Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (33 page)

Ethel was doing other appearances at the Canteen; one included an appearance on January iz, 1945, with her good friend Bill Gaxton, which was
broadcast on radio. Her other war efforts continued apace. On Independence
Day 1945 she joined Marlene Dietrich, Red Skelton, Paul Whiteman, and
countless others at the Washington Monument in front of a quarter of a million people, selling over twenty thousand war bonds. Fox, Ethel's old studio
employer, purchased $1.z5 million worth alone.26

Ethel sang for FDR at the July 1944 Democratic Convention and again in
October at the Madison Square Garden Party Rally. She saved ads for these
"Liberal Party Rallies," at which she performed Yip Harburg's "Don't Look
Now Mr. Dewey, but Your Record Is Showing!" and was joined by other performers such as Frank Sinatra, Victor Borge, and Bill Robinson. Like many
New Yorkers, she was thrilled when Roosevelt won and saved a telegram
thanking her for her help and hoping for "four more years of progressive government under FDR."27

In only five months, President Roosevelt would be dead. Ethel and
Dorothy Kilgallen were joking together in a radio studio prior to doing Kilgallen's show in April when someone rushed in to tell them the news. Kilgallen went on the air: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Dorothy Kilgallen. Because we have just heard the news of President Roosevelt's death, Ethel
Merman and I will ask you to excuse us from the program which we had prepared for this time. Our hearts are too full to speak." When the two left the
building, there was an eerie silence. The papers hadn't hit the streets, Kilgallen said, but "everyone seemed to know."28

That summer, things had changed on another front: Ethel and Bob Levitt
reconciled. The couple was intent on making their life together with Ethel
Jr. a success, and Big Ethel, unlike Levitt, was not one to be down and out
very long. "Ethel Merman has had an unbroken stage success, with [only]
temporary cardiac difficulties," wrote Ed Sullivan in a piece on female
celebrities whose lives were stalked by tragedy.29 Sullivan was genuinely
pleased that Levitt had moved back to the 25 Central Park West compound,
where Ethel promised her young family that she would take a break from the
boards.

Life at Home

Soon, Ethel Merman Levitt was pregnant again. She told friends that she
loved expecting, loved wearing a big black cape and waddling down to the
corner drugstore for a milkshake. For his part, too, Levitt told interviewers
that he adored Ethel when she was pregnant. Their second child, a son, Robert Daniels Levitt Jr., was born at Manhattan's Doctors' Hospital on August
11, 1945. Like Little Ethel, the baby was delivered by C-section, but Bobby's
birth was more traumatic, gravely complicated by his RH negativity and need
for a transfusion the moment he was taken from her. It was a life-and-death
situation, and, to save the newborn, the obstetrician, who had delivered Little
Ethel, used his own blood while waiting for a transfusion to arrive. The act
saved the baby's life.

Bob Jr. considers the names he and his sister received as typical of the
times, even though women didn't typically pass their names on to daughters.
In his opinion, he said, it was a way for his parents to make "mini-me's"
(evoking the Austin Powers character), miniature versions of themselves, just
like "Little Bit." Levitt believes that their names allowed his parents to engage the myth of a harmonious, close-knit family, a myth that they, like many
people, would find difficult to live up to. For the kids, Levitt was never "Dad";
he was "Big Bob" or "Big." "As I was often called `Baby Bob' in a loving way, our father was always called `Big' or `Big Bob,' in a loving way. I almost never
say the word big without evoking a wisp of my father's memory," Levitt Jr.
writes today.30

Merman openly shared her views on child rearing with the press. Aware
that these aspects of a female celebrity's life fascinate the public, she was also
able in this way to control the information that went out. Big Ethel and Bob
were committed to shielding Little Ethel and Bobby from the scrutiny of
public life. Said Levitt, "We agreed that certain things should be done with
respect to the children.... We used to have very strict policies about not letting the kids in any way participate in her career.... she wouldn't use them
to pose for pictures or any crap like that.... it was not fair to the children
to handicap them with that kind of notoriety, because they had to go to
school with a bunch of kids who will not take kindly to their identification
with a star. I think people who do that kind of thing ... are doing the kids
an injustice."31

Another reason that Ethel and Bob carefully monitored press reports on
their family was Ethel's almost hard-wired concern for propriety, avoiding
scandal, and doing things right. Certain things were expected of you as a wife
and mother, and Ethel intended to adhere to those expectations. Moreover,
in her case, the press might have been a little extra curious because her persona as Ethel Merman was not your standard-issue mom material: there were
the near asexuality of her roles, her childlike affinity with animals and children, and the mothering given her by children in Hattie. Her voice, her personality, her bravura and self-confidence were hardly the stuff of your typical selfless, nurturing mom. Predictably, all sorts of "Mother Ethel" stories
circulated: Ethel didn't care if her kids didn't follow her footsteps into show
business (true), or she prohibited cursing in front of the kids (her son recalls
only a few "Goddammits").32 A very widely told Ethel legend still circulating in one variation or another is the following: Mama Ethel (in later versions, Grandma Ethel) is strolling in Central Park with a young child. The
girl is screaming and clearly has been for some time. "Do you want to go do
this?" asks Merman to no avail. "Do you want to do that?" More tears. "Well,
do you want to do this?" Nothing. "Goddammit, I give up. What the [expletive] do you want to do?" Recounted from Dorothy Fields to Broadway
divas and fans who never even met her, the rumor shows no sign of abating.
Close friends and Merman's son find the tale completely implausible, but the
story has taken on a life of its own, enabling Merman fans and detractors
alike to reconcile the "real" Ethel Merman with the mother they imagined
her to be, a trend that would peak when she depicted Rose in Gypsy.

Ethel's scrapbook entries are less frequent during this period, hardly surprising given her new family responsibilities; moreover, she had her personal
home scrapbooks to fill. Still, the "career scrapbooks" reflect other shifts in
Merman's life. For instance, although plenty of correspondence still came
from "regular folks" and individual fans at this point, more came from fellow entertainers. Since Ethel was now circulating with them, this can only
be expected, and it's hard to imagine anyone, no matter how famous, not
eager to save fan mail from Katharine Hepburn, Joe Weber, Lew Fields (father of Dorothy), and former costar Tyrone Power (who penciled a note, "My
dear Miss Merman-is it your general practice to come to this distinguished
establishment without dressing? Ifyou know what I mean. Alexander"-God
only knows what happened).-13 That Ethel saved every artifact is slightly more
surprising. Each memento was pasted into the bulging scrapbooks, testimony
to the pleasure that father and daughter both shared in Ethel's success and
her place in celebrity culture. Ethel helped by annotating clippings, circling
reports or identifying photos or seating arrangements ("I met him that
night!" "He is the Attorney General," etc.).

The young family was back at a5 Central Park West. Little Ethel, Bobby, and
their governess lived at one end of the long hall on the twenty-first story, the
second of their two floors. At the other end of the heavily carpeted hall were
Ethel and Big Bob's bedroom and his office. When she was in a show, Ethel
came home on nonmatinee days from 4:30 to 5:3o to see the young kids. But
by and large, parents and children occupied separate worlds and separate
spaces. Bobby and Ethel took their meals with their governess, except for the
family meal that was taken together on Wednesdays, her day off. Then Gram,
who still lived in the building with Pop Pop, would take the grandchildren
to the five-and-dime. Bob has fond memories of her giving him tea and graham crackers out of a tin and her resting in bed with him, giving a physical
contact he loved. "Although I was very young," he says, "I remember my
mom at the time mostly as a'presence.' "34

Help included Myron the maid, who delivered the tray of food to Mr. and
Mrs. Levitt's bedroom ("She accidentally blew herself up in the stove," recalls
Bob Jr.) and Margaret the cook.35 Once Bobby was born, Ethel hired help
for the two children, a beloved governess named Abba, who was replaced by
a Miss Kopeman, whom Bob calls " `Koppi the Fierce and Terrible,' our childabuser governess."36 Miss Kopeman would force the kids to recite the Lord's
Prayer every night, in German, and beat them for the small misdemeanors that children routinely commit. Should they rest their elbows on the dinner
table, for instance, Koppi grabbed their arms and smashed their elbows down
hard onto the tabletop. They got the message.

Bobby and his sister formed the Gorilla Club, whose two other members
were Dickie and Jill, children of Dorothy Kilgallen and musical comedy performer Richard Kollmer. Dickie and Jill also had a governess, Miss Muller,
who was a friend of Koppi's. The chief aim of Gorilla Club members? To stay
out of trouble and keep out of the way of grown-ups supervising them.

Young Bobby seemed especially prone to misadventure. His big sister
would taunt him, calling the pudgy boy "Fatso" and tripping him as he was
learning to walk. Bobby found himself repeatedly hauled off to the bathroom
at the end of the hall, where Koppi would inflict her harsh discipline, spanking him with a hard hairbrush or washing his mouth out with soap. Merman,
having no idea that this sort of thing was going on, kept Miss Kopeman in
her employ until the mid 1950s. It took some time for Bob to come to terms
with that experience with Koppi: "I'm sure my mother had no idea at the
time, but we were able to talk about it later."37

If Merman was a "presence" to young Bob, it was a most welcome one.
He has special memories of her saying good night before leaving to do her
shows. Ethel would come into his room, and they sang a simple rhyming
game, "Play Ball," back and forth together: "Play ball, play ball / Everybody
likes to play ball / Sometimes you catch it / Sometimes you don't / When you
miss/ Remember this/ Let the ball roll." It became a cherished ritual to the
young boy, who deliberately altered words as they went along. "My changing the word miss in the rhyme `when you miss, remember this' to the word
don't was the funny, lightly desperate way I had of stopping the song with
that wrong un-rhyming word so that we'd have to start over again, so that
Mom would stay longer. So that she wouldn't leave for the theatre."38

He remembers little about his parents' marriage; it dissolved in 1951, when
he was only six. He and Little Ethel kept pretty much to themselves, busy
with their animal clubs and societies and trying to avoid Koppi's wrath. Of
his parents, Levitt recalls that his dad would sometimes refer to his mom as
"the Fearless Leader." From the early years, he remembers a lot of fighting
and raised voices. After the marriage dissolved, his father told Pete Martin a
bit about their differences:

When I write "Life with Merman," my evaluation of her is that she is a very
possessive woman and she has many possessions ... the kind of woman that
she must fancy herself in her fantasies, a woman who has got a distinguished career, has handsome children, and a presentable husband, has a good looking automobile, good looking clothes, good church, and jewelry-and I don't
think she differentiates much among them. When a car gets scratched she
races to have it polished up; when the kids get sick, she calls in the best doctors to have them made well. When her husband breaks his leg, I'm sure she
mourns suitably and behaves in all respects as a dutiful wife should. What goes
on inside of the automobile, what goes on in the minds of the kids, and what
goes on in the mind of her husband or his feelings is something that she just
doesn't comprehend.... Ethel, she's crazy about the kids, but she's crazy because they're her children.39

Levitt's postdivorce cynicism is understandable. At the time of these remarks,
he was fighting a losing battle with depression and alcohol. However sardonic
or bitter, the remarks reveal an interesting insight, namely, that Ethel understood her life as wife and mother as things to get right, almost like a rolenot in the sense of a pretense or a falsehood, but as an out-of-reach image or
goal. His assertion that his ex-wife's understanding was superficial or that she
was a "lousy mother" remains harsh,40 and their son assesses her abilities in
much more forgiving terms today. In Bob Jr.'s view, the "intensity of her
other demands as `Ethel Merman' distracted her from attending to her children. She wasn't able to see it." That did not make her "a monster mother,"
he says, "quite the opposite."41