Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (38 page)

Annie's run was so long and robust that critics joked that Ethel would be
doing the role well into old age, and she even quipped, "One of these days,
I'm going to do the whole show in an iron lung."62 Little did everyone know
that she would star in its revival two decades later. The last performance of
the original Annie Get Your Gun was on February 19, 1949, after two years,
and nine months, and 1,147 performances. Ethel was proud but exhausted.

Annie played even longer (four years) at the London Coliseum with Dolores Gray. In 1950, Annie du far-west opened in France, with chanteuse Lily
Fayol in a production that featured live elephants and that transformed
Tamiris's Native American choreography into an African-American boogiewoogie. Over the years, dozens of larger-than-life figures have depicted
Annie Oakley abroad, on Broadway, and in regional theaters, including Mary
Martin, Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Bernadette Peters, and Reba McIntyre
(who recalled singing "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" as a child).
Even with the considerable talents of these actors, Ethel Merman remains the
gold standard.

Some maintain that had Kern lived, Mary Martin would have been the
first Annie Oakley.61 Martin did end up being the first Annie Oakley to go
on tour, and her performance gave a soft, adolescent vitality to the tomboy
character. Later, Martin would describe the role as "the real me," but she consciously decided never to perform it on Broadway. "I would never do Annie
in New York," she said in her memoirs. "That is the turf of my good friend
Ethel Merman."64 When casting preparations for the tour were under way,
Martin had just finished her run in Lute Song and was two years away from
the first of her own shows with Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific (the
other would be The Sound ofMusic). At first, the pair found Martin too demure to play the sharpshooter, but the Texas-born star was quite intent on
getting the part-touring was her and husband Richard Halliday's idea, she
claimed in her autobiography-and she wowed them. Ethel gave her blessing by applauding enthusiastically during Mary's last run-through in New
York in 1947. The first stop gave the star a fond homecoming, in Texas.

Annie's Music

Berlin's music for the show did little to acknowledge changes in contemporary American popular music. He made no attempt to update or be hip as he did with Alexander's Ragtime Band, which delivered 191oS "ragtime with a
swing." When someone complained to him that the score ofAnnie Get Your
Gun was old-fashioned, he famously responded, "Yes, nothing but good oldfashioned hits."65

Innovative or not, he produced a wonderful, rousing score, with tunes that
would be cemented to Merman's image even more firmly than Annie's traits
were: "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "Anything You Can Do," "You Can't
Get a Man with a Gun," and "There's No Business Like Show Business," a
piece as indelibly associated with Merman as with the musical theater she
embodies.

Berlin composed the songs within a relatively short range, just over an octave, as was his style, and with a tight tessitura. Ethel used the few leaps Berlin
gave to great effect. Generally his notes are rather short, giving Merman little
time to sustain them, as she'd done with "I Got Rhythm." Since Annie required her to sing in nine of its fourteen numbers, the pieces could not be
too taxing, and Berlin's simple song structures worked well. Unlike other
composers, such as Cole Porter, who liked to end songs for Merman with A
natural, Berlin made no special accommodations for her voice; most of the
score's "Merman effects" were produced by Merman. For instance, in "Doin'
What Comes Natur'lly," her voice slid down from one note to the next, producing that slight hiccup when landing on words like doin . The effect is suggestive of a cowboy's yodel, appropriate to the Wild West setting of the show.
Yet neither the slide nor the yodel was written into the score.

In her rendering of "Natur'lly" and "Can't Get a Man," Ethel's singing
voice exhibited almost no vibrato; its features overall were those of a young
woman, as Annie was at this point before entering the more "adult" world of
Frank Butler and Buffalo Bill. Her delivery remained youthful in "I'm an Indian Too," with little vibrato and no lingering on its short notes. That Ethel's
vocalization while singing as an "Indian" suggested childlike features presents
an unfortunate racial cliche, even if at the time it was intended as a relatively
unself-conscious gag. The dialect that Merman used periodically (Su-ewww
for Sioux) further enhanced her voice's childlike quality, and Berlin composed "Indian" in a slightly higher range than the others, making her work
in a more youthful register.

The showiest song is "Anything You Can Do," although its effects are produced not through a dazzling melody but through lyrics. Its excitement is
bolstered by the fact that it's performed as a competitive duet, with Frank and
Annie challenging each other on various levels and terms. The lyrics dart
from traits appropriate to their characters in the show (shooting sparrows with bows and arrows) to those tied to their images as performers, particularly Merman's: any note you can sing I can sing higher/sweeter-and, humorously, softer.

One of the show's ballads, "They Say It's Wonderful," is not unlike the
male-female paired songs gaining ground in Rodgers and Hammerstein
shows. Oklahoma!'s "People Will Say We're in Love" and Carousel's "If I
Loved You" hypothetically articulate the attraction between the couple in the
early phases of their relationship. As implausible as they are-if one expects
credibility in musicals-such paired songs are a brilliant device to convey a
budding romance to the audience without slowing the story down with exposition. With Annie's "They Say It's Wonderful," Ethel softened her delivery, swooping up to emphasize the first beat of wonderful, without the hiccups and grace notes she used in the more comedic songs.

On its own, the melody of "There's No Business" is not particularly innovative either: the verse is tightly composed, the range not wide. But by
using the bright, twinkling key of C major, Berlin created a great sense of uplift, and during the bridge, the upward-step motion of the scale ("everything
about it is appealing / everything the traffic will allow") generates a certain
momentum and energy, rather than simply showing off. (It doesn't go too far
into showier high ranges.) The piece's subtle but forceful syncopation also enlivens, and Merman came down hard on the notes to stress them as if to bring
them all the more to life.

Merman's instinctive sense of getting the most out of every syllable is easily noted in Annie's soundtrack recording. In "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly,"
she pauses, ever so lightly, on the word sex to give it a little extra punch. She
flats notes, especially in the early comiclike "You Can't Get a Man with a
Gun." And her many grace notes, as one writer put it, go "off like bombs."66

Just as Annie linked Ethel Merman's persona with Annie Oakley's, it
would forever join her name with Berlin's, whose career it helped revitalize.
(That same year, Hollywood released another movie of his, Blue Skies.) Berlin
shrewdly told Broadway interviewers that he preferred writing for theater to
the movies, and how could he not, with Annie's runaway success? He made
close to 1.5 million dollars during the run of the show, earning royalties for
sheet music sales, the sale of film rights, and the release of an original cast
recording.

By the time ofAnnie, original cast recordings were starting to become common
practice-another byproduct of the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution. Decca's Jack Kapp explained that before that time, the prevailing wisdom had
been that the general public would be interested in only hits from shows, not
in every song, so the practice of releasing entire recordings by their original
performers-even with Oklahoma! developed unevenly. Kapp himself had
started it earlier, with the July 1942 release of Berlin's This Is the Army, 67 and it
proved an immediate success and source of revenue; Rodgers and Hammerstein
would further the trend, which, within the decade, would be the norm.

Competition among record labels to secure contracts could be cutthroat,
and releases weren't always granted for stars with existing contracts with other
labels. Still, the original cast recording was a win-win situation, enabling fans
to experience or reexperience the shows and generating extra revenue for producers, songwriters, and recording labels. And then there was the exposure
that the recordings gave shows-and stars like Merman-well beyond
Broadway. Even if Ethel Merman didn't tour as Annie, she could now be
heard all across the States.

Berlin had made a deal with Decca to release the original cast recording
for Annie before the show even started. Once it was released, the label promoted it robustly; Merman's scrapbooks are filled with ads and announcements. One writer speculates how "tragic" it would have been had Decca not
secured her in the cast album.68 But as one historian writes, "The truth was,
Ethel had been with the label since Panama Hattie (for which she recorded
four songs) and stayed with them through the mid-195os."69

Life Offstage

Merman would later write that this period in the mid- and late 1940s was
among the happiest of her life. She was a hit on Broadway and was enjoying
her work. But more than that, her family life was stable, which gave her
tremendous joy. Little Ethel and Bobby were like any kids, and, in some
ways, Big Ethel and Big Bob were like any parents: proud and enjoying the
stories they could tell about their children. Once a reporter coming out of a
matinee performance at the Imperial noted a "tiny figure" who came out onto
the dimly lit stage. "In a flat, lisping, one note baby-voice," this child sang
"the chorus of `They Say It's Wonderful' while the audience of two usherettes
and a man with a broom listen[ed] tenderly and appreciatively."70 Little Ethel
had gotten out of her mom's dressing room.

By the time she was three, Little Bit had other reactions to her mother's
work. When she was watching Annie with her father, the first thing she witnessed was her mom killing a bird; the girl could not be convinced it
wasn't real, becoming so upset that Levitt had to remove her from the theater. Her mother passed the story along to reporters, who printed it endlessly.
Other Little Bit tales appeared: "When her mother's vivacity gets too much
for her, as it sometimes does, she has been known to say, `Let's get out of this.
It's too noisy with her in here.' "71

When Ethel Jr. was three, Bobby was ten months old. Interviewers called
him "a solemn child, reticent about showing strangers his eight teeth."72 The
time ofAnnie Get Your Gun evokes other memories for him; one comes from
watching his mom from the wings, being held by someone he cannot remember. He remembers seeing his mom crying at the end of act I and Sitting Bull/Harry Bellaver comforting her. "To me, Sitting Bull took care of
Mom. He sat next to her on a bench and told her that it was going to be OK
when she cried."73

Merman kept up her typical busy pace off the boards. In June, soon after
the show opened, she and others celebrated Jimmy Durante's thirtieth anniversary with Broadway. "It was just like old times, they said-this great
night in tribute to the beloved Wizard of Schnoz, Jimmy Durante-and
some folks around me, like Billy Rose and Ethel Merman, got real sentimental and almost weepy when Eddie Jackson, now a little grayer and heavier, joined Jimmy in singin' a song and then out trotted the aging Lou Clayton to plunge into a quick-step jig."74 Merman also maintained her busy
benefit schedule: for heart disease; for the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund
(May 27, 1948); and for nurses, at Madison Square Garden ("Stars Shine
Bright for Women in White," May zo,1947). This last event was huge, with
Ethel joining the Andrews Sisters, Bill Robinson, Margaret O'Brien, Carmen
Miranda, Bert Lahr, Victor Moore, Milton Berle, Joseph Cotton, Duke
Ellington, and others to entertain thousands of visitors.

Ethel proved a fantastic and popular radio guest and continued making
numerous appearances, guesting several times on Bing Crosby's popular
show. But she proved unable to carry a show on her own. When The Ethel
Merman Show aired on radio on July 31, 1949, after Annie had closed, NBC
almost pulled it at the last minute, and it was reviewed poorly. "Normally,"
wrote John Crosby, "Ethel Merman has more personality than seems quite
fair, but it is seriously diminished by radio."75 Variety complained that the
program only "ostensibly" reflected her career (e.g., she sang "Some Enchanted Evening," the hit from South Pacific, which had just opened in April)
and that it was, moreover, just not enough of a show for her to carry. Much
has been said about Merman's lackluster career off the boards, especially in film and television, where there's a consensus that she was "too big" for the
screen. Still, it's interesting that on radio, where one would think she'd excel
because of her voice, she did best in supporting roles and guest appearances.

Although it was hard for Merman to cede center stage, when she had toin radio, TV, and movies-she was a good sport about it. These venues were
not only essential to her career but also less grueling than a long Broadway
run. Unfortunately, her brief experience with The Ethel Merman Show on
radio would become a harbinger for her other work in film and TV. Always
the guest star, never the star.