Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (61 page)

At 7:25 P.M., May 21, 1959, the curtain went up at the Broadway Theatre. The
house was packed. Mama Rose/Ethel Merman entered from the back, marching down the stage-left aisle, screaming out, "Sing out, Louise!" to one of the
children onstage. An ecstatic Broadway audience exploded. Ethel Merman
had announced her return.

Ostensibly Gypsy is the story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. But from that
moment of her grand entrance, Merman made it clear just whose show Gypsy
was. Merman as Rose lords over everything, and the show was indeed something to lord over. Gypsy was easily her most ambitious musical, demanding
more work and nuance in terms of acting than all of her previous roles put
together; her triumph was such that even hard-to-please critics consider it
perhaps the greatest performance in musical history.' Gypsy would leave a
permanent imprint on Ethel's persona, and Mama Rose's impact was so great
that, as one Broadway historian said, it "swept aside all [of her] other characters." 2

Rose's Story

Rose is the mother of two girls, Baby June (her clear favorite) and Louise.
Their success on the vaudeville circuit means everything to her, and there is
nothing she won't do to procure it. In this opening scene, she threatens to
tell the press that "Uncle Jocko's Kiddie Show" talent contests are rigged if
he doesn't feature her girls more prominently. When she gets her way, Rose
exhorts, "Smile, girls, smile!" as the girls sing "May We Entertain You."3

From there we meet Rose's disapproving father, who refuses to support
her. After chiding him for his lack of adventure in "Some People," Rose makes off with a gold plaque he received at work and then lands in Los Angeles, where she soon meets candy salesman Herbie. After they exchange a
"sexual look," Herbie asks the thrice-married woman whether she would
marry again. No for her; yes for him. In the bittersweet "Small World," their
differences and their mutual attraction are made evident, and Herbie becomes the family's agent and Rose's lover.

Daughter June is still the star performer. Louise, younger and less confident, is shunted to the back, something that continues as the two become
young women. The girls lament life on the road, the inability of their
mother to settle down ("If Momma Was Married"),' and the fact that their
lives are dominated by life on the stage, their mom, and a vaudeville act that
everyone has outgrown. The teenage June elopes with Tulsa, one of the
young men Rose had brought into the troupe and the only male in the entire show with a solo number ("All I Need Is the Girl"). Louise, whose crush
on Tulsa had gone unnoticed, is now stuck with a family act and working
for a mother who doesn't think she has the chops to make it. But in the rousing "Everything's Coming Up Roses," Mama Rose's instinctive determination kicks in, cheering Louise and Herbie on and converting despair to optimism.

Rose is grooming Louise for the starring role, but the shy, gangly girl lacks
the innate talents of her sister. Rose rallies the troupe again in "Together,
Wherever We Go," an upbeat, jaunty tune with lyrics that assure and
threaten all at once. ("You'll Never Get Away from Me" conveys that same
tension, with lyrics recalling the actual words Rose Hovick [sometimes Hav-
ock] said to her daughters on her deathbed.) But the family acts are getting
hokier, the Depression has taken its toll, movies are popular, and vaudeville
is not. Rose refuses to bend. When the family is booked into smaller and
seedier venues, the end of the road comes to them in the form of a burlesque
house. At first, Rose is horrified that her "family act" has been booked in a
house featuring strippers, but then she quickly offers up Louise as a replacement when one of them can't go on. Strippers Mazeppa, Tessie, and Electra
had earlier instructed them with "You Gotta Have a Gimmick," and now
Louise, suddenly onstage as "Gypsy Rose Lee," decides that hers is to minimize the stripping while bantering with the audience with wisecracks about
the act. Herbie, meanwhile, finally realizes that Rose cannot change and
walks away. Louise, too, has also taken leave of her mother; after her "Let Me
Entertain You" act, she comes into her own and ascends into stardom, a process conveyed in montage.

"Rose's Turn" is performed solo on a darkened stage. The cast-aside
mother performs as if for herself, reflecting on her life and all that she has
done for her children, both of whom are now gone. The moods of this number range from vulnerability ("M-m-momma's letting go ...") to defiant selfpreservation ("I did it for me!"), after which the delusional Rose bows to an
imagined audience. Louise, who'd been watching from behind, tenderly invites her estranged mother out, draping her fur stole over her mom's shoulders with maternal care.

Producing the Fable

Both Gypsy: A Musical Fable and the story of its production have become the
stuff of legend. In 1994, the full-length book The Making of Gypsy was published,
and Arthur Laurents's play and the original cast recording have remained in
print steadily, keeping the original show in the public eye. Its bigger revivals have
done the same thing, notably Angela Lansbury's in 1973, Tyne Daly's in 1989,
Bernadette Peters's in 2003, and Patti LuPone's in 2007. Bette Midler played
Rose in a high-budget TV movie in 1993. Surprisingly, the recollections of the
musical's original creative team and performers lack most of the usual contradictions that shape the afterlives of so many shows. Their stories have circulated
and recirculated with each revival or with each new biography, and so the accounts are for the most part reliably well-worn. This is not to say that the initial
production went smoothly, however, or that the show was without its tensions.

Gypsy began as the quasi-factual memoir that Gypsy Rose Lee published
soon after the death of her mother, Rose, in 1954. A gifted storyteller, the
charismatic stripper was less concerned with accuracy than with telling a tale
with flair. It was David Merrick who had come up with the idea of turning
the stripper's memoir into a musical after reading excerpts published in
Harper 's and Town and Country. Merrick (1911-zooo) was one of Broadway's
biggest and most formidable legends. In a thirty-year career, he produced
such shows as The Matchmaker (and its musical reincarnation, Hello, Dolly!),
I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Stop the World-I Want to Get Off One Flew
over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I Do! I Do! An odd-looking man with a "cheesy,
lopsided toupee,"5 Merrick was gruff and ruthless and made no bones about
being in show business for the money. The producer was extremely gifted
with promotional savvy and daring; he'd been known to plant shills in the
audience, feed fake stories to the press, and encourage fights among his stars. An "abominable showman," Merrick thought nothing of promising more
than too percent of a show's take to get people onboard, breaking the backs
of unions, squaring off with Walter Winchell, whatever it took. He may have
been an admired man, but he was not a beloved one. Asked at one point
whether he was on speaking terms with Merrick, actor Peter Ustinov replied,
"We speak but we do not talk."

Competing with him for the rights to Miss Lee's book were Alan Jay
Lerner and Frederick Lowe, the My Fair Lady duo who were also in discussions with Lee, as was Warner Brothers, which offered her two hundred thousand dollars. In the end, she accepted Merrick's much smaller offer. Not only
did she like him (according to her son, Erik Preminger, he reminded Lee of
her ex-lover Mike Todd), but she also understood that his offer, which included film rights, would be more lucrative in the long run if the play became
a success.

Merrick's coproducer was Leland Hayward, a less gimmick-driven producer than Merrick but one who was no less shrewd. His films had included
Mr. Roberts, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Spirit of St. Louis, and he had
produced shows such as State of the Union, Mr. Roberts, South Pacific, Anne
of the Thousand Days, and, of course, Call Me Madam. It was Leland Hayward who had produced the classic Ford 5oth Anniversary Show with Ethel,
and her appreciation for him was enormous.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green signed on to do the book but soon
changed their minds, preoccupied with another project-the film script for
Auntie Mame, Rosalind Russell's reprisal of her stage role. When Comden
and Green backed out, the producers turned to Arthur Laurents, the gifted
young writer of West Side Story and recent Hollywood movies such as Snake
Pit and Rope.

Hayward procured Jerome Robbins as choreographer-director. Robbins's
and Merman's paths had crossed before, in Stars in Your Eyes and Call Me
Madam. A notoriously difficult personality ("bastard" is how most associates
describe him), Robbins was brutal to his dancers and to people who challenged his artistic decisions. During Gypsy's production, Broadway tongues
flapped over possible clashes between him and Merman, both strong personalities, but their professional areas were different enough that he likely
didn't feel competitive with her; besides, this woman was carrying the show.
The two enjoyed a good working relationship, and when a reporter suggested
to Ethel that "it was her own box-office appeal that made Merman so sure
of [the show's] success," she corrected him: "That's bunk. I read the book. I
heard the music. And then I learned Jerome Robbins would direct. That was the end, honey. Jerry Robbins directing-on Broadway, that's like working
for God."6 Ethel referred to Robbins as "Teacher" for what she gained from
him during the project.

Along with Agnes De Mille, Gene Kelly, Michael Kidd, Robert Fosse, and
Robert Cole, Robbins was a key figure who made the '5os the "choreographer's decade"; West Side Story, directed and choreographed by Robbins, is
unimaginable without its dance routines. The decade saw musical dance routines utterly transformed, a period when, in the words of the New York Times,
the "high-kicking chorus curies have been replaced by an eager, earnest corps de
ballet." 7 Dance sequences were now used to express complex emotional, psychological, and narrative situations across musical hits like Carousel and, of
course, West Side Story.

Arthur Laurents had been left raw from the experience of working with
Jerome Robbins on West Side Story before Gypsy and vowed never to work
with him again. (He was also infuriated that Robbins had caved to pressure
and named names during the HUAC-McCarthy hearings.)' But for all his
rancor, Laurents knew that "no one could choreograph a scene like Jerry,"
and Robbins, for his part, insisted that he wouldn't do Gypsy without Laurents onboard.

Enter Stephen Sondheim

Also fresh from the critical success of West Side Story was Stephen Sondheim,
a composer and lyricist who came to the project with all the promise in the
world. But Ethel did not care to entrust the show's music to a relatively inexperienced songwriter; the disappointing Happy Hunting was too fresh in
her mind. The producers offered no resistance; after all, their first choice of
composers had been old Merman favorites Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, before turning to Jule Styne, the versatile popular composer for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, High Button Shoes, Peter Pan, and Bells Are Ringing and who had
worked on film and TV projects involving Merman for decades-in the I 30s,
he had provided some of the music to Straight, Place and Show at Fox. Styne's
was an established, mainstream track record, something the young Sondheim
lacked. Styne also knew how to write with particular stars in mind, another
thing Sondheim had little experience with at the time. Said Styne, "This is
not denying Steve's musical talent, but to write for Ethel Merman was a kind
of bag he didn't know much about.... When you write for a star you've got
to take in what the star has to offer. If you don't, you're not doing what the people want to hear.... Steve didn't have to tailor, he had to write only character. At the same time, some of Gypsy's production team was concerned
that Styne might be too commercial for the show and unable to convey its
tangled, intricate themes. Styne's songs were usually simple and straightforward, with memorable, hummable refrains ("Diamonds Are a Girl's Best
Friend," "The Party's Over"), and his musical phrasing was geared to lyrics
rather than offering elaborate melodies to which his lyrics might conform.
Pairing him with Sondheim, a composer and lyricist of much more complexity, did not seem a likely match, a point that cast further doubt. The
Gypsy team was glad to be proved wrong when Styne-a man most remember as a person of talent and decency-played some of his ideas. They were
also struck that the composer's pride was unruffled by having to audition.