Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman (born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann; January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American singer and actress. Known for her distinctive, powerful voice, and her leading roles in musical theater, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." She performed on Broadway in Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy, and Hello, Dolly!

She is also known for her film roles in Anything Goes (1936), Call Me Madam (1953), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Among many accolades, she received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in Call Me Madam, a Grammy Award for Gypsy, and a Drama Desk Award for Hello, Dolly!

Merman introduced many Broadway standards, including "I Got Rhythm" from Girl Crazy, "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries", "Some People" and "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy, and the Cole Porter songs "It's De-Lovely" (from Red, Hot and Blue), "Friendship" (from Du Barry Was a Lady), and "I Get a Kick Out of You", "You're the Top", and "Anything Goes" (from Anything Goes). The Irving Berlin song "There's No Business Like Show Business", written for Annie Get Your Gun, became Merman's signature song.

Early life

Ethel Merman was born January 16, 1908, in her maternal grandmother's house in Astoria, Queens, but she later insisted that the year of her birth was 1912. She was an only child. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant with James H. Dunham & Company, a Manhattan wholesale dry-goods company, and her mother, Agnes (née Gardner) Zimmermann, was a schoolteacher.

Edward had been raised in the Dutch Reformed Church and Agnes was Presbyterian. Shortly after they married, they joined the Episcopal congregation at Church of the Redeemer, where their daughter was baptized. Merman's parents were strict about church attendance and she spent every Sunday attending morning services, Sunday school, afternoon prayer meetings, and evening study groups for children.

Merman's parents insisted she have an education with training in secretarial skills, in case her entertainment career failed. Merman attended P.S. 4 and William Cullen Bryant High School (which later named its auditorium in her honor), where she pursued a commercial course that offered secretarial training. She was active in numerous extracurricular activities, including the school magazine, the speakers' club, and student council, and frequented the local music store to peruse the weekly arrivals of new sheet music.

On Friday nights, the Zimmermann family took the subway into Manhattan to see the vaudeville show at the Palace Theatre, where Merman saw Blossom Seeley, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and Nora Bayes. At home, she tried to emulate their singing styles, but found her own distinctive voice difficult to disguise.

After graduating from Bryant High School in 1924, Merman was hired as a stenographer by the Boyce-Ite Company. One day during her lunch break, she met Vic Kliesrath, who offered her a job at the Bragg-Kliesrath Corporation for a $5 increase above the weekly $23 salary she was earning, and Merman accepted the offer. She eventually became personal secretary to company president Caleb Bragg, whose frequent lengthy absences from the office to race automobiles allowed her to catch up on the sleep she had lost the previous night when she was out late singing at private parties.

During this period, Merman began performing in nightclubs, first hired by Jimmy Durante's partner Lou Clayton. At this time, she decided the name Ethel Zimmermann was too long for a theater marquee, her next ambition to sing in. She considered combining Ethel with Gardner or Hunter, which was her grandmother's maiden name. Her father strongly disapproved of these considerations, so she abbreviated Zimmermann to Merman to appease him.

Career

Early career

During a two-week singing engagement at a club in midtown Manhattan called Little Russia, Merman met agent Lou Irwin, who arranged for her to audition for Archie Mayo, a film director under contract at Warner Bros. He offered her an exclusive six-month contract, starting at $125 per week, and Merman quit her day job, only to find herself idle for weeks while waiting to be cast in a film. She urged Irwin to cancel her agreement with Mayo; instead, he negotiated her a better deal allowing her to perform in clubs while remaining on the Warner Bros.'s payroll. Merman was hired as a torch singer at Les Ambassadeurs, where the headliner was Jimmy Durante; the two became lifelong friends. She caught the attention of columnists such as Walter Winchell and Mark Hellinger, who began to give her publicity. Soon after, Merman underwent a tonsillectomy, which she feared would damage her voice, but after recovering, she discovered it was more powerful than ever.

While singing in vaudevillian revues on the Keith Circuit, Merman was signed to replace Ruth Etting in the Paramount film Follow the Leader (1930), starring Ed Wynn and Ginger Rogers. Following a successful seven-week run at the Brooklyn Paramount, she was signed to perform at the Palace for $500 per week. During the run, theater producer Vinton Freedley saw her sing and invited her to audition for the role of San Francisco café singer Kate Fothergill in the new George and Ira Gershwin musical Girl Crazy. Upon hearing her sing "I Got Rhythm", the Gershwins immediately cast her, and Merman began balancing daytime rehearsals with her matinee and evening performance schedule at the Palace. Merman introduced the songs "Sam and Delilah" and "Boy! What Love Has Done to Me!" as well as "I Got Rhythm" in the show.

Girl Crazy opened on October 14, 1930, at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 272 performances. The New York Times noted Merman sang "with dash, authority, good voice and just the right knowing style", and The New Yorker called her "imitative of no one." Merman was indifferent to her reviews, prompting George Gershwin to ask her mother: "Have you ever seen a person so unconcerned as Ethel?"

During the run of Girl Crazy, Paramount signed Merman to appear in a series of 10 short musical films, most of which allowed her to sing both a rousing number and a ballad. She also sang at the Central Park Casino, the Paramount Theatre, and a return engagement at the Palace. As soon as Girl Crazy closed, she departed with her parents for a vacation in Lake George in upstate New York, but after their first day there, Merman was summoned to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to help salvage the troubled latest edition of George White's Scandals. Because she was still under contract to Freedley, White was forced to pay the producer $10,000 for her services, in addition to her weekly $1,500 salary. Following the Atlantic City run, the show played in Newark, New Jersey, and then Brooklyn before opening on Broadway, where it ran for 202 performances.

Merman's next show, Humpty Dumpty, began rehearsals in August 1932 and opened—and immediately closed—in Pittsburgh the following month. Producer Buddy DeSylva, who also had written the book and lyrics, was certain it could be reworked into a success, and with a revamped script and additional songs by Vincent Youmans, it opened with the new title Take a Chance on November 26 at the 42nd Street Apollo Theatre, where it ran for 243 performances. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times called it "fast, loud, and funny" and added Merman "has never loosed herself with quite so much abandon." Following the Broadway run, she agreed to join the show on the road, but shortly after the Chicago opening, she claimed the chlorine in the city's water supply was irritating her throat, and returned to Manhattan.

Merman returned to Hollywood to appear in We're Not Dressing (1934), a screwball comedy based on the J. M. Barrie play The Admirable Crichton. Despite working with a cast including Bing Crosby, Carole Lombard, and Burns and Allen, under the direction of Academy Award-winning director Norman Taurog, Merman was unhappy with the experience, and she was dismayed to discover one of her musical numbers had been cut when she attended the New York opening with her family and friends. She also appeared on screen with Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions (also 1934), but her return to Broadway established her as a major star and cemented her image as a tough girl.

Anything Goes was the first of five Cole Porter musicals in which Merman starred. In addition to the title song, the score included "I Get a Kick Out of You", "You're the Top", and "Blow Gabriel Blow". It opened on November 21, 1934, at the Alvin Theatre, and the New York Post called Merman "vivacious and ingratiating in her comedy moments, and the embodiment of poise and technical adroitness" when singing "as only she knows how to do." Although Merman always had remained with a show until the end of its run, she left Anything Goes after eight months to appear with Eddie Cantor in the film Strike Me Pink (1936). She was replaced by Benay Venuta, with whom she enjoyed a long but frequently tempestuous friendship.