Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (79 page)

A frequent guest on The Merv Griffin Show, Merman also joined Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, and Dinah Shore on their talk shows
during this time. When one 1969 appearance coincided with Ethel's sixtyfirst birthday, Dolores and Bob Hope wired their telegram: "Dear Ethel: It's
hard to believe ... you sure don't look it. Whatever you're doing, double up
and send me your diet.... [The next sentence she inked out: "I was astounded
when I heard the figure."] I wish I was there to do `De Lovely' withyou'cause
that's what you are. Lots of love. Dolores [and] Bob Hope."15

Watching tapes of these shows today drives home just how indefatigable
(and patient) Merman was about her work. Appearance after appearance, she
sings the same songs, tosses off the same lines, responds to the same questions, and performs in the same style she always had, looking right out into
the crowd or camera, throwing off enthusiasm and pep in a way that must
have made colleagues her age tired just watching. Instinctively, she knew
where to direct her gaze, when to pace, what to say. ("I'm still new at this....
I'm used to being on the other side of the highballs.") The tapes verify Buddy
DeSylva's claim that watching Ethel was like watching a movie, so effortlessly
did she repeat every detail, giving everything the same vitality as if she were
doing it all for the first time.

By far Merman's most moving TV appearance aired on May 20, 1971.
Once again she was a guest on Merv Griffin's show, along with Jerry Herman
of Dolly! and Ralph Edwards, the host of the long-running radio and TV hits
This Is Your Life and Truth or Consequences. Griffin tried to persuade Edwards
to reveal how he always surprised his guests on This Is Your Life. The show's
formula involved bringing a guest-often a celebrity-into the studio under
some pretense, and then when Edwards announced, "John Doe, this is your
life!" the person would be reunited with various real-life players-family
members, lost friends, former high school teachers-who would wait behind the stage curtains. It wasn't hard to do, said Edwards. "For instance, I could
say to you, `Merv Griffin, this is your life,' or `Jerry Herman, this is your life.'
But what I'm really going to say is, `Ethel Merman, queen of musical comedy, this is yourlife!"' Ethel was floored. Josie Traeger was there, as were Texas
Schribman, BenayVenuta, Perle Mesta, and, most important, son-in-law Bill
Geary with Barbara and Michael, whose heads Ethel kissed passionately,
clutching them for the rest of the show. Emotionally overwhelmed, Merman
was onstage as just herself, a regular grandma. And although she kept saying
"I can't believe it!" (as in How could you trick me?), Ethel made no attempt to
hide her tears.

In March 1973, Merman went on a short vacation to see her grandchildren. The trip had been planned in advance, and when Broadway organized
a special tribute to Stephen Sondheim during the same time (for which Angela Lansbury, preparing for Gypsy in London, flew in, as did most of Broadway's royalty), Ethel chose not to cancel. (Both she and her son, Bob, were
spending more time with Barbara and Michael.) Merman's focus on her family intensified even more the following month, when Agnes suffered a severe
stroke that left her hospitalized for the rest of her life. Ethel pared back professional activities to the bare minimum so that she and Pop could make daily
visits at Roosevelt Hospital, the prestigious West Side facility. Agnes Zimmermann died there on January 14, 1974, two days shy of Ethel's sixty-sixth
birthday. Her ashes were flown to Colorado Springs, where they joined Ethel
Jr.'s in the family's small section of the mausoleum there. A modest service
was held.

Mother and Son

Bob Jr. was still distant but devoted. The mother-son relationship was still
not especially close during this time, and his absence on the This Is Your Life
spot is conspicuous. (Levitt has not been predisposed to heavily mediaoriented celebrations of his mother.) "Ethel and Bob have so many
similarities-that's why there was often so much friction," says Tony Cointreau. "He has his mom's humor and impishness. Both have a stubborn
streak. Bob gets his generosity and trust from his mom.... They'd lock
horns a lot, and he played the rebel with her. But they adored each other."16
Bob shared his mother's suspicion of show-biz fakery; he just pushed that
world further away from him than Ethel could. "We didn't see each other too often, a couple times a year," he says.17 In some regards their values were
different; Ethel's conservative views and positions made it impossible for her
to embrace what she considered her son's "counterculture" lifestyle, and
Bob's lack of professional ambition and focus was a source of disappointment
to her. Ethel was proper and organized; her son, by contrast, had the disheveled "hippie" look that many of his generation had. But she adored new
daughter-in-law Barbara, and loaned the young couple money to buy a residence in New York City.

It would be difficult for any son to know how to navigate the world of his
mother when that mother is Ethel Merman. Bob constantly struggled with
how to appreciate her celebrity while trying to stand down from that celebrity
himself. An illuminating encounter shows that struggle, as well as mother
and son's eagerness to get along:

Long ago, there was a blackout in New York City one night ... and I got
"stuck in the dark with mom" in her apartment for much longer than I usually stayed.... We had a great time, talking about this, that, and the other
thing; going a bit deeper than we usually did in normal conditions.... My
mother loved the thought of being a spokeswoman.... What [she] really
wanted was something like the role of spokeswoman for NASA. She was quietly disappointed when her friendship with the Nixons didn't shake that loose.

So there we sat in the blackout, on her big brass bed, and Mom introduced
the subject of ... "another spokeswoman opportunity." ... "[But] I'm not
going to tell you because you'll tease me, and this is very important to me." I
had teased her about the NASA thing; ribald stuff about riding the rockets
with astronauts. She loved it.... Until it all fell through. Then there was a sore
spot, so I promised I wouldn't tease. And after a few rounds of "I really, really
promise!" Mom took a chance and broke the news that she was being considered, "just considered... for the spokeswoman ... for SEARS!" I was bound to
my promise to be very careful how I said "Sears?"

"Yes Sears! ... Wouldn't that be wonderful? ... Sears is all across America!
If I were the spokeswoman ... I'd be all across the country." .. .

"But why do you, the Queen of Broadway, need to beat the drum for Sears?"
We were talking in circles....

"Why not? What's the Queen of Broadway got to do with it? ..."

My mother set me straight....

"Look, classy is classy, and Sears is Sears, and I know the difference. And I'm
not worried about it. So don't you be. I've got lots of opportunities in this
world to be `classy.' . . . If [the work with Sears is] done right, like an Aunt
Ethel character, but real, just me, I'd find that very satisfying."1S

Later, Bob came to respect and understand his mom's decision more. "She
always wanted to be in touch with regular people. She didn't need the airs....
I think that's the reason so many fans are still delighted by her."i9 That openness to "regular" opportunities-from Sears to singing with the New York
Sanitation Department Band-shows that Merman was never one to find
things beneath her station, something that fans might overlook when they attribute aspects of the ambitious, celebrity-obsessed "Mama Rose" to her.
There was a comforting friendly neighbor or aunt in this real-life Ethel.

One fan, an acquaintance of Bob Levitt's, remembers:

My most vivid memory was actually the first time I rang the bell and Ethel
opened the door, standing there in a pink housecoat and bunny slippers. She
was so warm and gracious and unpretentious....

Behind a set of French doors was a small room lined with oil paintings of
Ethel in roles going back to Panama Hattie. That's where Bob and I sat to discuss a project we were working on, and at one point that unique voice said,
"Bob, open the door, my hands are full." She was standing on the other side
with a dish of Haagen-Dasz [sic] coffee ice cream in each hand. It was overwhelming for a young fan like me to be served by this legend. Another time
she was going out with friends for the evening, and when she was ready to
leave, she stopped by and introduced us to them. They were all around her age,
but I was especially tickled that one of them was "Mrs. Caxton," presumably
the widow of her Anything Goes co-star.20

Ethel's business instincts had noted in Sears an opportunity to boost her
name recognition across the country. "I'll be in everybody's living room, on
the TV, in the papers, I'll come through their mail, and everybody will get to
know me better as the person who welcomes them to where they shop," Ethel
told her son when he asked her what made her think the job would be gratifying. Although Ethel never became their spokeswoman, she did a number
of commercials for Texaco, Canada Dry, and Friendship Cottage Cheese.
Knowing full well the difference between classy and "unclassy" and maintaining a strong sense of herself as a regular "Aunt Ethel" figure, her ability
to redirect that image was as unconventional in the '7os as it had been fifty
years earlier, when she was just starting out.

With more time away from professional activities, Ethel didn't need to
spend as much time maintaining "Ethel Merman," and she enjoyed this new
phase of her life, living it fully if rather quietly. She enjoyed "rooting around
[her] place,"21 watching TV, answering mail, talking on the phone. ("Ethel
loved talking on the phone," recalls Cointreau. "And she loved gossiping!" )22 She enjoyed listening to records by Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Eartha Kitt, and especially Christmas carols. "Mom was very comfortable as a solo homebody," says Levitt. "And she was also very comfortable
with old friends like the Panzers [from Queens], or with Tony and Jim
[Russo, Cointreau's partner]." She loved being "Aunt Ethel," he says, adding,
"she was less comfortable with her own kids and grandkids because of the his-
tory."23 (Ethel often referred to her two grandchildren as "those monsters!")24

Today, Levitt admits that the larger-than-life production that was "Ethel
Merman" "could be nasty. Mom was under a lot of pressure to animate that
figure and [then there were] the pressures of celebrity-plus the histories of
her own abuse," especially from Six. But he adds that "it was not her essential nature to be mean." Levitt is wholly aware that people did, in fact, experience her that way, since he witnessed firsthand how cruel his mother could
be. But he says, "Her cruelty-which could be vicious-was never calculated. She was mean like a little girl could be mean." (Barbara remembers
how Grandma Ethel would tease her brother about a speech impediment he
had.) Levitt describes his mom as "adolescent by nature," with that petulant,
immature side-along with a positive, innocent side that was filled with playfulness. He remembers that when he visited her at her apartments, she delighted in playing peekaboo at the door, pulling her pink nightcap over her
eyes and making squeaky noises like a small animal. When Bobby teased her
in rhyme about her various beaux ("Eric Palm ... is a bomb!")-reprising
the chimed rhymes they had shared when she put him to bed as a
youngster-she loved it: "Oh, stop it!" she'd giggle. "Mom was willing to be
foolish with people she trusted," he says.25 Merman did a great deadpan and
was good at feigning outrage and indignation; he also remembers the impromptu imitations she'd do behind the backs of folks she thought were
pompous. She and Betty Bruce-a close friend who shared Ethel's wicked
sense of humor-delighted when, at the Korvettes store on 47th Street, they
would hear a "Carolyn Cooze" paged frequently. Whenever they heard the
name over the loudspeaker, Bruce and Merman would break up.

That childlike side of Ethel is evident in her appearance on The Muppet
Show in the 1970s. "Her true humor," says Bob, was brought out in this work,
and both he and Cointreau report that Ethel said this was the TV appearance
that gave her the most pleasure. It is not Ethel Merman, Broadway superstar,
who appears here, as she does on The Bobby Vinton Show, The Jack Jones Show,
and The Sha Na Na Show at the time, nor is it Ethel Merman the comic or
camp icon, as on Batman. The Muppet Show reveals a sweet Ethel, and since
that feature played no part in forming the public Merman, as her voice and wisecracks did, its signs may be harder for nonintimates to detect. The show
introduces Merman wearing a tall red-and-black-feathered headpiece, a la
Dolly Levi, seated as if in a still portrait and surrounded by her excited Muppet costars. Later, in front of a mock makeup mirror, Ethel performs a medley of her hits in duets with the different puppets, saving the competition
number "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" for Miss Piggy, the diva
with attitude toward her human rival. In this and the other numbers, Ethel's
eyes twinkle in evident pleasure.

She took what Cointreau and Levitt describe as an "innocent delight" in
those puppet characters, something the camera was able to capture. She is not
"on" in any sense; nowhere else on tape does she appear so relaxed as she does
here serenading Kermit the Frog or dealing with the difficult Miss Piggy. And
she genuinely enjoyed the Muppets as characters. "She saw them as little
people," says Cointreau.26 At home, her big brass bed was covered with the
little Muppet characters.

The decade brought more troubles and sadness. At the end of November
1973, Bruce Yarnell, her costar in the Annie Get Your Gun revival, of whom
Ethel was very fond, died in a plane crash, and she took the news hard. Violence hit again in the summer of 1975, in a loss that was much closer to home.
On the evening of July 25, Ethel's daughter-in-law, Barbara Colby, was shot
dead while returning to her car at a drama studio where she'd been teaching,
in the Palms district of West Los Angeles. She died instantly, and her companion, actor Jim Kiernan, died a few hours later. It was a bizarre, unmotivated killing, but the area had recently seen several bold and strangely random robbery-murders. The day after the incident, six youths were brought
in for questioning, but there was no proof of their involvement.