Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (85 page)

It was when Ethel was applying lipstick in front of her mirror that the
seizure struck, and the force threw her violently to the floor. Although she
was able to move herself to a phone and lift the receiver, she wasn't able to
speak. The Surrey management saw that the call was originating from Merman's apartment and went up, but their master keys couldn't open her door;
Ethel had had a special security lock made. Merman had to crawl to the door
through the lipstick and other debris from the fall to let them in. The medics
arrived shortly, and by then she was able to convey to them that she wanted
them to call Irving Katz, her trusted friend and financial adviser since the
early'6os, and have him come over. Katz arrived, and the medics continued
to work on her. Later that evening, after they'd stabilized her, Katz took Ethel
by cab to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was admitted.31

Three days later, on April it, Mary Martin was at home watching the Oscars, and when she didn't see Ethel, she worried that something was wrong.
There was. Initially, hospital doctors had thought that she had suffered a
stroke, but after extensive tests and a long surgery on April 15, Merman was
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Neurologists gave her eight and
a half months to live.

"When Ethel got sick, Bob was right there," recalls Cointreau. "No son
could do more. He gave his whole heart and soul every single moment."32 One of the first things Levitt needed to do was make her environment as
pleasant as possible. When she was ready to leave the hospital, he got things
set up for her at her home, making sure his mom would be surrounded by
the personal objects that comforted her. Part of his job entailed shielding his
celebrity mother from the press. He downplayed the severity of her condition to them, and, after she came home, he worked to minimize the chance
of encounters: "Dealing with surprise photographers would [have been]
awful."33 He recalls one reporter from the New York Star who was on his
mother's trail. Levitt spent forty-five minutes talking to her, explaining the
difficult situation to her. Amazingly, Levitt was able to get her to pull back,
an act he still appreciates today (when such journalistic restraint seems unfathomable).

Now it was Bob Levitt's turn to protect the Merman-Levitt family life
from public scrutiny, a self-preservation strategy his mother had developed
before he'd even been born, as in the 1939 interview, "My Private Life Is Private." As he put it, "Mom truly appreciated [her fans'] presence and their applause. But you shouldn't attempt to be personal-she drew lines, and she
could cut you off "34 Levitt preserved Merman's privacy with a hard-tobalance mix of compassion, empathy, and some real, no-nonsense
toughness-more traits he had in common with his mom.

The illness affected Ethel's ability to talk. At the beginning, she was able
to speak, but her speech was slurred, and as the tumor ran its course, she became increasingly aphasic. Toward the end, there was no Merman voice left
at all. Tony Cointreau recalled a rather miraculous occasion during this time,
involving a small needlepoint pillow he'd given her with the words "She's Me
Pal" stitched on it, one of the songs she'd performed at Camp Yankhank.
Tears were streaming down Ethel's cheeks, and holding the pillow to her, the
"speechless" woman then started to sing "She's Me Pal." Says Cointreau with
astonishment, "And Ethel sang the entire song from start to finish."35

At first Ethel's health benefited from a healer Bob brought in, who had reduced her brain tumor mass by a third. At a certain point, however, his
mother refused to allow the healer in to see her anymore, and Bob made the
agonizing choice to acquiesce to her wishes and confront a situation in which
his mother now faced certain death rather than a miraculous, if temporary,
recovery. This sad and wrenching period did, however, provide moments of
sweet intimacy and bittersweet illumination. Bob notes that this twilight period gave him insight not just into his mother's life, her friends, and her nature but into human nature. "That big, Ethel Merman persona was shrinking from the impact of a brain tumor, and as it disappeared so did many of Mom's more limited friendships." It's the rare person with skills to act with
respect, understanding, and helpfulness in the face of such finality and in the
face of the suffering of a loved friend or colleague. Mary Martin was one of
the few who could, and did so with warmth and grace. "She would sit by my
mother's bed and hold her hand," recalls Levitt. "She would talk to her softly
and even cry with her gently. She was not afraid to share the woe of Mom's
terrible predicament, but she never bottomed out there. She had the courage
and loving presence to go into that woe, but she had the skillful grace to rise
up through it again and return with Mom to the relief of more soft talk and
silent smiling."36 Mary encouraged Ethel to keep moving, to stay active and
alert, explaining to her friend that she'd had to do the same thing during her
recent rehabilitation. In addition to son Bob, family "members" Tony Cointreau and Jim Russo were at Ethel's side constantly; from Queens, old family friends Fritz and Anna Panzer, Carol and Joe Freund came every week, as
did Madeline Gaxton.

Ethel was able to cheat the neurologists on their predictions but not by
much. On Wednesday, February IS, 1984, ten months after her diagnosis, she
died in her sleep. She had left precise instructions in her last will and testament, and in accordance with her wishes, a small, private funeral service was
held at St. Bartholomew's, the Manhattan Episcopalian church that Merman
liked to attend. At the service, close friend Dorothy Strelsin brought seventysix roses, one for each year of Merman's life, and afterward, Levitt, Cointreau,
and other intimates scattered the petals on Ethel's brass bed, interspersing
them among her beloved Muppet dolls. For several days, they let them dry
there and then distributed handfuls to Ethel's inner circle of close colleagues
and loved ones. Levitt made a special trip to bring these and other mementos to Irving Berlin, who, in his nineties, had been too frail to attend her service. At the maestro's apartment, Berlin shared his affectionate and touching
appreciations of Ethel and her work with her son.

New York knew that with Merman gone it had lost a part of itself As
Carol Charming said, "It's like the Statue of Liberty has fallen." The New York
Times observed, "Offstage, as well as in the theater, Miss Merman was a sort
of symbol gaudy, speech, York New her with era, her of Broadway the of j ew-
elry, flamboyant, gum-chewing manner."37 On the evening of February 16,
1984, theaters along Broadway dimmed their lights in homage to her. At the
time, Bob Levitt was returning from picking up his mother's cremated remains from a crematorium in the Bronx. Riding in his friend's car, heading
downtown on Broadway, he had his friend stop the vehicle so he could place
the urn with his mother's ashes onto a sidewalk on Broadway to "take in" the tribute as it was happening-he would soon understand how his mom could
have spent time talking to the ashes of their other family members. (Several
years earlier, Ethel had closed out the family mausoleum in Colorado Springs
and had taken possession of her daughter's ashes, her parents, and later those
of Bob Levitt Sr., whose widow gave them to her. Today all of their cremated
remains, including Ethel Sr.'s, remain in the possession of Merman's family
intimates.)

Ethel left a private set of instructions along with her official will of November i8, 1980. She wished to have her body cremated and the ashes given
to Bob Levitt Jr. Her estate was to be divided largely between Levitt and the
two grandchildren, Barbara and Michael Geary. It was valued at eight hundred thousand dollars-a very low total, the press noted. In fact, most of her
assets were held by the American Entertainment Enterprise, the company
Merman had formed under the guidance of her close associate Irving Katz,
who was its CEO.

Merman's will stipulated that son-in-law Bill Geary receive the marble
urns that had once stood at the Colorado mausoleum, along with five thousand dollars. To the Actors' Fund of America she gave a thousand dollars;
twenty-six thousand more was distributed among friends and family caregivers. Granddaughter Barbara received nothing in the way of personal items
through the will, since the two were not on speaking terms. A couple of years
earlier, there'd been an incident when Barbara brought her soon-to-behusband to have a meal with Grandma, and Ethel pitched a fit about his unkempt hippie appearance. Barbara dashed off a " `How dare you!' letter" ("It
was a function of being twenty-two," she says now), and the two never rec-
onciled.38

Merman's will also specified that her personal effects were to be auctioned
off, which disappointed MCNY's Theater Collection curator, Mary Henderson, who had approached Levitt about obtaining some memorabilia for
its collection. Since Ethel had donated her father's scrapbook collection to
the museum and done two high-profile benefits on its behalf, she was certainly aware of the museum's role in preserving her legacy, and it's rather odd
that she didn't set a few items aside to give to its collection. It is also odd that
Ethel identified so few items for friends and family. Before Christie's auction,
Levitt, who had gone through his mother's things, set aside several things he
wanted to stay in the family: Barbara was given Ethel's big brass bed and a
broach that had belonged to Agnes Zimmermann-an item that Levitt
wanted to keep on the women's side of the family.

On October to, 1984, nearly everything else of Ethel's went up for auction, including the special Tony Award she received in 1972, the rifle from the
Annie Get Your Gun revival, her "Sarah Bernhardt cup" from Josh Logan, her
furniture, clothing, and jewelry, including the famous gold charm bracelet.
A few people bought items to preserve them: Marie Marchesani purchased a
watch of Bob Levitt Sr.'s and gave it to Levitt Jr.; Benay Venuta purchased
the oil painting she'd done of Merman as Rose and donated it to the Museum
of the City of New York. Katz, to whom Ethel had bequeathed a beloved
Panama Hattie portrait, purchased her iconic charm bracelet.

Radie Harris, the gossip columnist who had followed Merman's career for
decades, described the auction:

It certainly was the first time within my memory that a Tony Award winner
has shown such a lack of sentiment in this highly coveted honor. But Ethel was
totally unsentimental about any of her personal possessions. I find this especially depressing, since some of these mementos would have been greatly treasured by her son, Bob Levitt, her grandchildren and close friends, like Madeline [G] axton,... and so many others. Perhaps that is why ... so few of her
fellow co-workers ... were represented in the Christie's East turnout. Joshua
Logan was among the few exceptions, but he made no bids.39

Soon after Ethel's death, a film producer who wanted to make a biopic of
Merman's life approached the American Entertainment Enterprise. Would
Bob okay it? When Levitt discovered that "the producer had been responsible for throwing the inaugural ball for George Bush, Sr., I lost all interest in
placing my mother's life story in his hands."40 Since then he has kept his
mother's memory largely out of the hands of entrepreneurs and has celebrated her memory through more informal and personal venues. It would
prove impossible for him (or anybody else) to keep Ethel Merman from living on with others who would memorialize her, in so many ways.