Ethel Merman
| Ethel Merman | |
|---|---|
| File:Ethel Merman NYWTS.jpg | |
| Background information | |
| Born | January 16 1908 |
| Origin | Astoria, Queens, New York |
| Died | February 15, 1984 New York, New York |
Ethel Merman (January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was a Tony Award winning star of stage and film musicals, well known for her powerful voice and vocal range.
Personal life
She was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann, in her maternal grandmother's house at 359 4th Avenue, Astoria, Queens, New York, of a German Lutheran father and Scottish Presbyterian mother. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant and her mother, Agnes Gardner, was a school teacher. Although many people long assumed she was Jewish because of her pre-stage last name (which is common among non-Jewish Germans as well, particularly when there are two "n"s at the end of the name) along with the fact that she was from New York City, she was baptized Episcopalian. 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 Silv’ry Moon” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band" while her adoring father accompanied her on the piano.
Merman was married and divorced four times:
- Bill Smith, theatrical agent.
- Robert Levitt, newspaper executive. The couple had two children; divorced in 1952
- Robert Six, airline executive, 1953-1960.
- Ernest Borgnine, actor, 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.
Career
She was known for her powerful, belting alto voice, precise enunciation, and accurate 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.
She began singing while working as a secretary for the B-K Booster 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".
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 "Anything You Can Do" with Ray Middleton in 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", "Some People", and ended the show with the wrenching "Rose's Turn". Critics and audiences saw her creation of Mama 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". 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 (unfortunately the two shared something else in common — they would both die of cancer-related illnesses at the age of 76).
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 theatre fare in the 1970s 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 her outsized stage persona did not fit well on the screen. Others have said 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, a performance that many Merman fans feel was overlooked for an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Merman's last movie role was a self-parody in the film Airplane!, appearing as a soldier suffering from shell shock who 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.
She was predeceased by one of her two children, her daughter, Ethel Levitt (known as "Ethel, Jr." and "Little Bit").
After Merman was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1983, she collapsed and died several weeks following surgery at the age of 76 in 1984; she had been planning to go to Los Angeles to appear at the Oscars that year.
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. Then, a minute before curtain up, all the marquees dimmed their lights in remembrance of her.
Merman co-wrote two volumes of memoirs, Who Could Ask for Anything More in 1952 and Merman in 1978. In the latter book, the chapter entitled "My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine" consists of one blank page.
Ethel 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!"
She 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 also rumoured that Ethel Merman provided the inspiration for the Helen Lawson Character in the roman a clef novel "Valley of the Dolls."
Audible Samples of Ethel Merman
Courtesy of NPR Windows Media Player Required
- Ethel Merman with Jimmy Durante You Say the Nicest Things
- Ethel Merman Sings: The World is Your Balloon
- Ethel Merman Sings: Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Theatre performances
- Girl Crazy (1930)
- George White's Scandals of 1931 (1931)
- Take a Chance (1932)
- Anything Goes (1934)
- Red, Hot and Blue (1936)
- Stars In Your Eyes (1939)
- DuBarry Was a Lady (1939)
- Panama Hattie (1940)
- Something for the Boys (1943)
- Sadie Thompson (1944) (was replaced in previews)
- Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
- Call Me Madam (1950)
- Happy Hunting (1956)
- Gypsy (1959)
- Annie Get Your Gun (1966) (revival)
- Hello, Dolly! (1970) (replacement)
- Mary Martin & Ethel Merman: Together On Broadway (1977)
| Preceded by: Mary Martin for South Pacific |
Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1951 for Call Me Madam |
Succeeded by: Gertrude Lawrence for The King and I |
Filmography
- The Cave Club (1930) (short subject)
- Follow the Leader (1930)
- The Devil Sea (1931) (short subject)
- Roaming (1931) (short subject)
- Old Man Blues (1932) (short subject)
- Ireno (1932) (short subject)
- Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1932) (short subject)
- You Try Somebody Else (1932) (short subject)
- Time On My Hands (1932) (short subject)
- Be Like Me (1933) (short subject)
- Song Shopping (1933) (short subject)
- We're Not Dressing (1934)
- Kid Millions (1934)
- The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)
- Strike Me Pink (1936)
- Anything Goes (1936)
- Happy Landing (1938)
- Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
- Straight Place and Show (1938)
- Stage Door Canteen (1943)
- Call Me Madam (1953)
- There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
- It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
- The Art of Love (1965)
- Around the World of Mike Todd (1968) (documentary)
- Journey Back to Oz (1974) (voice)
- Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
- Airplane! (1980)
Television performances
- The Ford 50th Anniversary Show (1953)
- Panama Hattie (1954)
- Merman On Broadway (1961)
- Maggie Brown (1963) (unsold pilot)
- An Evening with Ethel Merman (1965)
- Annie Get Your Gun (1967)
- Tarzan and the Mountains of the Moon (1967)
- Batman "The Sport of Penguins," as the evil Lola Lasagne (1967)
- "That Girl", guest appearance, as herself (c.1969)
- 'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gershwin (1972)
- Ed Sullivan's Broadway (1973)
- The Muppet Show (1976)
- Match Game PM (1976), (1978)
- A Salute to American Imagination (1978)
- A Special Sesame Street Christmas (1978)
- Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979) (voice)
- Night of 100 Stars (1982)
See also
- List of notable brain tumor patients
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Thomas, Bob (November 1985). I Got Rhythm!The Ethel Merman Story (Hardcover) (in English), New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 239 pages. ISBN 0-399-13041-1.
External links
- http://www.musicals101.com/mermbio.htm
- Ethel Merman at the Internet Movie Database
- Ethel Merman at TV.com
- Photos
- NPR's Susan Stamburg's Report on the Memory of Ethel Merman
- Ethel Merman at All Music Guide
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