2,200.
The ornery Ethel, who told friends Carol Channing was “a vulgar publicity seeker,” also opined that “Dolly was a foolproof part. Look how many gals have done it. Even Betty Grable!”—who had parlayed her Broadway success in Cole Porter’s 1939 musical
DuBarry Was a Lady
into screen superstardom. Despite having declined to leave the States to play
Gypsy
in London, Merman was furious when Angela Lansbury played Mama Rose there, to huge box office and critical acclaim. Lansbury said, “Ethel figured
Rose was her private property, and I had no right to play the role. She told people that.… Also, I got the Tony [for the role—in 1974, for
Gypsy
’s first Broadway revival] and she didn’t, although she richly deserved it.”
Merman was more legitimately aggrieved when asked to play a recurring role on Jack Klugman’s TV series
The Odd Couple
. She’d ordered her agent to “get me some of that dough they’re throwing around at all those second-rate actors out there” in Los Angeles, where she did appear on
Batman
as villainess Lola Lasagna. Ethel was enraged and stung when she learned, “They want me to play Jack Klugman’s aunt?! Goddamnit, he was my leading man in
Gypsy
! Why the hell should I play his aunt? It’s insulting.” The producers reconsidered and said she could play Klugman’s older sister. “Absolutely not!” she replied.
Ethel’s coarseness was well known, and though she voted and even campaigned for conservative candidates who made an issue of their “moral values,” she reveled in public shockers. According to biographer Bob Thomas, at one “rather formal reception in a palatial Manhattan residence,” Merman was going up a double staircase while actor-director José Ferrer was going down on the other side. “Hey, Joe!” she suddenly yelled. “Did you hear the one about the Polack who was so dumb he thought Fuck-ing and Suck-king were a couple of Chinese cities?” The embarrassed Oscar winner answered, “No, I hadn’t, Ethel,” and walked on.
She was also partial to risqué greeting cards that dealt an unexpected shock. Like one that read, “Help bring love to the world …” on the front and on the inside “Fuck someone today.” “She collected dirty jokes and nasty stories,” said friend and associate Benay Venuta. “At parties, she was known for telling them … [and] trying to make the hostess blush.… Ethel was received in several of New York’s finest homes—usually
once
.
“Back in ’72, a mutual acquaintance was at a restaurant party with her. After Ethel exhausted her fund of bodily function jokes, she let someone else talk. So this guy mentions that he’ll be voting for [George] McGovern in the upcoming elections. Ethel was aghast, and couldn’t or wouldn’t keep it to herself. In her book, McGovern’s a ‘Commie,’ so she starts talking up Richard Nixon, actually calling him ‘a fine and noble man.’ Most people already knew not to bring up politics in front of her.”
M
ERMAN DECRIED MOST OF THE CHANGES
sweeping America in the 1960s and ’70s, and many or most of the younger stars. Modern trends and new Broadway plays usually appalled her, but it also hurt that fewer youngsters knew who she was, or who she’d been. Gone were the days when Cole Porter had announced, “I’d rather write for Ethel Merman than anyone else in the world.” Though formerly she’d disapproved of people doing Ethel Merman impressions, toward the end of her life she was glad, even grateful, to hear them.
“There’s practically no great singers today,” she explained in a 1970 interview syndicated in Australia. “You gotta have style and real personality for ’em to imitate you.” About female movie stars, she somewhat hypocritically offered, “Half of ’em are tramps. Nobody acts like a lady anymore.” About Jane Fonda she specifically said, “No one wants to hear an actress’s opinion about politics!” Regarding a young female rock singer, she summed up Grace Slick as “gimmicky but good” (not explaining what the gimmick was), then allowed that she didn’t “get” Janis Joplin (who died later that year):
“That girl has problems.… Bein’ heard ain’t one of ’em; like me, she gives an audience their money’s worth. But when I sing, everything’s comin’ up roses. When she sings, it’s a primal scream, for heaven’s sake!”
Though she took up touring in concerts, Merman became an exile from Broadway. She refused to consider supporting roles, except on the screen, which came calling even less often than before. To a younger generation she became known as the aggressive lady with the booming voice and the very imitable vibrato. “As she got older,” noted conductor Les Brown, “Ethel’s voice remained strong. Yet when she held a note, there was now a vibrato, and it just seemed to get worse, until it became the easiest thing in the world to ‘do’ Ethel Merman just by singing loud and energetically, with an exaggerated, almost comical vibrato.” For many who’d never heard her in her prime, Merman’s voice sounded “funny,” and they questioned her vocal reputation.
Ironically, when she recorded a 1979 album of her hits set to a disco beat, the vibrato was temporarily gone, but
The Ethel Merman Disco Album
came out at the end of the disco era and appealed to neither her older nor her younger fans, including most gay ones. “I heard nearly every copy that sold, sold to gay men,” said Ben Bagley, “not that many copies sold at all.”
Though not as personally well liked as some other Broadway icons, Ethel Merman shone brighter over the Great White Way than most anyone else. Her career coincided with its years of glory and universal appeal, a time when a Broadway star could be a national star without aid of other media, and when many of the nation’s hit songs came from Broadway shows.
“Talent and charisma made Broadway stars,” said stage actor George Rose. “Not the cosmetic, shallow appeal of Hollywood, but real, in-person qualities. It takes real stamina and natural magnetism to keep an audience captivated and to make them return. When she got on the stage and performed, Ethel Merman crushed any traces of boredom or restlessness.… People might get bored or impatient at a Merman musical, but only when she wasn’t on. When she was, she captured all eyes and ears.
“She grabbed your attention and never let go till after the curtain calls. And
she
decided when the curtain finally fell.… Nobody else could consistently pull in crowds even to mediocre musicals. Merman was in good ones,
bad ones, great ones, and so-so ones. Regardless, you went to see
her
. Crude or loud, funny, boisterous, she had the true magnetism, that star quality. Ethel Merman just lit up Broadway.” In her heyday, she
was
Broadway.
“Ethel could see right through people, usually. She could tell if someone wanted to use or exploit her. Except with some of her husbands.… After she saw the movie
All About Eve
, she kept asking how come a sharp dame like Bette Davis hadn’t seen right through that conniving little Eve?”—friend and co-worker B
ENAY
V
ENUTA
“The motion picture was
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
—correct me if I’m a ‘Mad’ short. I was the token Englishman; Miss Merman—which I’d imagined was a male mermaid—was the token leading lady. She was merely the most foul-mouthed and loud-mouthed female I have ever had the shock and displeasure of working with.”—T
ERRY
-T
HOMAS
(Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy hit also costarred Edie Adams and Dorothy Provine)
“Ethel’s a good egg. I got to see her shy and vulnerable side when she came to see me about
Gypsy
. I think her bluster was a façade.… She was very eager to please, and always loved applause, always sought that.”—G
YPSY
R
OSE
L
EE
“A bitch. When Ann Sothern got the screen version of
Panama Hattie
, I hear Ethel Merman wrote her a poisonous letter.… A lesbian? Not a bit of it! She loathed women.”—A
RTHUR
T
REACHER
, who appeared in the 1940 stage musical
Panama Hattie
“She liked being one of the boys, but she did wish to be treated like a lady. A great gal. Great voice. On a clear day you could probably hear Merman on Catalina [Island].”—B
ING
C
ROSBY
“Ethel played my wife in
There’s No Business Like Show Business
. (The film costarred Marilyn Monroe.) Now, if you don’t think playing Ethel Merman’s husband is acting, let me tell you.… She was about six or seven years older than me, but the emotional, temperamental difference was wider than that.… A very challenging assignment.”—D
AN
D
AILEY
“Playing a love scene with her [in the film of
Call Me Madam]
was like acting opposite a refrigerator. I felt I was selling a product, with rather chilly resistance from the product.”—G
EORGE
S
ANDERS
“She treated her supporting cast like dirt. That’s not what I call the spirit of show business. So when she sings that song and gets to the line about ‘There’s no people like show people,’ I just have to laugh, or try to.”—B
ETTY
G
RABLE
, who before her screen superstardom worked with Merman onstage
“If you talked to her, it took a lot of courage. And if she answered you, it was always like answering the group—she would include everyone. It was always like she was being interviewed. She never said anything about my performance, but she would give me a few taps on the shoulder before I was ready to go on—and that was acceptance.”—S
AL
V
ITELLA
, who was in the touring company of
Call Me Madam
“I remember once, onstage, we were in the middle of the ‘Mr. Goldstone’ scene, and a couple of stagehands were listening to a ball game on the radio and you could hear it all onstage. And suddenly Merman said, ‘Excuse me.’ And she goes off through the set and yells,
‘Shut the fuck up!’
Then she comes back onstage and finishes the scene. She wasn’t about to put up with that.”—M
ERLE
L
OUISE
, who played Dainty June in
Gypsy
“When she found out I’d offered her role [as a madam in
The Art of Love
] to Mae West first, Ethel stopped talking to me. She said she wouldn’t consider being in any more of my pictures. I sent word that I hadn’t considered her for any more of my pictures. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, Merman ran the spectrum of emotions from A to B—or should I say from A to Me.”—producer R
OSS
H
UNTER
“Working with her [on screen], I learned she’s a big mouth, and I refer not solely to her singing. I’d really rather not discuss her.”—movie star R
AY
M
ILLAND
“She was not a top-drawer actress … but she wasn’t given the chance until
Gypsy
. Singing and strutting is what she did best. In
Gypsy
she got to show some range, at long last. It could have been the start of a new … era for her. But then she decided to retire.”—
Gypsy
director-choreographer J
EROME
R
OBBINS
“I do not at this time recollect anything of printable value about working with her.”—A
LICE
F
AYE
, leading lady of
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
, a 1938 film whose title song was one of Merman’s hits
“I think the movies we made together were good for Ethel Merman’s screen career, but she was better for her Broadway career, if you catch my drift.”—E
DDIE
C
ANTOR
“We were both in
Girl Crazy
, [but] she stood out. She had a clarion voice and a heck of a song [“I Got Rhythm”]. I went to Hollywood soon after, and I guess Ethel made the most of her talent on Broadway.”—G
INGER
R
OGERS
“She was tough, but in a way she had to be. She could look at a row of balcony lights in a dress rehearsal and tell you the third one on the right should be pink and not yellow—and the guy would say, ‘Oh, shit, you’re right!’ A lot of women in the theater couldn’t do that.” (Nor a lot of men.)—stage and TV star J
ERRY
O
RBACH
, who worked with Merman in the Lincoln Center revival of
Annie Get Your Gun
“What a commotion that woman liked to make! Center of attention or nothing. What nowadays they call a drama queen. Which is funny, because she always struck me as rather a drag-queen type, even when she was younger.… She tried to irritate me by using a Spanish accent when we did a movie at Fox [
Happy Landing
, 1938]. A regular bigot! She never got to me, because I’m just as American as I am Cuban. Hell, I went to high school in New Jersey!”—C
ESAR
R
OMERO
“I think that like most eccentric people, Miss Merman thought all the people around her were strange. She strived to give the impression of being terribly well adjusted, but I’m sure psychotherapy could have helped her.”—V
IVIAN
V
ANCE
(the
I
Love Lucy
costar, who worked extensively onstage before turning to TV, was a strong advocate of psychiatry)
“She played Dolly Levi—Dolly lost. It was pure showbiz, purely commercial. She wasn’t Dolly up there, she was Ethel Merman in Dolly clothes.… The audiences came, of course; they came to see the Ethel Merman version. But it wasn’t
Hello, Dolly!
anymore; it was
her
show.… Channing or Streisand, they were part of a cast, trying to act out a character. But with Ethel Merman—and not just her fault, with the
audience
, she was such an institution—the rest of us felt like just her chorus boys or her chorus line.”—D
ANNY
L
OCKIN
, who costarred as Barnaby Tucker in both the stage and film versions
“The explosion in Forty-Fourth Street last evening was nothing to be alarmed by. It was merely Ethel Merman returning to the New York theater.”—B
ROOKS
A
TKINSON’S
typical welcome-back-Ethel review in the
New York Times
, on December 7, 1956
“Ethel Merman was New York’s musical version of the Statue of Liberty. She was that big, that famous, that awesome—really a case of they don’t make them that way anymore.”—M
ICHAEL
B
ENNETT
“A monument is what the Merm was, while she was on the stage. You don’t judge or measure a monument in moral or relative terms. There was nobody else like her. Back then, already people knew and appreciated that fact.”—stage star B
URGESS
M
EREDITH
, who costarred with Merman in an episode of TV’s
Batman