Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (86 page)

Ethel Merman was "not just performing all the time.
She's been in the middle of things that have made history."

JULE STYNE

Merman's most immediate personal legacy is her family. Today her son, Bob
Levitt, lives in a small, close-knit community north of San Francisco, where he
keeps up with business affairs involving his mother and mentors children in programs in which they write short plays. He devotes considerable energy to his
community and to various other social and political activities. He has an adult
son, Richard. Ethel's son-in-law, Bill Geary, is retired and resides in Sweden with
his wife of forty years. Bill and Ethel Jr.'s son, Michael Geary, lives in Florida,
where he maintains a swimming pool business. His sister, Barbara, works at a
small, innovative theater school in Northern California. At night she sleeps in
her grandma's big brass bed. Tony Cointreau, Ethel's "second son"-and the
family's "historian and archivist," as Levitt puts it keeps the Merman flame
alive in Manhattan, where he lives with Jim Russo, his partner of four decades.

Of course, Merman's legacy extends far beyond her family. By the time of
Gypsy, Merman remarked she was "turning into a landmark of sorts."' It
therefore made sense that several years before her death, this human Broadway "landmark" entered negotiations about renaming the 46th Street Theatre after her,2 plans that, according to her son, came quite close to materializing before she died.

There may be no Ethel Merman Theater today on Broadway, but the star
is far from absent. Just a year after her death, shows and tributes started popping up across the globe. During the mid-r98os, three Japanese women performed as Ethel Merman, reversing the tradition of whites donning the "yellow mask" for gags, as Ethel had done with William Gaxton in Anything Goes.
Their "Japanese Ethel" was not a serious homage so much as a good time set to music. In July 1985, Jack Tinker, theater critic for London's Daily Mail,
wrote a show called Call Me Miss Birds Eye, in which he performed as narrator. This was a tribute that moved chronologically from Girl Crazy through
Gypsy and presented Ethel's hit songs (sung by Libby Morris) interspersed
with colorful Merman anecdotes-such as the one that gave Birds Eye its title.
Reviews were positive: Christopher Edwards, Tinker's colleague at the Daily
Mail, said it was "staged with wit, skill and professional pride.... This is
Class with a capital K."3 Said Clive Hirshorn, "Only one thing is missing ...
Ethel Merman!"4

Three years later, U.S. singer Rita McKenzie starred in a one-woman tribute, Ethel Merman's Broadway: Call Me Ethel.' which ran off-Broadway at the
John Houseman Theatre. McKenzie wrote the show with director Christopher Powich, who had interviewed Merman several years before. To spice up
the proceedings, they too mixed songs from Merman's career with autobiographical elements and anecdotes (such as her keeping a swear box). McKenzie performed Merm with panache: during "Hostess with the Mostes'," for
instance, she treated the audience to 1950s-styled hors d'oeuvres. Tony Cointreau recalls how carefully Ethel Merman's Broadway had been researched,
and Bob Levitt, in New York for the initial run, told McKenzie he enjoyed
it. Others did too; the New York Times called it "A Don't Miss!" and Rita
McKenzie has been doing the act periodically in venues across the country
ever since.

The Myths Take Over

In the years since her death, various mythic images of Merman have taken
hold. A prominent iconic image is of Merman as survivor: a woman who
lived a long life, lived it loudly, and possessed an unquestioned sense of self
and place in that world. This is the singer who introduced Depression audiences to the lines "Don't take it serious / it's too mysterious" in "Life Is Just
a Bowl of Cherries." In away, this is one place where Merman the person and
Merman the personality intersect: on being matter-of-fact and optimistic.
Another was her ability to remain ordinary in the face of an extraordinary career. To June Squibb, Electra the stripper in Gypsy, "Working in the theatre
was the most natural thing in the world for Ethel Merman.... It was like
someone saying, `Yeah, I dusted today. '115 That style has burnished Merman's
image with approachability-she is not just Aunt Ethel, but someone comfortingly regular. This is the Ethel who never viewed herself as being "above" working for Sears, singing with a Sanitation Band, doing signings at Korvettes, and so on.

But the extraordinary side of Merman is even bigger. And as a singer and
performer she was extraordinary, even if as a person she was not: this Ethel
Merman is a kind of superheroine, an Ethel who could not be put down by
anybody or, it seemed, by any earthly force; she was the "Atomic Bomb" that
headlined clubs in the '6os. Despite Ethel's great physical stamina, this myth
of her as woman warrior flies in the face of biographical fact; family members
do not forget the men who took advantage of her celebrity, abused her trust,
abused her. But that mythic Merm is half saint, half soldier, a figure people
summon to come to their aid. In a 2004 song "Change the World," pop
singer-satirist Nellie McKay asks who she "should ... be today" and then
sings, "Have to have a plan / Please, Ethel Merman / help me out of this jam!"6

Although these iconic Ethels overlap with the "Real Ethel," they rarely coincide fully. Some of the Merman myths, especially those regarding the big
voice and big behavior, have utterly outstripped reality. People tend to adapt
Ethel Merman to suit whatever they need her to be: pure Broadway queen
and musical triumph; Jewish, anti-Semitic, or both; homophobic, lesbian, or
both; generous or cheap; loud, sweet; or all of these things at once. So fans
make Ethel Merman into or out of their own image.

If the Merman icon is varied, her appreciators are even more so. There are
the professional consumers (critics, experts, people in the entertainment industry) and the fans (the regular, ordinary people). Of course, the two groups
overlap, but the professional appreciators are assumed to be reasoned, detached observers, while the fans are often considered overinvolved adulators.
(Fans, after all, are by etymology fanatics.) Supposedly, experts and fans are
separated by levels of professionalism, education, and expertise, but with
Ethel Merman we can see just how feeble that opposition is. After all, "serious appreciators" can brilliantly assess Merman's place in Broadway history,
or give concrete specifics about every show she ever did, or analyze the details of her voice's belt and diction, but so too can many of the "ordinary"
fans. These fans, with their unofficial museums of legitimate and pirated
recordings, tapes, kinetoscopes, letters, autographs, auction items, and memorabilia, are themselves expert historians. Get one error wrong, and you will
hear about it; Ethel devotees love to correct one another, sometimes out of
respect for the historical record, sometimes with an eye toward bitchy oneupmanship. What's more, professional appreciators, such as Walter Kerr and
Walter Winchell, have often written as if they were nothing more than excited fans themselves, gushing out praises with unabashed enthusiasm.

Merman has never generated neutral responses, and today the intensity of
fans' devotion can reach insane, even toxic, levels. Given that Merman was
such an overpowering figure to begin with, it's perhaps not surprising that
even now she seems to demand intense involvement--despite her actual distaste for that kind of attention from fans. For some followers, competitive
zeal is a measure of one's level of devotedness or presumed expertise, providing entree into a club to which one is either rewarded with or refused membership. Such extreme fandom is particularly vibrant in New York and on
Broadway-themed Internet sites, where possessive and peculiar behavior has
a flair all its own.

Fans' interactions with one another range from big-hearted generosity to
spiteful challenges, and writing this book exposed me to a delirious range of
Merman-driven humanity. More than once, people communicated passionately about "their" Ethel or their "Ethel collections" and then shut off like a
switch when I said I was writing a book. It was not that they didn't want to
go on record, it seemed, but that they were irritated that it was not their
record. (One of Merman's costars asked me, "How can you write a biography on Ethel Merman if you never knew her?") A few people spoke only after
learning that this book was contracted by a university press, that is, by one
less profit-driven than a commercial press. Others seemed agitated, even to
the point of silliness, when this biographer's perspective didn't duplicate their
own, such as in not disliking Mary Martin enough or in believing that Merman's importance to gay fans and drag queens merited discussion. The reasons for these strange relations among Ethel's devotees are as varied as the
devotees themselves, for fandom-despite its communal nature-is a highly
personal affair, and the affair between Merman and her lovers features some
rather amazing turf wars.

When money is involved, the Merman universe is as nasty as any other
business, and many of the people whose livelihoods depend on the Merman
name can be especially touchy. Several performers whose shows announce
some homage to Merman, from vocalists to male drag artists, simply refused
to discuss someone whose name and image were earning them a living. Thus
invested in Ethel Merman, why should they give anything away? These are
people who have their own piece of the Merm, just as others hold on to her
via a trinket or a souvenir of an encounter (emotional "possessions," which
seem a more appropriate way to honor a woman ultimately so detached from
her own possessions). Curiously, Merman's family, which stands to have
more to gain or lose than anyone in memorializing Ethel Merman, is not part
of this competitive world, despite its constant incursion into their lives. Says granddaughter Barbara Geary, "Personally, I think there's room for everyone.
My grandmother touched so many people, and there is plenty of her to go
around." 7 From Bob Levitt: "In my heart, I know that her memory is served
best and enjoyed more in an open atmosphere; in sincere, non-proprietary
celebration."8

In Ethel's Spirit

One professional "Merman lover" who celebrates Merman in an honest,
open way is singer Klea Blackhurst. Her passion for Merman is such that,
when Ethel died in 1984, a friend had to call her to break the news to her personally. Today her Web site features "The Book of Merman,"9 a short, wellresearched bio that makes clear Blackhurst's respect for the tradition and
roots Merman represents to her. (It puns on Blackhurst's Utah origins.) She
is an ardent fan of belting: "I will defend that sound to the end." Her mom,
she says, was also a belter, adding that while growing up, "I just thought every
woman sang like her and Ethel.""

In zoos, Blackhurst opened her show of about twenty Merman songssome famous, some less known (such as Happy Hunting's "Just a Moment
Ago") in Everything the Traffic Will Allow at Danny's Skyline Room, a New
York cabaret club. Response was great: the New York Times subtitled its review "Nothing to Hit but the Heights."" Like Call Me Ethel and Bird's Eye,
Blackhurst's show consisted of songs peppered with anecdotes in between. In
addition to stories about Ethel were stories of her own travels down the Ethel
trail, such as her thrill of working with Dody Goodman, an original cast
member of Something for the Boys. Even the vase of artificial roses on the
piano was a show of respect to Ethel and her allergies to flowers.

Her contagious enthusiasm and humor make it easy to like Blackhurst,
whose vitality fully conjures up Merman's spirit. Vocally, she shares Merman's
great belt and crisp enunciation, her astonishing phrasing, breath, and vocal
control. She can also hold the long notes and handle the complex rhythms
of Gershwin and the fast pace of Porter, and she works well in slower ballads
and love songs as well. (Blackhurst's rendition of "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" is terrifically slower and softer than Merman's.) When I asked her how she prepared for Everything the Traffic Will Allow, Blackhurst said she was intent on
capturing the Merman spirit rather than actually matching the voice. "I chose
not to imitate Merman," she says. "Rita McKenzie had done it before, and
done it very well. I don't think I would have been that good."12

Although vocally Bette Midler has less in common with Merman than either Blackhurst or McKenzie, she is widely perceived as quasi-official carrier
of the Ethel Merman torch. Midler's persona shares Merman's physical,
earthy qualities, her purported "Jewish" ethnicity, and seems to channel the
vibrant, lusty chutzpah of Ethel's public image. Like her, she is ample-figured
and short and has a robust, down-to-earth presence. Miss Midler has never
tried to be a glamour queen and also shares the same lack of upper-crust pretensions Merman was known for. There is also the near-constant twinkle in
her eye and her readiness for a naughty joke: after marrying German performance artist Martin Von Haselberg, Midler told the press, "Every night I get
dressed up like Poland and he invades me."

Midler's career is an open acknowledgment of predecessors like Merman.
She has recorded songs made famous by Ethel and other vocalists from the
'40s and '5os, such as Peggy Lee (an entire CD) and the Andrews Sisters
("Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy"). And she has even walked in some of their very
same footsteps, performing, as Merman and Judy Garland had done, at the
old Palace Theatre in 1973; she starred in the film For the Boys (recalling
Something for the Boys), and portrayed Jacqueline Susann in Isn't She Great?
Perhaps the most overt connection to Merman was Midler's role as Mama
Rose in the 1993 TV film of Gypsy. (Yes, she is better than Rosalind Russell!)

As much as Midler may recall Merman, however, she also reminds us that
Ethel can never be reproduced; the two women are products of completely
different eras. The Divine Miss M delivers her off-color remarks more publicly than Ethel ever could (or would) have. Her relationship with gay fans,
moreover, existed before she was even out of the gate; after appearing on
Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof, many of Bette's early singing gigs were in
New York's gay bath houses popular after Stonewall and before AIDS. And
Bette overtly courted a campy persona, doing early performances dressed as
a wheelchair-bound mermaid, dedicating aTV special to "truth and beauty,"
cracking jokes about her aging body (with upper arms taking on a life of their
own), all things that may evince the spirit of Merman but would never have
been possible in the actual circumstances of Ethel's own life and attitude
toward her career.