Ethel Merman's brassy voice and knock-'em-dead style made her a favorite with Broadway audiences. She sang "I Got Rhythm" in the 1930 George and Ira Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, and in 1946 she played cowgirl Annie Oakley in the original Broadway production of Annie Get Your Gun. The latter show's hit number, "There's No Business Like Show Business," became Merman's signature tune. She continued performing into the 1970s, often appearing on TV as a beloved symbol of Broadway sass. She also had a memorable turn as a nagging mother-in-law in the slapstick movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963, with Mickey Rooney and ZaSu Pitts).
Merman was married four times; the fourth marriage, to actor Ernest Borgnine in 1964, lasted 32 days... Like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Merman was once a guest villainess ("Lola Lasagne") on the 1960s TV series Batman... Merman was one of several actresses to follow Carol Channing as the star of the Broadway show Hello Dolly... Annie Get Your Gun was revived on Broadway in 1999, with Bernadette Peters (and then Reba McIntyre) starring as Annie Oakley... Merman openly lied about her age and her birth year is given as anywhere between 1906 and 1912; modern biographers have settled on 1908 as the year she was born.
Merman, Ethel [née Zimmermann] (1908–84), actress and singer. The leading musical comedy queen of her era, she was born in Astoria, New York, and performed in cabarets and in vaudeville before making her Broadway debut in Girl Crazy (1930) where her singing of “I Got Rhythm” stopped the show and catapulted her to fame. Thereafter she appeared in George White's Scandals of 1931 and Take a Chance (1932) before getting many juicy roles in Cole Porter musicals: the evangelist‐turned‐songstress Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes (1934), former manicurist Nails O'Reilly in Red, Hot and Blue! (1936), nightclub singer May Daly in Du Barry Was a Lady (1939), saloon owner Hattie Mahoney in Panama Hattie (1940), and rancher Blossom Hart in Something for the Boys (1943). One of her greatest successes was the sharpshooter Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun (1946), followed by ambassadress Sally Adams in his Call Me Madam (1950). After playing the Philadelphia Main Liner Liz Livingston in Happy Hunting (1956), Merman gave what was considered her greatest performance: the driven stage mother Rose in Gypsy (1959). Walter Kerr described her Rose as a “brassy, brazen witch on a mortgaged broomstick, a steamroller with cleats, the very mastodon of all stage mothers.” Her last appearances were in a 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun and as a replacement in the lead of Hello, Dolly! Prior to her time, Broadway's leading ladies usually had been demure innocents. The dark‐haired, brassy performer with perfect projection and impeccable diction changed the nature of heroines for many musicals, usually playing tougher, more knowing, and cynical figures. Autobiography: Merman, with George Eells, 1978.
Ethel Merman was the leading American musical theater performer of her generation, creating roles in 13 Broadway musicals between 1930 and 1959, and continuing to appear in shows occasionally through 1970. Her clarion voice and exact enunciation were perfect for an era when a stage performer was required to sing loud enough to be heard at the back of the theater without amplification. That made her a favorite of the leading songwriters of the day, and she introduced some of the most memorable songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Her Broadway stardom, at a time when the musical theater was a major source for American popular music, nationally afforded her opportunities in other areas of entertainment including personal appearances, records, movies, radio, and television. But her real home was on the Broadway stage, and that's where she spent the bulk of her time for 40 years.
Merman began singing as a child and entertained at military camps during World War I. She became a secretary after graduating from high school, but gradually built up a career singing in nightclubs and vaudeville. In September 1930, she reached the pinnacle of vaudeville success, playing the Palace Theater in New York. By then, however, she was already preparing to make a transition to the legitimate theater, and on October 13, 1930, she opened in a featured role in the Broadway musical Girl Crazy, with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, attracting considerable attention with her performance of "I Got Rhythm." The show ran 272 performances, closing June 6, 1931, and she found time during its run to continue her nightclub appearances and to work at New York's Paramount Pictures studios, where she appeared in short films, and then made her feature film debut in Follow the Leader, released in December 1930. On September 14, 1931, she opened in her second Broadway show, that year's edition of the revue George White's Scandals, introducing "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries." It ran 202 performances, closing March 5, 1932. On October 1, 1931, she made a test recording of "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" for RCA Victor Records, but she did not make her first issued recordings until a Victor session a year later, on September 29, 1932, that produced a version of Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean?" Over the next several years, she made occasional further recordings, for Brunswick Records in 1934 and 1935, for Liberty Music Shop Records in 1939, and for Decca Records in 1940, usually performing songs associated with her shows and films. But recordings accounted for only a small part of her work.
Merman opened in her third Broadway musical, Take a Chance, on November 26, 1932, her most memorable song being "Eadie Was a Lady." The show ran 243 performances, closing July 1, 1933. In September, she went to Hollywood, where she co-starred with Bing Crosby in We're Not Dressing and with Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions, both films released in 1934. (Footage of her singing "It's the Animal in Me," shot for We're Not Dressing, was used in the 1935 film Big Broadcast of 1936.) After a year, she returned to New York and her greatest stage success yet, starring in the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, which opened November 21, 1934, and ran 420 performances, closing November 16, 1935. Her songs included "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," and the title tune. Unusually for her, she left the show before its closing to fulfill more film commitments in Hollywood, again co-starring with Cantor, in Strike Me Pink, and Crosby, in a screen adaptation of Anything Goes, both released in 1936. Then her bicoastal career continued back in New York with another Cole Porter offering, Red, Hot and Blue!, which opened on Broadway on October 29, 1936, for a run of 183 performances, closing April 10, 1937. Among her six songs in the show were "Down in the Depths on the 90th Floor" and "It's De-Lovely." Returning to Hollywood, she signed with 20th Century-Fox and made three films released in 1938, Happy Landing, Alexander's Ragtime Band (which featured vintage songs by Irving Berlin), and Straight, Place and Show. This turned out to be her last extended work in films. Turning 30, and with only ordinary looks, she had no real chance of being a big Hollywood star, but her voice guaranteed her above-the-title status back on Broadway.
Accordingly, Merman headed back east again for her sixth stage musical, Stars in Your Eyes, which featured songs written by Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields. It opened February 9, 1939, for a run of only 127 performances, closing May 27, and by December 6, Merman was back on-stage in Cole Porter's DuBarry Was a Lady, a more successful effort that ran 408 performances, staying on the boards until December 12, 1940. Before then, she had left it to open in another Porter show, Panama Hattie, on October 30, 1940. This musical gave her longest run yet, 501 performances, closing on January 3, 1942. She had married theatrical agent William Jacob Smith in 1940 and divorced him in 1941, then married newspaperman Robert Daniels Levitt. With him, she gave birth to her first child, Robert Daniels Levitt, Jr., on July 20, 1942. On January 7, 1943, she was back on Broadway, singing Cole Porter songs in Something for the Boys, which ran 422 performances, closing January 8, 1944. (During the year, she made a cameo appearance in the all-star film Stage Door Canteen, and she made her first appearance in the Billboard singles chart with "Move It Over" on RCA Victor.)
On August 11, 1945, Merman gave birth to her second child, Ethel Levitt. Her tenth stage musical was the biggest hit of her career, Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, a depiction of the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Opening May 16, 1946, it ran 1,147 performances, until February 12, 1949, and she stayed in it until the end, singing "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "They Say It's Wonderful," "Anything You Can Do," "I Got the Sun in the Morning," and "There's No Business Like Show Business," among other songs. The original Broadway cast album had become a commercial entity in the time since her last stage appearance, and the cast album for the show, released on Decca, reached number two in the charts. This recording success increased her profile, and she was given her own network radio series, The Ethel Merman Show, which ran during 1949. She also signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca and scored a series of chart entries in 1950 and 1951 paired with fellow stage star Ray Bolger: "Dearie," "I Said My Pajamas (And Put on My Pray'rs)," "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake," and "Once Upon a Nickel."
On October 12, 1950, Merman returned to Broadway in Irving Berlin's next musical, Call Me Madam. It ran 644 performances, until May 3, 1952, and she won a Tony Award. RCA Victor owned the rights to the original Broadway cast album, but she was still under contract to Decca. As a result, the rest of the original cast, with Dinah Shore substituting in the starring role, recorded an album for RCA, while Merman and a quickly assembled studio cast including Dick Haymes recorded a competing one for Decca. Merman's version outscored Shore's, reaching number two in the charts, with her duet with Haymes on "You're Just in Love" reaching the singles charts.
Despite her increased national profile, Merman had not returned to movie making. Broadway audiences may have had no trouble accepting her as the youthful Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, but moviegoers would have been required to swallow their disbelief had the 42-year-old tried to star in the 1950 movie version. (As it was, MGM never asked her, first giving the role to Judy Garland, who dropped out due to illness, and then to Betty Hutton.) But the role of Sally Adams, the Perle Mesta-like "Hostess with the Mostes' on the Ball" in Call Me Madam, was a matronly one, and Merman did get to appear in the film version, which was released in 1953, her first starring movie role in 15 years. The soundtrack album on Decca reached number five.
Merman did not immediately go back into a Broadway show, first acknowledging the rise of television by making a number of small-screen appearances, notably one on the two-hour Ford 50th Anniversary Show on June 15, 1953, broadcast live on both CBS and NBC. Her main stage rival had always been Mary Martin, as soft-voiced and sweet as Merman was stentorian and overpowering. The two performed a lengthy duet on the show, and Decca released it on an album. After appearing in television adaptations of Anything Goes (paired with Frank Sinatra) and Panama Hattie, Merman next starred in another lavish movie musical filled with vintage songs by Irving Berlin, There's No Business Like Show Business, also featuring Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, Donald O'Connor, Johnnie Ray, and Marilyn Monroe, which was released for the 1954 Christmas season. The soundtrack album on Decca reached number six. Merman concluded her exclusive contract with Decca by assembling the double-LP set A Musical Autobiography, which combined cast recordings with studio recordings from 1947 and 1955 of songs with which she was associated for a career overview.
Merman's 12th Broadway musical was Happy Hunting, which opened December 6, 1956, and ran 413 performances, until November 30, 1957. RCA Victor recorded the cast album, on which she was able to appear. But the show was remembered less for itself than for its star. She looked for a more worthy vehicle next and found it in the musical that became her mature triumph and gave her her last new role on Broadway, Gypsy. In this show based on the early life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Merman portrayed Mama Rose, the ultimate stage mother, who bullies her daughters into becoming successful. She played the unsympathetic part with enthusiasm, singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and the wrenching tour de force "Rose's Turn," songs written by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. The show opened on May 21, 1959, and ran 702 performances, until March 25, 1961, and she not only stayed with it all through the Broadway run, but also undertook a national tour that ran an additional nine months. The cast album reached number 13 and stayed in the charts for more than two years. For once, she very much wanted to do the 1962 film adaptation, and she would have been nearly age-appropriate for it, but she was aced out of the role by Rosalind Russell.
At 54, Merman was ready to give up the eight-show-a-week schedule of Broadway, and she returned to personal appearances for the first time since 1930, making her Las Vegas debut in October 1962; her show was recorded for the Warner Bros. Records LP Merman in Vegas. (She also went into the studio and re-recorded some of her best-known songs for the Warner Bros. LP Merman: Her Greatest!) She guest-starred on television and had character parts in the films It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and The Art of Love (1965). On May 31, 1966, she returned to musical theater in New York in a 20th anniversary revival of Annie Get Your Gun intended as a five-week limited run, but extended until it finally closed on November 26, 1966, after 124 performances. RCA Victor recorded a new cast album that reached the charts, and a television adaptation ran on March 19, 1967.
Merman appeared in a national tour of Call Me Madam in the late '60s and made her final stand on Broadway when she became the eighth woman to star in Hello, Dolly!, starting on March 28, 1970. She had turned down the show back in 1964; now she closed it on December 27, 1970. Having reached her sixties, she worked less frequently. She made the occasional cameo in a film (Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood [1976], Airplane! [1980]); and she re-recorded her best-known songs yet again, on the British LPs Merman Sings Merman (London Records; 1972) and Ethel's Riding High (Decca; 1975). She surprised her fans by recording a new studio cast version of Annie Get Your Gun for London Phase 4 Records in 1973, and she shocked them with The Ethel Merman Disco Album on A&M Records in 1979. She also gave occasional concerts, appearing at Carnegie Hall as late as 1982. Two years later, she died of a brain tumor at age 76, her reputation as Broadway's biggest female star of the 20th century secure. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, There's No Business Like Show Business, Alexander's Ragtime Band
First Major Screen Credit: Her Future (1930)
Biography
Twenty-two-year-old ex-stenographer and former nightclub singer Ethel Merman achieved overnight superstardom when, in 1930, she first belted out "I Got Rhythm" in the Broadway production of Girl Crazy. Merman's subsequent stage hits included Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, Panama Hattie, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam, and Gypsy. While her Living Legend status was secure on the Great White Way, Merman was less fortunate in the movies. She was upstaged by Ed Wynn in Follow the Leader (1930), by Bing Crosby and Burns and Allen in We're Not Dressing (1934), by Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions (1934), and -- most ignominiously -- by the Ritz Brothers in Straight, Place and Show (1938). While she was permitted to repeat her stage roles in the movie versions Anything Goes (1936) and Call Me Madam (1954), she had to endure watching Betty Hutton wail her way through the film adaptations Red, Hot and Blue (1949) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and withstand the spectacle of a miscast Rosalind Russell misplaying the part of Mama Rose in the 1963 filmization Gypsy. Perhaps Merman's talents were too big and bombastic for the comparatively intimate medium of films; or perhaps she just didn't photograph well enough to suit the Hollywood higher-ups. Merman's best movie work includes the two Irving Berlin catalogues Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and her character role as Milton Berle's behemoth mother-in-law in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Ethel Merman's final film appearance was a cameo in Airplane! (1980): she played the unfortunate Lieutenant Hurwitz, who is confined to the psycho ward because he thinks he's Ethel Merman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
For more than fifty years singer and actress Ethel Merman (1909-1984) was a beloved legend of stage and screen. Her first musical appearance, in George and Ira Gershwin's "Girl Crazy" in 1930, resulted in her instant rise from secretary and occasional club singer to Broadway singing sensation. Merman went on to star in a dozen more stage musicals and numerous films and continued to perform into her seventies.
Actress and singer Ethel Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in Astoria, a suburb of New York City, on January 16, 1909. She later shortened her name to Merman because, she said, "If you put Zimmermann up in lights, you'd die from the heat." Merman showed an early interest in singing, and her parents, Edward and Agnes, encouraged her. Edward Merman, an accountant, loved to sit at the family piano and sing, and his daughter often joined him. Even then her voice showed signs of becoming a giant instrument; she noted later in a New Yorker interview that, "The neighbors used to hear me, of course." Merman made her public debut at the age of five, singing at a Red Cross camp.
In high school Merman trained to be a secretary; even in later life, she insisted on taking her own notes at business meetings and handling her own correspondence. She became the secretary to the president of a New York City company, who had connections in the entertainment industry. He gave her a letter of introduction to George White, a theatrical producer. White offered Merman a place in the chorus line of Scandals, a long-running and highly popular Broadway revue; amazingly, she turned down this break because she preferred to sing. Merman continued to work as a secretary, but also began to sing at nightclubs. While singing at the Little Russia club, agent Lou Irwin noticed Merman and signed her to a six-month contract at Warner Brothers' New York studio. However, the closest she came to a film performance was as a bit player, wearing a leopard skin. Merman decided to keep singing at night clubs and soon had regular engagements.
At this point Merman elected to quit her day job and, in another stroke of good luck, she caught the attention of theatrical producer Vincent Freedley. In 1930 he arranged an audition with rising young composer George Gershwin, who was casting for a musical, Girl Crazy, cowritten with his brother Ira. Merman was hired and appeared on the program far down the cast list, as "Kate Fothergill," bride of a gambler. On opening night, while singing "I Got Rhythm," Merman held a high C for 16 bars. The audience went wild and she had to perform several encores. Her performance overshadowed the rest of the cast, including the musical's star, Ginger Rogers. George Gershwin, who was conducting the orchestra, reportedly ran backstage afterward and told Merman, "Don't ever let anyone give you a singing lesson; it'll ruin you." Merman became an instant star at the age of twenty-one, based on this single performance, and wisely followed Gershwin's advice. Girl Crazy ran for 272 performances, and Merman belted out "I Got Rhythm" eight times a week.
Teamed up with Cole Porter
After the success of Girl Crazy, Merman appeared in the eleventh edition of George White's Scandals. This time, however, rather than being offered a place in the chorus line, Merman was one of the headliners along with singer Rudy Vallee. She sang several numbers, and her solo rendition of "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" made the song a popular hit. Scandals ran on Broadway for 202 performances. After it closed in 1932, Merman then appeared on the road in Pittsburgh, in the musical Humpty Dumpty, a satire of American history. Unfortunately, this show was one of the few flops in Merman's career, and it soon closed without ever leaving Pittsburgh. However, by the next season Humpty Dumpty had been drastically rewritten and opened on Broadway as Take a Chance. Again Merman was a hit with audiences, which led to her being offered her first featured role in a Hollywood film.
The cast of the film We're Not Dressing included such major stars as Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard, but it did not give Merman a real chance to display her singing talent. Her biggest number was singing "The Animal in Me," which she shared with a "chorus line" of forty elephants. The song was cut from the final film and, after appearing in another minor film role in Kid Millions, Merman decided to return to the New York stage. These experiences foreshadowed what would be a major problem with Merman's screen appearances. She was not a typical screen beauty and, as she recalled later, the directors constantly told her to hold down her voice, her strong point.
In 1934 Merman starred in the musical comedy Anything Goes, which featured songs by Cole Porter. She sang several songs that are now among the most famous of show tunes, including "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," and the show's title song. Anything Goes was a major hit and ran for 420 performances. During its run Merman also was given a radio program of her own. Once again, she decided to try Hollywood, appearing in the film version of Anything Goes as well as several more forgettable roles. Again she was disappointed by her film career and returned to Broadway. Through the rest of the 1930s Merman continued to alternate stage and screen roles. She starred in three more Cole Porter stage musicals: Red, Hot and Blue!, Du Barry Was a Lady, and Panama Hattie; and in the films Happy Landing, Alexander's Ragtime Band, and Straight, Place, and Show. As usual, Merman found that she was a hit on stage, but her films were not as successful. Film executives began to feel the same; when Du Barry Was a Lady was filmed, Merman's role was given to Lucille Ball.
In 1943 Cole Porter turned to Merman once again when casting his new Broadway musical, Something for the Boys. Although the production was plagued by management problems and reviewers found Porter's new songs below his usual standards, Merman was stellar and the show ran for more than 400 performances. Something for the Boys marked one of the rare occasions when Merman missed a performance; several months into the show's run, she developed a severe case of laryngitis, and her understudy had to take over for a week. This musical also marked the fifth and last time that Merman would star in a Porter musical.
Greatest Hit Musicals Followed
After Something for the Boys closed, Merman was approached for the lead in a new musical to be produced by the famous team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Annie Get Your Gun. Equally famous composer Jerome Kern had agreed to write the show's songs; however, he died suddenly and Irving Berlin was convinced to step in. Merman's portrayal of Western marks woman Annie Oakley proved to be one of her most famous performances. With great Berlin songs like "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" and "There's No Business Like Show Business," Annie Get Your Gun was a huge hit and ran for 1,147 performances. However, when the show was filmed in 1950, Merman's role went to Betty Hutton (who also had been given the film lead in Red, Hot and Blue! the previous year).
During the 1950s Merman starred in two more hit stage musicals, Call Me Madam and Gypsy. In Call Me Madam, another Berlin musical that opened in 1950, Merman portrayed a character based on noted Washington, D.C. hostess Perle Mesta. Merman took pride in always knowing her lines, but also did not like last minute changes. When Berlin asked her to learn new lyrics for the song "The Hostess with the Mostes"' she reportedly refused, saying, "Call me Miss Bird's Eye. It's frozen." Call Me Madam had advance sales of $1 million and ran for 644 performances. Merman also starred in the film version made in 1953.
Merman's last great stage hit was 1959's Gypsy, with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. In this story of famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Merman played the ultimate driven stage mother, Rose Hovick. Her number "Everything's Coming Up Roses" was an instant hit, as was the show itself; it ran for 702 performances. Merman considered the role of Rose Hovick her favorite, and "Everything's Coming Up Roses" became her anthem. She was deeply disappointed when her role in the 1962 film version went to Rosalind Russell. After Gypsy, Merman starred in a 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun and then joined the cast of Hello Dolly for three months during the seventh year of its run.
Tragedies Filled Personal Life
Despite Merman's flashy, self-confident stage and screen image, her personal life never matched the success of her professional life. She was married and divorced four times: to film agent William B. Smith; airline president Robert F. Six; publishing executive Robert D. Levitt; and, finally, actor Ernest Borgnine for 38 days in 1964. She had two children with Levitt, who committed suicide years after their divorce. Merman's daughter (nicknamed "Ethel Jr.") struggled with chronic depression and lost custody of her children to her husband after their divorce. She died in 1967 following a drug and alcohol overdose, in a vacation cabin with her visiting young children in the next room. "Ethel Jr.'s" death also was listed as a suicide, but Merman never accepted that verdict and insisted that her daughter had taken an accidental overdose of prescription medicine.
Merman continued to perform well into her seventies. She retired from Broadway in 1970, after starring in Hello Dolly, but during the 1960s and 1970s she frequently appeared on television programs. Merman was a guest on Judy Garland's variety show and also featured on Batman (as "Lola Lasagne"), The Love Boat, and The Muppet Show. Merman also made several films during this time, although none were the hit musicals that had made her famous. Among her later films were It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and Airplane (1980), in which she played an injured soldier who thought he was Ethel Merman. Her last major public appearance was at a Carnegie Hall benefit performance in 1982. The next year Merman underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor that was discovered after she suddenly collapsed in her apartment. However, the tumor was not operable and she continued to decline. Sadly, the woman with a giant singing voice and vibrant stage presence became bedridden and had to struggle to speak even a few words. Merman died in New York City, where she had lived her entire life, on February 15, 1984.
Books
Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, Penguin/Dutton, 1994.
Merman, Ethel, and George Eells, Merman: An Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1978.
Merman, Ethel, and Pete Martin, Who Could Ask for Anything More, Doubleday, 1955.
Thomas, Bob, I Got Rhythm: The Ethel Merman Story, Putnam's, 1985.
Periodicals
National Review, March 23, 1984, p. 16.
New Yorker, May 31, 1993, p. 73.
Time, February 27, 1984, p. 104.
Vanity Fair, February 1992, p. 174.
Online
"Biography for Ethel Merman," Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com(December 6, 2000).
(born Jan. 16, 1909, Astoria, N.Y., U.S. — died Feb. 15, 1984, New York, N.Y.) U.S. singer and actress. Merman, who had never taken voice lessons, worked as a secretary before her first professional singing engagement in 1929. She made her stage debut in George and Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy (1930) (seeGeorge Gershwin; Ira Gershwin). Her brassy, ebullient style and powerful voice made her a favoured performer for Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and others. In the mid-1930s Merman made her first Hollywood appearance, and she later starred on her own radio show. Her many Broadway successes include Anything Goes (1934), Red, Hot and Blue (1936), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Call Me Madam (1950), and Gypsy (1959).
1909–84, American musical comedy star, b. Astoria, N.Y., originally named Ethel Zimmerman. Merman's theater debut was in Girl Crazy (1930). Noted for her booming voice, she has appeared on Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam (also the film version, 1953), and Gypsy. Among her films are Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954).
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 and vocal range, often hailed by critics as "The
Queen of the Broadway stage".
Merman was known for her powerful, beltingalto 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 hell 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."[2]
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'sDuBarry 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'").
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.[citation needed]
Merman's film career was not as distinguished as her stage roles.[citation needed] 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.
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.
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!"[3]
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.
Merman in popular culture
Merman was mentioned in the Broadway musical The Producers. During
the song "Springtime for Hitler", Hitler says the line: "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."
It is rumoured that Merman provided the inspiration for the character of Helen Lawson in the roman à clef novel Valley of the
Dolls.[citation needed]
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 sang "Everything's Coming Up Roses".
The British PsychobillybandThe Meteors recorded an
instrumental called "Return Of The Ethel Merman" for their 1986 album "Sewertime Blues".
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[1] Ethel Merman Experience
video clip[2]
