Caryl Flinn

Caryl Flinn is the author of Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman released by U. California Press in November 2007. She has given talks on Merman in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Tucson, Iowa City, and Providence and has given interviews for WICN, WAMC, WILL, KERA, KWGS, SF television station KRON and online columns including broadwaystars.com. Her previous books, on film music, are geared to academic readers, Strains of Utopia (on classic Hollywood films) The New German Cinema; and an anthology, Music and Cinema. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.

(posted May 12, 2008)
The ETHEL MERMAN FACTOID OF THE MONTH, May 2008
My goal is to update the site so as to post an interesting fact or trivia item about Ethel Merman at least once a month. Here is my posting for May 2008:
Many of the people I interviewed for BRASS DIVA said that Merman "never lost touch with her roots."  The singer who started out as a stenographer in Queens used her typing skills all her life--typing out all-alphabet sentences for any interviewer well into the 1970s.  She also kept a strong sense of organization and order intact: in her date book, where names of friends, doctors, birthdays were scrupulously filed, she also kept recipes--including one for a grilled cheese sandwich. For all previous postings, please review the Ethel page!