Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (4 page)

Astoria Roots

On the northwestern tip of Queens lies Astoria, a town of affordable beginnings and home to many immigrant American families. It was first settled in
the seventeenth century, after Englishman William Haller exchanged seven
coats, fourteen kettles, a blanket, and beads for fifteen hundred acres. Before
long, generations of German, Czech, Irish, Italian, and Greek immigrants arrived and developed the area, and, in 1870, Astoria was incorporated into Long Island City, which was itself incorporated into New York City twentyeight years later. By the time Ethel Merman's story begins in the early twentieth century, the social fabric and business and cultural lives of Astoria were
thriving, its prosperity a direct result of the central and southern Europeans
who'd made their homes and livelihoods there: "Germans built the gold standard in pianos at Steinway; Italians made violins."1 Astoria was a vibrant, varied community, a microcosm for the ethnic diversity of immigrant New York
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It was here that Edward and Agnes Zimmermann made their home. The
couple were direct descendants of German and Scottish families that had
eventually settled in the New York area during the mid-nineteenth century.
Agnes Gardner Zimmermann had been born there in 1884 in a Scottish-Irish
household, where she was one of twelve children. Little is known about
Agnes's siblings except that one of her brothers, Willie, died as a youngster
from choking on a banana and that one of her sisters lived nearby her home
as an adult. Her father passed away before she gave birth to her one daughter,
and her mother, Mary Gardner (nee Hunter), died when little Ethel was eight.

Of small to medium build, the brown-haired Agnes was not a physically
imposing woman. At the same time, her stern, attractive face had a nearseverity to it. "Gram was lean and wiry," recalls grandson Bob Levitt Jr. "She
had a tightness to her, but she also had a simple kindness. She never got very
deep, but she was reliable."2 Not sophisticated, certainly not lighthearted or
playful, she was a proper woman, a tidy, efficient homemaker, with skills that
helped the Zimmermann household stay on course and prosper.

Edward Zimmermann, "Pop," was born October zo, 1880,3 four years before his wife. He was born at home, on 36th Street in Manhattan, to a family that was among the waves of German immigrants in the nineteenth century. Levitt recalls stories that his grandfather's family had fought alongside
Union soldiers in the Civil War when immigrant men were commonly asked
to prove their loyalty through military service. By the time of his generation,
Edward's family had been fairly Americanized, but his German roots held
fast. He loved German dishes-which Agnes couldn't prepare-and he
knew enough of the language to enjoy Die New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, the
city's main German-language paper. His early scrapbooks reveal a glimpse of
that heritage, as well as the active cultural life of German immigrants at the
time. On Christmas Day, 1931, Die New Yorker Staats-Zeitung ran a photo of
a young singing sensation in the city. Under the caption, Edward translated
word-for-word, "Ethel Merman is one of the extraordinary songstresses in
George White's `Scandals' appearing at the Apollo Theatre."4

Despite the Zimmermann name, Edward's family had no traceable Jewish roots-his famous daughter would spend her life insisting that the two
n's were proof enough of that-but it is possible that Jewishness was something that the family had left behind on the way to America. Edward's own
family was Lutheran. "As far as religions go," Ethel, who was raised as an
Episcopalian, would later say, "the Zimmermanns are all mixed up."5

Pop worked as a bookkeeper at James H. Dunham and Company, at 345
Broadway, in lower Manhattan, a wholesale dry goods firm that remained his
employer for life. Diligent and meticulous, Edward would eventually help
Ethel hone her money management skills and manage her accounts when she
entered show business; he was also a notary and later signed off on some of
her contracts with the zoth Century-Fox film studio. Her father may also
have helped her invest her earnings at the beginning of her career-Merman
was a careful, savvy stock market investor-but the exact nature and extent
of his involvement are unknown.

Ethel said, "My dad is a mensch. He's not as hep ... as my mother, [who]
springs quicker than my dad. But he's smart as the devil. Mom, though, is the
hard head, the Scottish shrewdness, the good manager type [who] wouldn't
let anybody cheat her [and had] a certain amount of steel in her soul."6

Edward met Agnes when she was employed as an office worker in the city.
In her free time she sang in a choir. "She was a good alto," recalls Ethel. They
met "on one of those hayrides boys and girls used to organize ... or maybe
it was a sleigh ride" and, according to Ethel, had a small wedding.? After they
married, Agnes quit her job to become a full-time homemaker in Astoria.

Edward and Agnes produced one child, Ethel Agnes Zimmermann. On
January 16, the heavily pregnant twenty-four-year-old Agnes was attending
a friend's wedding in the neighborhood when the labor pains began. She
rushed to her mother's house, where she made her home with Edward, and
there gave birth to their daughter. On April i9, they baptized little Ethel
Agnes Zimmermann in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer,
on nearby Crescent Street.

And so Ethel Merman was born on January i6-in 19o6, 19o8, 1910, 1911,
and 1912. All have been given as her actual birth year by official newspaper
reports, biographies, theater archives, and marriage, death, and birth certificates of Ethel and her family. When celebrity hit, Ethel hardly discouraged
the confusion, aiming at the later years whenever pressed for specifics.

Curiously, the World of Merman has not cared that much about setting the
record straight. When she died in 1984, no less a source than the New York
Times offered two different years, and today, the Museum of the City of New York, which houses her biggest archive collection-her scrapbooks-contains
three conflicting years in its records. In her second, final autobiography, written at age seventy, Merman offers a clever dodge: "I was born in my parents'
bedroom on January 16. The WorldAlmanac says it was 1909. I say it was 1912.
But what difference does it make as long as I feel thirty-three?"8

Given how frequently celebrities pare down their age, perhaps the real
question is: why did Ethel shave off only four years-why not ten? The answer seems simple. With ten years missing, several key Merman myths
would be pulled off course. She would have been but twelve when she made
her Broadway debut, fourteen when playing the world-weary Wanda Brill.
She would have been nothing but a twinkle in her daddy's eye when as a
young girl she sang to troops stationed on Long Island before they were
shipped out for combat in World War I. Her vanity didn't make Ethel care
that much about her age, and she seemed to know instinctively the importance of some of these stories. Why should she scuttle such colorful milestones, especially since they were an authentic part of her?

By the early to mid 193os, after her success was established, Merman and
the New York press seemed to have mutually settled on 1911 or 1912 as the official year of her birth. Before then, sources are fuzzier and more flexible, with
the notable exception of the New York City municipal records. There, we
learn that the Broadway icon who began her life as Ethel Agnes Zimmermann came into the world on January 16, 19o8.

The birth records of early New York provide a fascinating portal into a truly
lost past. Family physicians who brought babies into the world had to complete the birth forms that were deposited in the municipal files. Some physicians had the new fathers fill out certain portions, regardless of their ability to
understand written English. The questions and categories are straightforward
but revealing of the times: fathers' occupations are listed; no space is provided
for the mothers'. Another line requests the race of the infant only if the child
is "not white." (Here some of the fathers entered "German.")

In both of her autobiographies, Merman says that she was born-"it was
1912!" one can almost hear her boom-at 359 Fourth Avenue, Astoria. Several sources indicate a residence on 33rd Street; the official municipal record
gives 265 Fourth Avenue, Long Island City. Whatever the precise address
(more on this below), the house itself was an unexceptional three-story,
wood-framed duplex where Ethel's maternal grandmother had made her
home. The ground floor was rented out, and the second floor was home to
some of Ethel's relatives on her mother's side: Aunt Mary and Uncle Harry Pickett and a cousin on her mother's side, Claude Pickett. Ethel and her parents occupied the top floor. Two doors down and around the corner, near a small
apple orchard, was the family of Margaret Sharkey, Merman's maternal aunt.

Edward's side of the family, by contrast, was less present in the young family's life. His mother had died when he was eight, and his father had also
passed away before Ethel was born. "I was never as close to that side of the
family as to the Gardners," Ethel told her biographer."9 Overall, though, the
young household kept to itself, and the ties with even Agnes's relations didn't
really thrive once the Zimmermanns moved into Manhattan after Ethel's career took off. Bob Levitt Jr., for instance, recalls having only minimal contact with his mother's cousins while growing up, and close friend Tony Cointreau remembers an awkward cocktail party that Ethel threw after she retired
from the stage. Sometime in the early r98os, Ethel invited a cousin over to
her apartment for the first time. "No one had anything in common," Cointreau recalls. Even their drinking habits were different; the family kept requesting elaborate cocktails, and a frustrated Ethel had to tell them to keep
the requests simple.

Ethel cherished Pop's largely gentle temperament. Of her parents, he was
the sweeter, easygoing type."10 Yet even if he was an "angel," as Ethel later
told her son, the Zimmermann household was "STRICT! I couldn't get away
with anything, especially with Pop." And the man could hold a grudge. Levitt
recalls that Pop and his brother had had a rift-"about what, Mom never
knew. But it was absolutely permanent, and they never spoke to each other.
That's what Mom grew up with."11 Ethel inherited this obstinate side, and
Levitt believes this probably contributed to his mother's ability to cut people
permanently out of her life ("Some things in life aren't even worth regretting," she would say),12 especially when she felt taken advantage of. At the
same time, Ethel's upbringing ingrained in her a strong sense of sentimentality, the flip side of grudges-clinging to the past for its fond memories
rather than focusing on its fallouts.

Ethel was an attractive young girl. She had very dark wavy hair that she
usually wore long. Her complexion was slightly dark, and her round, deep
brown eyes animated her face. Looking back, Merman described herself as
"pudgy" to her biographer, saying, "My stomach stuck out a little."13 Photographs suggest otherwise, showing an attractive girl, often adorned in the
decorative bow typically worn by young girls in family portraiture of the
time. "I had sort of long hair and my Mother used to roll my hair up in curls
around the bottom and ... put a big bow across here and my hair was loose
and soft.... Never wore it braided, always soft, hanging." Agnes didn't sew,
so she and Ethel would go into the city for her dresses and buy nice shoes at Coward's. ("My mother would say `never wear cheap shoes,' and I have never
had trouble with my feet.")14 One of her aunts made skirts for Ethelpleated, plaid, worn with pullover sweaters or blouses. She did not like hats,
and she did not wear them. And she did not like frilly, girly outfits or accessories, a fact that her first biographer changed to keep her image in line with
the heavily accessorized women Merman depicted onstage.

Sources vary on whether Merman grew up in her birth home or if the family moved when she was a girl. Family caregivers and Merman researchers, such
as Al F. Koenig Jr., maintain that the Zimmermanns stayed put until relocating to Manhattan in 1931 (other reports say 1933), after Ethel's career was established, and Merman contributes to the confusion on the point. In her first
autobiography, she gives 29031st Avenue as the place where she grew up; in her
second, 31st Avenue. Her biographer Bob Thomas claimed it was 359 Fourth
Avenue. Saved mail to the family postmarked in November 1931 was received
at both 2908 31st Avenue and 3056 3oth Street.15 Like the birth address, the
record will never be set entirely straight, if for no other reason than at the time
the U.S. Postal Service and addresses in general were more relaxed and less regimented than they are now. Populations were smaller, and community members were more aware of their neighbors than many are today. Mail could reach
families in small towns with just a name and a town on the envelope; inscriptions could approximate a family's location with cross streets and still arrive.
Changes to Astoria's street plans have also confounded the record, with buildings, addresses, and street names of the period rerouted or gone altogether. As
early as 195o, Ethel went "home" to search for her childhood house and
couldn't find it. "It was terrible to see. It's all built up," she said. i6 In a very real
sense, the precise locations of Merman's childhood years are lost to history.

Ethel's bond with her parents was founded on mutual devotion and a strong
sense of duty and affection, even if, as her son attests, it was not the most
emotionally resonant of relationships. All her life, he recalls, "they would talk
every day my Mom was in town, but they spoke quite superficially. That was
all they needed."17 It might not have been the deepest of relationships, but
the loyalty and devotion were there in a way that few people experience. That
stability may have provided the groundwork for Ethel's longing for similar
levels of loyalty in her own marriages and family life, a dream that would
prove more elusive.