Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (10 page)

The idea of Ethel's overnight discovery resonated deeply with contemporary audiences. It made sense: during the Depression, the fantasy of leaving
one's socioeconomic station and hitting the big time was utterly compelling.
Of course, that myth had long been pivotal to the American success story,
one in which pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps determination-material conditions be damned-was all it took. In this narrative, success was a matter of individual resolve, not collective action. That ethos was reflected in the
popular nineteenth-century boys' stories of Horatio Alger, in tales of upward
mobility whose heroes were made of determination and hard work, assisted
here and there by a big dollop of good luck.

Early Broadway shows had capitalized heavily on such myths in the late
i9ios and 'zos, especially in stories involving women moving from rags to
riches; Marilyn Miller's fame, for instance, had been secured by one such
show, 1920s Sally. In Ethel's case, however, it was her actual life story that fit
the mold rather than any show or character she portrayed. Early program
notes read like Alger stories in miniature. For Girl Crazy: "Ethel Merman less
than a year ago was pounding a typewriter in an auto appliance plant in Long
Island City. It was here, most likely, that she `got rhythm.' . . . last spring
Miss Merman met Al Siegel and they formed an alliance for vaudeville. Their
act put them in top demand and, after a swing around the country, they
landed in Brooklyn, where they stayed for seven weeks. This appearance preceded their present engagement." Hyperbole was already at work: Siegel and
Merman never went around the country; her only trips outside the New York
area were the Philadelphia tryouts of Girl Crazy and the engagement in
Miami. Other versions emerged. The New Movie Magazine wrote, "Here is
the story of a girl who didn't wait to be discovered, but went out and fought
her way to success. "20

Broadway had thus unearthed Ethel's talents and justly rewarded them.
The real Broadway, of course, has always been a rather undemocratic, vicious
beast, but small matter: its shows are there to peddle myths, not to live up to
them. And the myth of an outsider talent being recognized has become such
a staple as to be the mainstay of the story lines themselves-a tradition still
upheld by early twenty-first-century hits such as Wicked and Hairspray. The
1930 success of Girl Crazy suggests that the show contained just the right kind
of fairy-tale dust for all concerned: singing star, viewers, producers. The show
was, after all, up against some tough odds: the stock market crash of 1929 had
ended many a new Broadway opening (especially for musicals, always more
costly). In addition to preempting most theater construction, the crash
helped hasten the demise of the large revues that had dominated the Great
White Way for over a decade.

Not quite a story of rags to riches, Ethel Merman's is one of raw talent paying off overnight in a fairy tale of promise and song and dance numbers. (Why
has no one made a musical out of it? If New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
got one, why not Ethel Merman?) When Pete Martin asked her outright, "Ethel, would you say you had to struggle or was it a little like Cinderella?"
she responded, "I think it was a little like Cinderella because Girl Crazy was
given to me on a silver platter.... I mean that part made me overnight." And
then she went to say how she was very fortunate, since after Girl Crazy there
was "one thing right after the other. They kept going up up up up up up up
all the time. So there's somewhat of a Cinderella story, I think, Pete." (Martin decided to put harder edges on her modesty, rendering it tougher, vernacular, and more "Merman": "I made Cinderella look like a sob story.... The
way I figure it, Cindy's tale is a downbeat one compared to mine.")"

Unlike the Horatio Alger myths, Cinderella-a sort of distaff equivalentdoes not participate in her fate so much as await it. Yet Merman's background
as a stenographer casts her as a toiler with spunk and drive (recall the revisionist rumor of her writing her own recommendation), a woman who
doesn't passively await anything. At the same time, however, and despite
being a real workhorse, Ethel never had to struggle to break into the business.
And she never pretended that she did.

Whatever form it took, Ethel's (quasi) rags-to-riches story fueled the hopes
of everyday people across a variety of social and economic lines. Any office
girl or newspaper boy could make it, just as a boy born in a log cabin could
become president in this imaginary world of equal opportunity. The twentytwo-year-old woman was ideally cast, and the press played it up:

Every office and every community has its "Ethel Merman." You all know the
girl. She is around 20, maybe a stenographer, or department store clerk or
school teacher. She does her daytime job well and then at night is the life of
the party. But most of these "Ethel Mermans" are never heard of in Hollywood
or on Broadway. And why? Because they are unwilling to work and fight for
stardom.... It's really all a matter of courage. [That's] the kind of determination and never-say-die attitude which brought the real Ethel Merman to the
peak of success.22

Now, it's always best to take any story of "firsts"-first nights, first inventions, first discoveries-with a grain of salt, for they too are myths, myths of
beginnings and of origins. In the beginning there was Merman. And she was
good. And on the seventh day, she quit her day job. And on October 14,1930,
that woman emerged into the light. Yet as much as that evening put Merman
into musical theater history, it's important to stress that she was not an unknown quantity before then. As Edens later reminded his interviewer, "By
the time of Girl Crazy, Ethel Merman was well known around town. Out of town tryouts had established she was gonna be a knockout."13 Dorothy Fields
remembered, "I knew her when she tried out for International Revue, a show
that [Jimmy] McHugh and I did.... Mermsy ... came to the Mills Office
to try out. She was a stenographer and she had a great voice, but they wanted
a Gertrude Lawrence type for this revue.... [Producer Lew] Leslie had this
passionate crush on Gertrude Lawrence and was determined to get her....
it was our misfortune, because shortly after that, she did Girl Crazy."24

Girl Crazy: Impact and Aftermath

At the time of Girl Crazy, the Broadway musical was a form very much under
construction, still in its growing pains. The plot lines were mostly thin and
undeveloped, despite exceptions like Jerome Kern's monumental Showboat
in 1927. Plots and characters usually existed to move the proceedings from
one production number to another; there was not necessarily any meaningful relationship among them. Unlike Porgy and Bess (1935), the Gershwin
brothers' exquisite "folk opera" that melded serious story line to sophisticated
score, Girl Crazy was not terribly ambitious or novel. People enjoyed it, and
George's score was duly lauded, but as a musical, little of it was truly exceptional. In fact, it might not enjoy its rather exalted place in musical theater
history if it hadn't been for Ethel Merman.

In the 1920s, a show run of one hundred performances was enough to
make it a hit; in the early '30s, it took a run of about two hundred to see a
return of the initial investment. Girl Crazy ran for 272 performances, longer
than Porgy and Bess would (its innovations puzzled more than a few critics
and theatergoers). Girl Crazy's numbers were respectable indeed. It closed in
June 1931, partly because of the summer heat, which always caused the box
office to dip, especially since New York theaters were not yet air-conditioned.

Girl Crazy and especially its songs-"I Got Rhythm" in particular-have
enjoyed a good afterlife. Twice, in 1932 and 1943, Hollywood released adaptations; Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney starred in the 1943 version. A
third, heavily modified one came out in 1965-When the Boys Meet the Girls,
which featured Connie Francis and a most unusual blend of musical costars:
Louis Armstrong, Herman's Hermits, and Liberace.

For Merman, Girl Crazy exemplified the kind of musical that would characterize almost all of her work on Broadway: lighthearted stories filled with
catchy, show-stopping numbers. And the songs were what mattered. Before it
opened, critics may not have considered nightclub performer Ethel Merman as so completely different from other girl singers, but once Girl Crazy started,
reviewers were tripping over themselves trying to separate her from the rest of
the pack. Reviews would single out her "rock solid," physical sense of rhythm
and quickly dubbed her New York's "Rhythm Girl."25 Girl Crazy's fine score
showed the world how Merman could punch out strong rhythmic phrasing
of her material, marking the beat hard and keeping to it. She negotiated complex rhythmic patterns and high note-to-word ratios with ease ("I Got
Rhythm" has both) and held down strong melodic and rhythmic lines alone
and in duets. In many instances, it was Merman's delivery that has made "her"
hits as memorable as they've become.

"I Got Rhythm" is a case in point. As a 1930 reviewer wrote, Ethel's best
work was not in Libby Holman-styled "torch songs" but in "rhythm songs" like
Gershwin's tune.26 "Rhythm" enjoys as solid a place in the history of Broadway as it does in jazz and was recorded by artists such as Lionel Hampton, Art
Tatum, Louis Armstrong, Red Nichols (the trumpeter responsible for assembling the orchestra for Girl Crazy's premiere), Benny Goodman, the Dorsey
brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, Ethel Waters, and Lena Horne. Still, Merman's version remains quintessential; "Rhythm" belongs to her in a way that history
won't change. Twenty years after introducing it to the world, she took its refrain for her first memoirs, Who Could Ask forAnythingMore? owning the piece
as singers often do (Mary Martin's autobiography is My Heart Belongs ... ).

Other popular hits of the twentieth century have been permanently "Mer-
mafied" through her initial performance of them. Cole Porter's "Blow, Gabriel,
Blow," for instance-a piece that describes Merman's voice as crisply as she
performed it-has been covered by singers such as Mary Martin, Carol Burnett, Patti LuPone, Klea Blackhurst, and, improbably, Jonathan Pryce21-yet
in the public imagination, Merman's version towers over theirs.

While Girl Crazy was still on the boards, Ethel continued working at other
singing jobs during evenings after the show or on days off, exhibiting the
same energy she'd had when holding a full-time day )ob. She performed at
Manhattan's prestigious Casino in the Park several times, sometimes sharing
the bill with members from the Gershwin show. One night she played there
with the De Marcos dancing team; another time, with material arranged and
played by Edens.

Merman had great fondness for the enormously talented Roger Edens
(1905-70), whom she and other intimates called Buster. Merman described
their friendship as close as one between brother and sister, with a sweet and
special closeness that would last their entire lives. Writes son Bob Levitt,
"Mom would become the Queen of Broadway and Buster, Roger Edens, would become one of the most clever and kindly gentlemen in all of show
business; a sweet giant of unpretentious creativity, a large, soft-speaking man
from Texas-funny and sharp, honest and loyal and musical from head to
toe. Every Queen should have a Buster! Roger was such a good Buster he had
two Queens. Mom shared him with Judy Garland. Reflecting on that in her
autobiography, she says, `... he was as close to her as he was to me."'"'

In her autobiography, Ethel mentioned her shows with Edens at the upscale Central Park Casino. "We got as big a thrill peeking out at the audiences
as they did listening to us. Before we'd go on, Buster would say, `Eth, look
who's sitting there tonight.' And we'd be thrilled to see Mayor Jimmy
Walker, Marlene Dietrich, A. C. Blumenthal and Peggy Fears, Noel Coward.... It was like getting paid for doing something you would gladly pay
to do."29 Edens later recalled the same thing: "It was so much fun to see her
with all these people with savoir faire and she loved it. You know, there's a
great naivety in Ethel. Completely. She and I would stay in one of the back
rooms and look through to see who was out there tonight. "M For Bob Levitt,
in those moments, "Ethel and Buster were peeking out at their own future;
their soon to come parity with the Central Park Casino's elite clientele. But
knowing my mother as I do ... I feel comfortable in my guess that Ethel and
Buster were not just `under the influence' of being in thrilling company, they
were already high-on their own genius."31

Ethel's other off-board activities included a benefit on Sunday, December
20, 1930; earlier that year, on November 4, and later on March 31, 1931, she
teamed up again with Edens, this time playing with Leo Reisman's orchestra
along with the popular and widely liked piano player Eddy Duchin. Edens
accompanied Ethel again at the Palace with fellow composer and pianist
Johnny Green, playing on twin pianos (both Edens and Green would go on
to have stellar careers in Hollywood at MGM's Music Department). And
Ethel was making frequent live appearances at film theaters, opening for pictures at Manhattan's Paramount and in the Bronx at the Paradise. Later, in
Jersey City, she opened for Red Headed Woman, whose star, Jean Harlow,
would soon be announced as a big Merman fan.

New York's top nightclub performers at the time included Rudy Vallee, Guy
Lombardo, Morton Downey, and Cab Calloway. Ethel performed with them
all, appearing with Vallee and Downey in the spring while Girl Crazy was still
running. Her busy schedule was not restricted to clubs, and in March she and
Girl Crazy costar W. M. Kent were photographed "signing the petition to call
the new Hudson Bridge Washington Bridge."32 On April 23, 1931, she appeared
on the NBC radio show The Bond Bread Sunshine Program (the same official letter inviting her also requested her autograph), and, that same month, Ethel
was featured in newspaper ads for "Rhythm Clothes," specially dubbed that at
Bloomingdale's for its fifty-ninth anniversary.