Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (47 page)

During the early part of the year, Ethel resumed her romance with Sherman Billingsley, though they remained extremely discreet. One telegram, for
instance, invites her to a Stork Club event "on behalf of Walter [Annenberg]," another of Ethel's escorts.4 Like Cushing, Billingsley showed his appreciation by throwing pricey parties at his Stork Club for Ethel and her
friends in show business, such as Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford. (Crawford was Ethel's favorite actress when she was a young stenographer; now
Crawford was sending Ethel fan letters joking about their "mutual admiration society.") During Crawford's party, Ethel went to the stage, where she
mouthed the words to "You're Just in Love." Behind her was impersonatorcomic Mary Healy, who, along with husband Peter Lind Hayes, was making the rounds of New York clubs and parties, sending up the Merman-Nype
duo to peals of laughter in a skit called "Call Me Merman, Starring Ethel
Madam."5 (Berlin's song was so popular at the time that other singers, such
as Pearl Bailey, were featuring it in their nightclub acts as well.)

Ethel remained the apple of New York's eye. In the spring of 1951, tickets
for Call Me Madam were booking six months to a year in advance; in May,
a journalist reminded readers that when Annie Get Your Gun opened in 1946,
"we declared May 16 Merman Day, in perpetuity"6 and that it was high time
to renew the proposal. Musicals were as popular with critics as they were with
audiences; ticket sales for Guys and Dolls, The King and I, A Tree Grows in
Brooklyn, and South Pacific were as brisk as Madam's. Ethel was acquiring
new fans every day; a young comic named Jerry Lewis was sending telegrams
on her birthday or whenever he and his wife took in her show; Judy Garland,
Ethel's favorite young singer, was a frequent companion and coperformer at
events around town. (It was Garland who reopened the famous Palace Theatre in December 1951 for the first live show there in eighteen years.) Noncelebrity fans continued to stack up, and Merman saved poignant messages
from many of them-from parents whose ill children she had cheered up and
from a man who'd appreciated a visit she'd made to a military hospital where
he was recovering from war wounds. For many fans, Ethel Merman had
evolved from being a personality that ordinary young girls could emulate into
a star who came down to visit from on high.

In July 1951, when Russell Nype took temporary leave from Madam to pursue work in Hollywood, receipts took a small plunge. But the bigger news that
month was when Merman announced a pending deal with zoth Century-Fox for her to star in the filmed version of Call Me Madam, reprising for the first
time in Hollywood her lead role on the boards.? Even better, it would actually come to pass.

In just a couple of months, though, something happened that would
change her life even more than filming CallMeMadam. On October 20,1951,
producer Leland Hayward threw a lavish dinner party at L'Aiglon to celebrate
the one-year anniversary of Madam, which had now grossed over $2.7 million.
One of the guests was Robert Foreman Six, a charismatic Denver business executive whom Hayward had met while serving in the army in World War II.
Six would become Ethel Merman's third husband, the man who inspired her
to leave the Broadway stage and New York for over five years.

Robert Six

Large-framed and tall, Six cut an imposing figure. His face was long and rugged,
almost horselike. Just a year younger than Ethel, Six had made aviation history
by single-handedly presiding over Continental Airways, a company he'd
founded in 1937, a time when only i percent of the nation's population had ever
taken a commercial flight.' Along the way, Six repeatedly defied rules of the
trade with an almost uncanny ability to suss out future trends, anticipating
three-class service, the importance of an all-jet fleet, decent food, "no-frills
flights," and the financial potential of Asian routes. He surrounded himself
with knowledgeable advisers, demanding and receiving loyalty in abundance.
And by running his comparatively small company efficiently, he defied the
odds and held a profit against larger airlines, such as TWA, Pan Am, and
United, companies with much larger budgets, more planes, and more lucrative
routes. (Throughout the'5os, Continental operated with just four jets. Six kept
them in the air almost continuously, maintaining them at night rather than
wasting daytime hours, to maximize profit.) Entirely driven about his work, Six
was notoriously hands-on, famous for surprise visits on flights, which would
terrify crew members if he found the smallest detail not to his liking. Once, a
martini served with both a lemon slice and an olive provoked an outburst: passengers should choose one or the other, not be offered both-too expensive.

Although the scrapbooks contain scores of photos of Merman and Six together during the early and mid-'50s, one taken about fifteen years later
shows the man at his best. He is in his sixties, surveying his ranch with guest
John Wayne, cowboy hats and all, the two resembling each other like uncanny mirror images.

Indeed, Bob Six was the iconic westerner. An adept barbecuer and an avid
fisherman and hunter, he stocked his home and office with gun collections
and formed the "Six Guns" fast-drawing club with some close colleagues
from work. The Six Guns actually participated in regional competitions, and
once Six even took part in a duel, to the understandable anxiety of his mates.
The archetypal self-made man, Six had dropped out of high school and risen
to the top through hard work, shrewd skills, and sheer moxie. In a way, Six
was the business world's male counterpart to what the public took Ethel Merman to be: brash, talented, supremely self-confident, and obsessive about his
work. Unlike Ethel, though, Six was gruff, moody, and volatile, and colleagues attested that his language was as foul as his temper, which could take
dark, violent turns. He was a difficult man to stand up to, impossible to intimidate.

If there ever was a man's man, Six was it. He could be awkward around
women-again, think John Wayne-but had a magnetic personality that for
some women could be very seductive. And while he was too distracted by
work to be reckless in that regard, by the time he met Ethel, Six had been
around the block. He'd been married once, to Pfizer pharmaceutical heiress
Henriette Erhart Ruggles, for some ten years. Evidently, his preoccupation
with work was more than the marriage, or Henriette, could bear. Six had broken from his parents early on, leaving them while still in his teens, and when
they died, he did not attend their funerals. Six knew he was hardly predisposed to being a family man and never claimed to be great around kids. He
never became a father himself, although Henriette had two children from a
prior marriage; they met an awful fate, perishing in a house fire that happened one evening. (Miraculously, the children's nursemaid got out alive.)
The event traumatized the young Mrs. Six, and the gruesome tale would be
heard again well after that marriage was over.

In contrast to Merman, whose relationships with politicians were for the
most part social, pleasant, polite, and mutually appreciative, Six, a businessman in a cutthroat industry whose policies, practices, and routes were determined by government agencies, had to be more closely entwined with them,
able to balance hardball negotiations with smooth relationships. A registered
Democrat, he felt a special kinship with LBJ, the larger-than-life Texas maverick who, just like Six, was legendary for his gruffness, sharp tongue, and deep
appreciation of loyalty. But Bob Six got along well with members of both political parties, favoring whichever policy makers helped his business.

Between his high-flying business profile and the contacts made through
Merman, Six had easy access to influential politicians of all stripes: President Eisenhower invited the two of them to attend the launching of the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, on January zi, 1954, in Groton, Connecticut, when even people who'd developed the sub were kept off the list.
These were the kinds of connections that over the 196os would help Six acquire several lucrative government business deals.

During that decade, Continental created a spin-off company called Air
Micronesia ("Air Mike"), which flew routes within Southeast Asia, an area
that had long fascinated Six. The government awarded Air Mike and Continental Military Air Transport contracts involving military loads between
Guam, Majuro, and Okinawa for tasks that were deliberately undefined.
With Kennedy insiders like Pierre Salinger, Bob Six was in on the formation
of Continental Construction, a corporate venture-a Halliburton of its time,
as Bob Levitt Jr. describes it-that prospered enormously from the carnage
of America's war with Vietnam. "It was war profiteering plain and simple,"
Levitt says.10

Even before Vietnam, Six had politics that would hardly square with progressive sensibilities. Before his days with Continental, the young man drove
delivery trucks for the San Francisco Chronicle, and when a general strike was
called, Six "earned a gold medal from the Chronicle for driving his truck
through rock-throwing picket lines.""

Back at the CallMe Madam party in October 1951, Six was enjoying himself.
Separated from Henriette, he had arrived with a date-just a friend, he
said-and quickly spent time with others. Six and Ethel hit it off immediately, chatting for most of the evening; she would write, "He takes an interest in my work. He doesn't expect anything out of it. He's just interested in
me and in what happens to me.... I simply adore the guy."" Opting to leave
for quieter grounds at the Hamburger Heaven, they brought along Ethel's escort, a last-minute replacement for Charlie Cushing, who fell asleep while the
Broadway star and the airline executive talked the night away.

In contrast to Bob Levitt, Bob Six was well aware of who Ethel Merman
was before he met her. While in New York on business, he had taken in Red,
Hot and Blue! DuBarry Was a Lady, Annie Get Your Gun, and now Madam.
He was not intimidated by her success; in fact, he was drawn to it; and unlike the introspective Levitt, Six enjoyed basking in the limelight of celebrity.
Says Six's biographer, Robert Serling, "Bob never would have married [Ethel]
if she hadn't been a glamorous entertainment personality-show business
fascinated him and she was absolute tops in that field." 13

Six phoned Ethel often after that first night, and the two started seeing
each other during his weekly visits to New York. "Something serious is going
to come of this," said Ethel.14 She tried to be discreet about the affair, but the
secret was hard to protect. "Ethel Merman's current dinner escort is Continental Airlines biggie Bob Six of Denver. Such muscles!" Walter Winchell
gushed in the first published report on November 5, 1951.15 After that, the
proverbial dam burst, and papers were filled with the couple's nightclubbing
activities.

Ethel's Return to Hollywood

It had been nearly fifteen years since loth Century-Fox had elected not to
renew Merman's film contract. Now, with Call Me Madam's record-breaking
ticket sales on Broadway, Lindsay and Crouse's strong script, Berlin's score,
and, of course, Merman's take-charge performance, they opened the doors.

On June 11, 1952, Fox acquired the rights for $250,000 of which $ioo,ooo
was for the book. A good negotiator, Irving Berlin received as much as composer and publisher as Lindsay and Crouse did combined. He also won the
following: "Credit will be given to Irving Berlin on a separate frame, on
which no other name shall appear and with exposure long enough to be conveniently read by the average audience."" (The film is actually introduced as
Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, which remains its official release title.) Even
more astonishing, the first shot of the movie commenced with Berlin's tunes,
not the studio's musical fanfare that typically opened loth Century-Fox
movies.

Fox regular Walter Lang (1896-1972), the able director of films such as The
Little Princess, State Fair, With a Song in My Heart, The King and I, and WeekEnd in Havana, was signed on. Lang had a great eye and was a natural at
musicals and other visually spectacular genres. New York-born Sol C. Siegel
(1903-82) produced. Siegel's extensive career in Hollywood included cofounding Republic Studios, where he worked for six years as producer and
executive producer.17 (He helped get John Wayne cast as the lead of Stagecoach.) Siegel left Republic in 194o and began producing for his own unit at
Paramount, where he stayed before starting his position at Fox as producer-associate producer in early January 1947 at a salary of $156,ooo. His
production credits there included I Was a Male War Bride, Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes, and Three Coins in the Fountain. In the '5os, Siegel served as president of the Screen Producers Guild.

Although Fox was counting on casting Merman from the start, it was Russian-born, British-trained George Sanders (1906-72) who was secured first,
as Cosmo. This was an entirely new role for Sanders; he usually depicted
world-weary villains with a brooding edge. (This was the actor whose suicide
note said, "I was bored," after all.) He had played one of the title character's
lovers in Hitchcock's 1940 film Rebecca and the sardonic Addison De Witt in
All about Eve (1950). Off-screen, he had gone on record declaring women
"little beasts."18 Happily, none of these brooding, misogynistic features surfaced in Call Me Madam-a musical was a "women's genre," after all-in
which Sanders was mainly called on to exude the charm of old Europe, and
that he did. Sanders was able to give his character the formal, debonair style
needed to contrast his role with Ethel's outgoing, relaxed Sally Adams.
Sanders also had his first opportunity to sing in film-the musically trained
performer had a pleasant baritone-and spoke in a generic, unplaceable Euro
accent that might have been drawn from his Slavic roots.

Sanders received $6o,ooo in a contract dated January 4, 1951-November
21, 1952. At the time, his track record in Hollywood was better than Merman's (who nonetheless received $125,000), but he had no experience in musicals and was not going to be the one carrying the picture. Besides Ethel, the
only other person reprising a role from the Broadway production was Lilia
Skala, who played the Archduchess of Lichtenburg, getting very little screen
time.