Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (75 page)

Those months in early and mid-1966 witnessed a few critical passages in
the world of show business: March saw Richard Rodgers receiving the National Performing Arts Award. On April 3 came the sad news that the widely
beloved Buck Crouse had passed away. Howard Lindsay was himself too ill
to attend Broadway's gala tribute to Crouse in late May, so Lindsay's wife,
Dorothy Stickney, stepped in to relay his sentiments, expressing his sense
of failure in not writing "a proper message" for her to bring because, in his
words, "Buck isn't here to help me." The two had worked so closely, she explained, that neither knew who had created a particular joke or line, and she
told the group that once she had overheard her husband absentmindedly answer the phone, "This is Buck."41 Ethel kept the thank-you that Lindsay later
wrote her for helping out with the memorial service for their colleague.42

That fall, Ethel performed at the inauguration of New York mayor John
Lindsay, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" with unusual group accompaniment-the New York City Sanitation Department Band, conducted by
John Celebre, all members of the professional musicians' union. For two
years, they had performed at the city's World's Fair and at hospitals, parades,
and a variety of other municipal events. After working with Merman, the
band sent Ethel a "certificate of appreciation," which she kept. What better
way to live up to her own advice: "Don't fart higher than your ass"? Her connections with regular working people of New York were still strong.

Nineteen sixty-six saw Merman making plenty of high-profile appearances
on TV as well, with hosts such as Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and Mike
Douglas; she also joined Fred Astaire live at the Hollywood Palace that year.
For every radio, stage, concert, and television appearance, Ethel hand-labeled
and filed the accompanying acetates. Says their handler today, Al Koenig Jr.,
"When she sang a Porter medley on `The Bell Telephone Hour,' she noted
that it ran nine minutes. When she performed with Carol Burnett, she noted the location of the sketch. When her grandchildren appeared with her on a
Mike Douglas afternoon, she marked `with the children."'43

Annie Get Your Gun Revival

Since Ethel was now turning down musical proposals for shows as big as
Mame and Hello, Dolly! (the latter was written with Merman in mind), it
was no small feat to get her back on the boards.44 But in 1966, she received
a phone call from Irving Berlin. Might Ethel be interested in starring in a
revival of Annie Get Your Gun? It didn't take long to convince her, and her
response was positive and public: "I'm glad to have this chance to straighten
something out. You may have read that I don't want to do another Broadway show. Wrong. I've been misquoted-again. Here's the story the way
I told it and the way it should have read: Yes, I'd do another show on
Broadway but I do not want to play in it for two or three years. Get the
difference? It's a big one. Long runs are not for me anymore."45 To preserve her freedom along with her stamina, Ethel signed on for a thirteenweek run-nine in Toronto and New York and four at Detroit's Fisher
Theatre.

In Manhattan, the show was scheduled to play not on Broadway but at the
New York State Theatre at the prestigious new Lincoln Center. Richard
Rodgers, producer of the original Annie Get Your Gun, was now president of
the center's Music Theatre and was an energetic force behind the new production. (Partner Oscar Hammerstein had died in 1960.) Along with Merman, one other original cast member was Harry Bellaver, the man whose Sitting Bull had made such a strong impression on young Bobby. Dolly Tate
would be played by Benay Venuta, who also played Dolly in MGM's adaptation of the show. (Venuta was the only person from the film who was cast
in the revival.) By this point, Venuta's career had intersected with Merman's
for nearly three decades, whether as her understudy or touring in roles Ethel
had originated, but this was the first time they worked together. Jerry Orbach
(1935-2004) played Charlie Davenport. The role of Frank Butler was given
to Bruce Yarnell, a baritone who'd been introduced to Broadway several years
earlier in a small role in Lerner and Loewe's Camelot. Critics were quick to
jump on Yarnell's age, thirty, in contrast to Ethel's, fifty-eight, even though
it was commonplace to pair aging male screen stars such as Fred Astaire
(1899-1987) and Cary Grant (1904-86) with women less than half their age.
Maybe the critics felt a cheap thrill of getting their talons into the star who'd been invincible for so long; some New Yorkers referred to the revival as
"Annie Get Your Son" or "Granny Get Your Gun."

To dress up his classic, Berlin added a new duet for Merman and Yarnell,
"An Old-Fashioned Wedding," which was a smash in previews. He'd also
written a new song for Venuta's Dolly, which was cut before the show came
to New York, and scrapped two others from the original ("I'll Share It All
with You" and "Who Do You Love, I Hope"). In all, the composer was
delighted about Annie's prospects, especially at this post-Gypsy phase of
Merman's career.

Work on Annie Get Your Gun went relatively smoothly when rehearsals
began in April, and Merman enjoyed getting to know Yarnell, for whom she
showed great affection, enthusiastically telling the press what a good career the
young singer had ahead of him. Annie previewed in Toronto's O'Keefe Performing Arts Centre on May 9,1966, to robust reviews. When it closed on the
zist, it traveled to Lincoln Center, where the premiere followed ten days later.
Bob Levitt recalls the evening of the show and says that once the show-and
his mom-began, any notion that Ethel was too old for the part, any snide
"Granny" sentiment, was dissipated in minutes. When Ethel came onstage,
the audience went wild, and she had to wait them out before she could even
start. Everyone seemed to be aware of the historical weight of the occasion.
Ethel did the show unmiked, even though miking was now standard practice,
and critics delighted in calling her "the lady with the built-in amplifier."46

When the show moved to Detroit, Merman gave a long interview to Shirley
Eder, the columnist with whom she had warm, cordial relations. Said Eder,

The offstage Merman is soft and sensitive. Her feelings are tender and she has
developed an elephant hide to keep from getting hurt. One day recently she
said, "I'm pretty sensitive when it comes to relatives and close friends. Sure I
depict the brassy type on stage, but if I'm spoken to in the wrong way by someone I love, I bruise easily. In private life, a person needs love and affection. I
guess we all need that. And I have many good and loyal friends who know my
true feelings. And I'm so fortunate that I still have my mother and dad and
two wonderful children and two grandchildren."47

(On opening night at the Fisher, Ethel received a wire: "Be as great as you are.
Love, Bobby.") Eder later thanked Ethel for her "charm," adding, "Anything
I can do for you in `print,' let me know."48

A small problem occurred one night at the Fisher, just before the big "I'm
an Indian Too" number at the end of act I. Merman went to sit down on her chair to change her shoes and stockings, but someone had moved it, and she
fell hard onto the floor. No time. She went back onstage and performed the
number, "tears of pain streaming down her face. She also did the whole second act not knowing whether the pain meant a broken hip or back," Eder
later reported.4" X-rays revealed that nothing had been broken, but Merman
was quite badly bruised. Ethel suppressed the story until the Detroit run was
over, just as she'd done in California with her back injury in Gypsy.

The Annie Get Your Gun revival went well, and Ethel agreed to the producers' request to extend the length of the run, moving it to the Washington
National Theatre until August 27 and from there to Philadelphia's Forrest
Theatre from August 30 through September 17.50 After that, the show returned to New York, and in March 1967, a truncated, ninety-minute version
was broadcast by NBC.

Annie Get Your Gun was exactly twenty years old and reaching new generations of fans, something that delighted Ethel: "Kids that never saw me before will see me. Maybe I'll start a whole new following."51 But the changes
on Broadway struck her too, especially the competitive business mentality
that nobody seemed to escape. More than once, she took aim at what she perceived as the overprofessionalization of child actors ("acting like midgets, not
children") and mimicked them to an interviewer.52 Merman expected kids
to be kids, not miniaturized professionals, and she vocally disapproved of parents who pushed adulthood onto them that way.

Outside New York, reviewers responded to Merman enthusiastically, although they retained bits of the same ambivalence they'd always had, an ambivalence that could seem more acute with the press's diminished sense of
public respect, not for Merman per se, but for celebrity and public figures
in general. For instance, an issue of TV Guide came out when the show was
televised, and Edith Efron opens it by saying that "Doin' What Comes
Natur'lly" "captures the essence of Merman herself," just as everyone said it
had in 1946. Then, however, she goes on to describe the star's audience in
terms of Merman lovers and Merman haters, a remark that would never have
accompanied a 1946 review: "Criticism ranges from relatively mild complaints that her voice is `terrible' to vehement statements such as `The very
sound of that raucous yelling sets my teeth on edge."' Although the piece
refers to the star as "The Voice," it says little about Merman's importance to
Broadway musicals, instead focusing on rumors about her personality: "Historically, Merman is said to be difficult to work with. Stage rumor has it that
she's a touch over-concerned with the spotlight and is inclined to stomp on lesser performers if she has the slightest suspicion of being upstaged. She
somewhat confirms this herself." Then the discussion offers strange support
in a quote from Merman, saying she can't stand lazy folks or people who step
on her lines.53

Efron, like other commentators, was still relying on class distinctions
when she discussed Merman's appearance: "She's not a glamorous human
being.... There's a crudity of manner which contradicts the good-looking,
expensive clothes, and the gallery of delicate impressionist pictures which line
her hotel living room. She's given to heavy name-dropping, almost compulsively quotes what the `greats' have said about her, at one time or another."
After comparing her to the nouveau riche, "without having undergone any
social polishing," Efron goes on to say that Ethel is "a unique womanbrassy, boastful, uneducated, bawdy, sentimental; and a tough, disciplined
trouper, who, at this point, is a fixed star in the show-business firmament and
a `living legend.' As a star, she's the real explosive thing-not the kind that's
manufactured by mimeographed press releases."54 On this last point Efron
was right, by dint of both Merman's personality and the history of the star
system when her career began. But when Efron concludes by saying both
sides are right-the Merman lovers who call her "earthy" and "natural" and
the detractors who find her "ignorant" or "anti-intellectual"-we see that
Ethel Merman was little more than a collective projection screen, mirroring
contradictory attitudes and fantasies that had little to do with her actual life.

Little Bit of Ethel

So New York had welcomed Merman back after her most recent "marital disaster." And while Ethel's disappointments on that front were put on the back
burner after her latest professional triumph, other family events in the
mid-'6os would prove tougher to reconcile. Ethel was still phenomenally
loyal to Mom and Pop and enjoyed frequent contact, but her own family's
history had not experienced any of that kind of stability. Ethel was zero for
four in marriages, her second and third scarred by violence; Bobby, though
loving, was detached and full of attitude. And Ethel Jr. was moving quickly
into adulthood.

Little Ethel was enrolled in Colorado College, and in her first year she became involved with a handsome football player named Bill Geary. The two
married in Juarez, Mexico. On February i8, 1961, Ethel Merman became a grandmother when Barbara Jeanne (often misspelled Jean) was born. The
new mother, Ethel Geary, sent her mom a card, "'A Valentine, mom, for you,'
Love, Bill and Ethel and Fatso," the term of endearment that she and her
mother had used for Bobby as an infant.55 Son Michael Lee Geary followed
in short order, coming into the world while Grandma was engaged at the
Las Vegas Flamingo. The proud grandmother carried pictures of them,
showing them off to everyone. "Call Me Grandma" ran the newspapers,
especially for the first grandchild, in which a widely syndicated photo
shows Grandma Ethel beaming through a hospital window at infant Barbara
Jeanne.56

The Geary couple set up house in Colorado Springs, where Bill supported
his family as an insurance agent, a line of work he kept throughout his life.
Bill's family hailed from Pennsylvania, and, according to Barbara, his parents
were not overly fond of their son's mother-in-law: "They didn't like Ethel in
person-they thought she was too pushy. But then, we [she and her brother]
would complain that `She criticizes us all the time!' so they were not really
predisposed to liking her." Barbara describes the relationship between Ethel
and Bill Geary (from whom Barbara is currently estranged) as one of "mutual tolerance. "57

Despite the joy her young kids gave her, Little Ethel's emotional problems
could not be disguised. She'd always been a sensitive child (recall her response
to the bird in Annie Get Your Gun), and her chaotic upbringing and family
situations only exacerbated a sense of instability. "My mother always seemed
overwhelmed," says Barbara. "I remember her as having no strength, no way
to find a center."58 And Grandma Ethel wanted everything to be right and
wanted to make it look right. Bob Levitt recalls Jack Klugman, now a close
friend of the family, saying, "Little Ethel's hair was on fire and all Ethel saw
was that her shoelaces were untied."59