Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (59 page)

There was widespread speculation about who would finance and produceDavid Merrick or Jo Mielziner, who at the time was bidding on Long Day's
journey into Night? NBC/RCA? It was NBC/RCA Victor and, eventually,
Mermsix that finally put up the show's $350,000 budget, and Mielziner received credit as producer. Ethel and Bob were characteristically mum when
journalists asked about their financial involvement, not even announcing the
formation of Mermsix until February 13. Variety called their production company an "outfit [with] no immediate production plans but has been established to permit launching operations when desired.""

Hunting attracted a team of Broadway greats. Mielziner also did sets and
lighting; Irene Sharaff, who had outfitted Ethel so well in Fox's Call Me
Madam, did costumes; and Abe Burrows, fresh from Guys and Dolls, Can
Can, and Silk Stockings, directed. Jay Blackton was musical director. But there were no big stars behind the music; no Irving Berlin, no Cole Porter
onboard. The songs were penned by two gentlemen from Philadelphia,
Matt Dubey and Harold Karr, who had composed a few popular tunes but
had never written a complete Broadway musical before. (Karr was a former
dentist, which so tickled the Broadway community that Bells Are Ringing,
another 1956 musical, featured a dentist who longed to write songs for
Broadway.)

According to Louella Parsons, Ethel wanted Anthony Quinn to portray
the penniless Duke. Whether she did or not, it was Fernando Lamas who was
actually signed. Born in Buenos Aires, Lamas (1915-82,) was a well-known
film star in Argentina. In Hollywood, he was most well known for playing
the dashing foreign Count Danilo in the recent Merry Widow. Happy Hunting would continue Lamas's run as the stereotypical Latin lover, and Lamas
was happy to comply, telling reporters that "Latins are temperamental" as a
way of explaining what made his female fans swoon so.11 (The show's program added a dash of political spice by describing him as "one of the most
popular stars in our Good Neighbor Countries.") Athletic and good-looking,
Lamas was also a former boxer and swimmer with large sexual appetites; his
wife at the time was actress Arlene Dahl.'2

Merman stunned the industry by permitting Lamas, a newcomer to
Broadway, to share top billing in lettering of equal size to hers. "It's the first
time in twenty years that Ethel allowed herself to be costarred with anyone,"
wrote Sheila Graham.13 But it was hardly an act of wild benevolence: Ethel's
name appeared above the show's title, and the sole photo promoting it depicted her face alone. The young lovers Beth and Sandy were played by Virginia Gibson and Broadway tyro Gordon Polk. Gene Wesson played Harry
Watson, an American reporter in Monaco.

As early as April 3, 1956, Merman's "new Broadway show" was officially
announced, though its story line remained "undetermined." (The Rocky
Mountain News printed that report next to the story "Grace's Royal Marriage
Is Termed a Gamble.")14 Rehearsals were scheduled to start April 29, but
nearly four months later, Lindsay and Crouse wrote to Ethel: "Abe tells us
the first act will be typed by tomorrow and airmailed to you.... We think
this is going to be the best book we have ever written.... Howard and
Buck."15

None of this deterred advance sales, which came in at over one and a half
million dollars,16 and the show's three-week Philadelphia tryout was sold out
well before doors opened on October 22. The Shubert Theatre there broke records, with the musical grossing $18o,ooo, and, when it moved to Boston
for three weeks, it beat house records there too.

Happy Hunting's Broadway opening was December 6, 1956, at the large
44th Street Majestic Theatre. Once again Merman's entrance was grand: several journalists mingle in a crowd and spot a woman behind a big hat, asking hopefully, "Miss Kelly?" to which she responds, "All right, all right, so it
ain't a Kelly under the Kelly."17 The playful hide-and-seek tickled Broadway
audiences, and their response was clinched by her first song, "It's Good to Be
Here." It might have been Liz Livingstone singing for all of Monaco to hear,
but New York audiences knew better. Their Ethel was back.

"Happy Feuding"

Happy Hunting has gone down in Merman musical history for the clashes between her and Lamas. Even at the time, reports stated that their dislike was
both mutual and immediate. It could have been the billing arrangements or
the fact that Lamas sang one song to Ethel's nine. Biographer Bob Thomas
maintains that it started the first day of rehearsal, according to an unidentified witness:

The two stars greeted each other with a degree of formality and immediately
began reading their first scene together. After ten minutes, Lamas held up his
hand to halt the proceedings.

"Excuse me," he said in his mellow Argentine accent, "but I would like to
ask a question. Is this the way it's going to be?"

"Is what the way it's going to be?" Burrows asked warily.

"What I mean is, am I going to read my lines to Miss Merman and Miss
Merman reads hers to the audience?" . . .

Merman's eyes narrowed, her jaw tightened. "Mr. Lamas," she began, her
voice growing edgy, "I want you to know that I have been playing scenes this
way for twenty-five years on Broadway."

"That's [sic] doesn't mean you're right," Lamas replied. "That just means
you're old."

Awitness to the exchange comments: "From that moment on, it was World
War IIL"18

Lamas would do the show with garlic breath to annoy her, and she would
mutter, just loud enough for him and the cast and crew to hear, "toilet mouth." She accused him of "stepping on her laugh lines," obstructing her
entrances, and upstaging her.'9 Their glacial silence was widely noted, and
the two did not speak to each other offstage unless absolutely necessary,
which proved awkward for people such as Benay Venuta, who was a friend
of both. Two incidents inflamed the situation. One night, after Lamas and
Merman exchanged an onstage kiss, he wiped his mouth with his hand in
full view of the audience. Enraged, Merman went to Equity, which gave
Lamas an official reprimand for "making unauthorized changes in his performance and stepping on Miss Merman's laugh lines."20 Lamas retaliated
by suing for damages of a hundred thousand dollars for improper censure.
He lost. Director Burrows quickly changed the onstage kiss to an embrace.
(Unapologetic, Lamas later told an interviewer, "Have you ever kissed Ethel
Merman? It's somewhere between kissing your uncle and a Sherman
tank. 11)21

The second incident involved Gene Wesson, the actor who played the
young reporter. One day Wesson showed up for work with his hair dyed gray.
He did it to appear older for a part he was trying out for in Too Much Too Soon
and refused to change it back. Ethel went "insane," as she said, convinced
that Lamas had egged him on, and a barrage of official complaints and countercomplaints ensued.

With all this backstage bickering, it was small wonder that columnist
Marie Torre referred to Happy Hunting as "Happy Feuding."22 The press was
having a field day. The New YorkJournalAmerican reported that after Equity's
verdict, producers took down a portrait of Lamas in the Majestic lobby and
replaced it with a shot of the less controversial juvenile leads.23 Columnists
such as Leonard Lyons and Ed Sullivan lined up behind the extremely public war, defending Ethel. Wrote Sullivan, "The Merman ... has been so nice
to performers, that I can't go along with any attacks on her from Gene Wesson or Lamas."24 (Ethel thanked him, keeping Sullivan's two-line response,
"Dear Ethel, You're m'gal! Say hello to Bob for me.") Lyons extolled her "exemplary behavior" in the spat with Wesson.25 For her part, Ethel kept quiet
about Wesson, simply filing another complaint to Equity, which, after its
unanimous decision, tendered her an apology on behalf of Wesson, who refused to produce one himself. (Its decision also barred Wesson from making
further public statements about her.) Bill Fields, Merman's press agent, offered suggestions for dealing with the press during the legal battles. Specifically, he asked her to write to columnist Hobe Morrison, providing her with
a sample letter that was "very short and simple, like your wire to Ed Sulli-
van."26 In the end, Wesson was let go from the show.

Reviews

Critics were aware that Happy Hunting was a rather generic production: "As
musicomedy, it is more than just not out of the top drawer, it is from a discontinued line of furniture.... Where she can, Ethel outflanks her material;
where she cannot, she outstares it."27 Variety wrote: "She is a spectacular performer, even when her show is otherwise mediocre.... [She] has a voice like
a calliope, the energy of a bulldozer and the comedy touch of an old pro."
But then the review qualified with, "It remains to be seen ... whether an
Ethel Merman, not quite as svelte or sprightly after several years of retirement, can tote the production in the money."28 The troubled show didn't exactly tank-it grossed $3.2 million on the $500,000 investment, 29 closing on
November 30, 1957. Few people suggested that Happy Hunting's slightly disappointing performance had anything to do with Ethel, since she had carried weak shows before. When Variety made its remarks, for instance, it
wasn't trying to be mean-spirited, but its shot at Broadway's diva does hint
that Ethel's cultural capital was not as solid as it had once been. While some
detractors had been looking for such signs for years, the difference was that
now the shot was taken at work in New York, her home turf. Were stars now
something to be shot at rather than aspired to?

Partly because of the unpleasantness with Lamas and Wesson and partly
because of the reviews, Ethel later referred to Happy Hunting as "a jeep among
limousines."30 She especially regretted working with inexperienced songwriters, something that would limit her working relations with a young
Stephen Sondheim in Gypsy. There wasn't much to celebrate in the play itself: "In spite of Merman's hard sell, the charm of Fernando Lamas, the fresh
spirit of Virginia Gibson, and two hit songs by Harold Karr and Matt Dubey
('Mutual Admiration Society' and `Newfangled Tango'), audiences realized
they had seen and heard this all before."31 Critics complained that the show's
tunes were substandard, and indeed, some songs are rather painful to listen
to. Even the "Mutual Admiration Society" duet, the show's standout number, fails to take hold as Porter's "Let's Be Buddies" had in Panama Hattie,
and its melody is undercut by an abundance of short notes and a hiccuping
syncopation that gives strange comic edges rather than the emotional punch
it needs. The piece was much like a prewar musical tune going for gags and
showmanship over emotional engagement.

Ethel utilizes a variety of clever vocal tricks. Her numbers are filled with
grace notes, but here she twangs at the beginning of sounds rather than at the
end, as she usually did (e.g., "blo-ow, Gabriel, blow"). She also exaggerates her American accent, especially in lyrics referring to the late Mr. Livingstone,
to deepen the incongruity of an American staying in a European kingdom.
Interestingly, her Queens accent is allowed to be full out in the show, as if
Ethel is finally claiming ownership of her songs in a way she hadn't before.
The combined effect is quite comic, revealing a performer who understands
her value not simply as a singer or as a comic actress but as a comic singer.

Tony Cointreau maintains that Merman may not have been singing her
best material with the show but that technically her voice could not have
been richer or more solid. "Ethel had so many more harmonics than most
singers," he says, referring to the additional overtones produced when a
given pitch or note is sounded, "and these things thrill audiences. This is especially so in Happy Hunting, where her harmonics are at their peak."32 Others, however, complained that, despite the technical skills Ethel had at her
disposal, her vocal performance for Happy Hunting reveals little pleasure or
emotional depth for them. One scholar of the cast recording says, "The
range she had displayed in Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam had disappeared. All I heard was a loud, energetic voice. Naturally, her style remained the same but there was no depth ... not a sense of enjoyment in
what she was singing."33 Given her experience with the show-and the
awareness of that experience among most informed listeners-it is hard not
to hear Ethel singing that way.

Happy Hunting did not develop the Merman persona so much as bank on
its established traits. The story sets up high society as an elite, pretentious affair deftly deflated by Liz/Ethel's zip and faux naivete. Whenever someone
knocks at her hotel door, for instance, Liz launches into the local language
with a "Nest-ce pas?" Later, she complains, "This whole place isn't as big as
Franklin Field!"34 The character is the consummate American adrift in a
mythic old country, just as Call Me Madam required, and indeed, Liz Livingstone mixes the newfound elegance of Sally Adams with the sartorially inappropriate figure of earlier shows. (At one point, Liz is described as a "walking Christmas tree.")35 And the defiant Merman pompadour is highlighted
on and off the boards; here, as in Madam, the star's floating head was the
chief image used in publicity materials.

Happy Hunting came out at a time when Merman's fans, critics, and audiences could be broken down into three principal groups. First were the enthusiastic worshippers, who adored all that Ethel was and what she represented,
who loved the locked-in "Merman qualities." Then there was the jealous or resentful group, people who were connected to the industry with some stake
in her fame and who were eager to chip at her success. This group had found
Merman's power too solid and her reputation too daunting ever to be challenged before. The third group found in Merman nothing less than a living
piece of Broadway, an icon of an old performance style and golden era that
was met with appreciation and awe. One thing is certain, however: Happy
Hunting shows a more deliberate melding of "Ethel Merman" and the character she plays than most of her earlier shows did. (It would take three years,
in Gypsy, for even more people to confuse Ethel's performance as Mama Rose
with the "real" Ethel Merman.)