Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman is widely considered the icon of the Broadway musical.  Born on 16 January1908 in Astoria, Queens, Ethel Agnes Zimmerman would go on to become one of biggest stars.  Despite having had no professional training, Merman was renown for her powerful, clear voice.  After opening in George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy in 1930,  Merman worked in Broadway musical theatre for nearly half a century, moving from hits like Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1934) to Irving Berlin‘s Annie Get Your Gun  and Call Me Madam (1946 and 1950) to 1959‘s Gypsy.  She even starred as the seventh "Dolly" Hello Dolly! (1970) in a  show originally written with her in mind.

Merman’s career in film and TV, by contrast, never ignited: Hollwyood never knew what to do with this brashy, brass diva, and she only kept her stage role in only one adaptation of her shows, 20th Century Fox‘s Call Me Madam in 1953.  Much of this was due to Merman‘s public persona and performance style, which were deemed too brash for Hollywood.  Nothing demure about her: Merman was tough, salty, down to earth, and was even unable physically to aspire to the effortless, upperclass glamour required of white female film stars of the studio era. Merman introduced some of the most famous songs of the 20th century: I’ve Got Rhythm, Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries, It’s De-Lovely, Blow Gabriel Blow, Anything Goes, Anything You Can Do I can Do Better, You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun, There’s No Business Like Show Business, The Hostess with the Mostess, and Everything’s Coming Up Roses.  After retiring from the stage after her 1970 run as "Dolly", Merman performed in concert tours and appeared on many TV shows and in film cameos (including her hysterical turn as Lt. Hurwitz in the disastor spoof, Airplane!).  Merman died at the age of 76 in 1984.

Merm Tidbit of the Month: June 08

Fun Fact in June -- Although we think of Ethel as the quintessential belter, no one used the term to describe her until the early 1950s. Before then, she was called everything from a blues singer, jazz singer, a "rhythm girl," crooner, torch singer, and once in the 1930s, a coon shouter.

Merm Tidbit of the Month: May 08

Fun Fact in May --  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..

Merm Tidbit of the Month: April 08

April's Fun Fact--  Marilyn (Cantor) Baker, one of the daughters of Eddie Cantor, was such an enthusiastic Ethel Merman fan that Ethel made her President of the Ethel Merman Fan Club in the early 1930s. (Her dad had to send out his assistant one day when Marilyn skipped school and went down to a
Brooklyn theatre to hear Merman perform).  As President, Marilyn was able to rally other young members into voting Ethel Merman as the best singer in a radio contest in which Ethel was up against older, more established singing stars.  "I never realised those contests were real!" she says today.

Merm Tidbit of the Month: March 08

Fun factoid for March -- During the run of GYPSY on Broadway, Ethel was uncharacteristically ill with throat problems (she'd hurt a blood vessel).  Friend and fellow Broadway diva Mary Martin, then in SOUND OF MUSIC, sent her the
following handwritten note.  Dr. Craig is the throat doctor the two shared...

Dear Queen! —
We heard you were “out”--!  This like hearing that Gabriel has stopped
blowing you know what!—so we went by to see our mutual friend and
co-producer [Leland Hayward] –at your theatre, to find out how you
were—and there he sat with David Merrick on the steps of the lobby—I
only wish I had a picture of Leland and David to send instead of this
note.  Then, you would know how  much you are loved and missed.
Take it easy "boy" (as our darling Doctor Craig wd say)—try not to
worry—and know that you are truly are—"The One and only" Merman—horn or
no horn!!
~ Love always, Mary and Richard

Merm Tidbit of the Month: February 08

Fun fact for this month --  Merman made $2500 a week for her work at 20th Century Fox for the films CALL ME MADAM and THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS in the early 1950s. CALL ME MADAM was the only filmed adaptation of a Merman show where the star kept her leading role on the silver screen.

Merm Tidbit of the Month: January 08

January 2008---Happy 100th, Ethel!  It is easy to picture the “Astoria doll with a trumpet in her throat” still going strong today.  After all, in 1970—forty years after her Broadway debut in the Gershwin Brothers’ Girl Crazy---Mermen appeared in her last Broadway show. 

She played the seventh Dolly Levi in Hello Dolly,  a show originally written with Merman in mind. On January 16th, take a moment to celebrate the Brass Diva with a glass of champagne on the rocks, her long-time drink of choice as you listen to your favorite Merman recording.