Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (16 page)

That Broadway could get away with more than Hollywood's heaviercoffered but more heavily regulated productions meant the musical had a bit
more room to engage those fantasies of other worlds. This aspect of musical
theater again helps anchor it deeply in the hearts of fans; it is small wonder
that the Broadway musical has always held a special place for so many people,
especially those for whom "different worlds" and social organizations have
special impact (for instance, gay, lesbian, or queer-identified people).

Although the musical theater is a uniquely American form of entertainment,
many of its aesthetic roots are European (French burlesque, British melodrama,
operetta). Moreover, as a business-show business-musical theater is typically
viewed as entertainment, not art, which gives the musical a rather middle-brow status that has made it an easy target for culture vultures to dismiss for its ostensibly uncultured status and profit orientation. And, despite sparkling exceptions like The Cradle Will Rock, Candide, West Side Story, and many others,
musicals are not known for taking many political or aesthetic risks, golden era
or no. The aim, especially during the Depression, was generally to please, to uplift, and at times to gently, very gently, edify.

As the musical continued to develop, it distanced itself from operetta (too
highbrow, European), and from vaudeville and music hall (too lowbrow,
working class), to become an exemplar of middle-brow American values. In
the early 1930s, its audience was still primarily New Yorkers, and the city was
still a city of many working-class immigrants. Broadway remained a relatively
affordable form of entertainment, though somewhat less so than in the 'zos
and much less so than its new rival, sound cinema. Not only did Broadway
entertainment embrace American values, it often defined and announced
them. Audience members could easily digest its normative fictions as so many
spectacular numbers, star turns, and captivating, light, enjoyable tales. The
musical comedy was a good salesman. Even Girl Crazy dramatized the power
of entrepreneurial thinking, assimilation, true love, and responsible citizenship. The Protestant work ethic and its moral equivalent (good is always recognized and rewarded) was told and told again. Reward often took the form
of true love (and, in the Depression, a surprise stash of cash to bootRomeo has an inheritance!). Half fantasy, half ideology, musicals offered a
Manichaean world of easily separated good and evil, where the pretentious,
corrupt, or mean-hearted would get their comeuppance in the end-and it
was characters like Ethel's that would robustly (if naively) dole out their just
desserts.

Merman was and would remain one of the most profoundly American figures of this relatively young American genre. Brash and down-to-earth, she
moved and spoke in the vernacular of Broadway. (Even if Mary Martin was
no less the quintessential American-she, too, excelled as Annie Oakleyher incarnation of that quintessence was more genteel, demure, and not at all
"New York.") In other words, Ethel Merman brought bustling vitality to the
musical, but the musical also brought it to her and helped with the "Americanization of Merm." Ethel was indeed the perfect star for Depression-era
Broadway, with her seemingly irrepressible vitality and her chipper, but devoid of saccharine, spirits. Then there was her own life story, much like the
book of a Depression-era musical itself. And she was an interesting woman
who broke the rules, with her unusual voice and brassy style, and also embodied them, with her pragmatism and work ethic.

The 1934-35 season was not a bad one for Broadway. Dramas such as The
Children's Hour, The Petrified Forest, Dark Victory, with Tallulah Bankhead
(soon to be Merman's companion on the social circuit), and Romeo andJuliet,
with Katharine Cornell, were doing well. Some of the musicals found refuge
in older fare, such as the operettas Revenge with Music and The Great Waltz.
The new revue Life Begins at 8.40 sparkled with its contemporary sets, songs,
and style. But the biggest musical event of the season was Cole Porter's Anything Goes.

Cole Porter

Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, in 1891 and was raised in a well-to-do
family. Encouraged by an adoring mother, he wrote songs-music and lyrics
both-as a boy. He graduated from Yale University as a pre-law student to
placate his father, but the experience seemed only to confirm his passion for
music, and he ultimately dropped out of Harvard Law School. And while his
first Broadway efforts in the mid r91os were not well received, by the late 'zos
and '30s, Porter had become the toast of the town.

In 1919, during one of his many periods in Europe, the gay Porter married
wealthy divorcee Linda Thomas in a more or less asexual union (Linda had
just left an abusive marriage). But theirs was a fond intimacy, and Cole remained deeply devoted to Linda "in his own fashion." Both had health problems: Linda's respiratory ailments eventually killed her; Porter, for his part,
endured a debilitating horse riding accident that occurred in 1937. It crushed
bones in both legs and necessitated dozens of surgeries, an eventual leg amputation, and painkillers that, combined with alcohol abuse, slowly transformed the composer into a frail, withdrawn man. He kept working until the
1958 amputation and died six years later.

Whether as composer or social figure, Porter was renowned for combining the debonair wit and cosmopolitanism of his urbane lifestyle with
naughty bits that shocked. His lyrics and rhymes came from a variety of high
and vernacular, exotic and banal sources. He would drop phrases in French,
use rhythms from North Africa, reference the Taj Mahal, Mickey Mouse,
Fred Astaire's feet, Camembert cheese, and Pepsodent toothpaste. "A Porter
song is a luxury item," wrote Walter Clemons, "expensively made ... and extravagantly rhymed. In a way no other songs of the period quite did, Porter
created a world. It was a between-the-wars realm of drop dead chic and careless name-dropping insouciance. And it was a sexy place to be invited."is Anything Goes was Ethel's fourth Broadway show and her first with Porter.
Over the following decade, Porter and Merman worked together on three
other shows: Red, Hot and Blue! Something for the Boys, and Panama Hattie.
None rivaled Anything Goes, which most Broadway historians and critics rank
along with Kiss Me Kate as Porter's best work. In 1934, it was certainly his best
to date, and Ethel was well aware of what the show and his songs did for her
own career. "It gives me a chance for the first time to sing straight lyrics that
aren't of the torch song order," she told the press. She loved the score. "It's
the first time I haven't been expected to shout about endearing sentiments in
a volume of voice calculated to shake the luster off the crystal chandelier in
the lobby.... now ... I don't have to sound like the Sandy Hook foghorn
with such songs as `You're the Top' and `Anything Goes."'i6

How Anything Goes came to pass is a legendary tale for Broadway mavens
and Mermaphiles alike. Vin Freedley, now working without Alex Aarons, was
looking for a vehicle for William Gaxton. The other male lead, intended for
Bert Lahr, went to Victor Moore. During the summer of 1934, they lined up
Porter, who was abroad in France, for the songs, the majority of which he
wrote quickly. For the book, Freedley secured Guy Bolton, then in England,
and P. G. Wodehouse, in France. Howard Lindsay was brought on to direct.
The comedy took place on a gambling ship; the hook was that the boat sank.
In mid-August, Bolton and Wodehouse gave Freedley their book, which they
called Hard to Get. Freedley, the story goes, was unsure about how funny audiences would find the tale. No sooner had he read it than fate stepped in.
On September 8, a fire gutted the real-life pleasure cruise SS Morro Castle,
just off the coast of New Jersey. One hundred thirty-four people died. A musical comedy about a sunken boat was now unthinkable.'7

By this point Bolton and Wodehouse had other commitments, forcing
Freedley to scramble for new writers. Director Howard Lindsay, who also had
several shows under his belt as a writer, agreed to write on the condition that
he be given a collaborator. The question was, who? According to Cole Porter,
after speaking with Lindsay about the issue, he mentioned it to magazine illustrator Neysa McMein. The next day, McMein called Cole to tell him she
had had a dream about Russel Crouse, and McMein's dreams, Porter maintains, were taken very seriously around town. Porter recommended Crouse,
who had done a couple of shows, Hold Your Horses and The Gang's All Here,
neither a resounding success. But his promise was evident, and, apparently
with the blessing of McMein, he was brought onto the project. (The story is
that, when Freedley went to look for him, Crouse was working in an office
literally across the street.) Anything Goes marked the first time Crouse and Lindsay worked together-the first show for one of Broadway's greatest playwriting teams of the century. According to colleague Nunnally Johnson,
Lindsay "was a great technician, and Crouse was very good with ideas. Wonderful working team, the best of them."18

The pairing was as happy as it was long-lived. When asked the usual question of how they actually worked together, Crouse joked that each one wrote
every other word. "Deciding who should write the first word was really the
only difficulty we had with Anything Goes. We finally tossed a coin, borrowed
from Cole, who was busy writing the music and didn't need it. Mr. Lindsay
won."i9 Their revisions could scarcely keep pace with the schedule Freedley
had established for the show. "By the time rehearsals started," said Ethel, "all
we had was the first act-and that had large holes in it. Suddenly we'd come
to an empty place in the book and Howard and Buck [Crouse's nickname]
would say, `Now this is a very funny scene which we haven't written.' "20

Crouse recalls:

Mr. Porter was equal to all the emergencies we created and I think we hold the
record. The show did not even have a name for days and days.... Billy Caxton finally baptized it accidentally. In answer to a question as to whether he
would mind making an entrance a minute after the curtain went up, Mr. Caxton replied "In this kind of a spot, anything goes!" We all leaped on the last
words and an electrician started spelling them in electric lights. Mr. Porter
dashed off to write a title song. He came in with it the next day.21

Lindsay and Crouse finished the story the night of the first dress rehearsal.
Protagonist Billy Crocker (name taken from a friend of Porter's at Yale) is
bidding adieu to society girl Hope Harcourt (Bettina Hall) on the ship that's
taking her to Europe, where she intends to marry a dull Englishman of
means. Crocker (Gaxton) misses the debark call and finds himself stowing
away in a room he shares with U. S. Public Enemy No. 13 (Victor Moore), disguised as Rev. Dr. Moon, who carries a machine gun-called "putt putt"in a saxophone case most all of the time. Ethel plays nightclub singer and former evangelist Reno Sweeney, who is sweet on Billy Crocker. Once he discovers
Moon's real identity, Crocker becomes mistaken for Public Enemy No. i, and
he and other characters have to assume various disguises-sailors, Chinese
couples, priests, a Pomeranian dog-in a slapdash series of mistaken identities. For its comedy, Anything Goes was also banking on America's fascination
with gangster culture. Just a few years earlier, Hollywood had released Public Enemy and Scarface, and in 1934, the real Public Enemy No. i, John Dillinger, was shot dead, as were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. But this
play was among the first attempts to treat that material comically.

The show previewed on November S at the Colonial Theatre in Boston,
where ticket prices ranged from $.83 for the second balcony to $3.30 for orchestra seats. The crew didn't know what to expect in Boston, given all the
changes so late in the game. There was, moreover, a blunder that night on Bill
Gaxton's part. "Billy had on white tie and tails, and the audience was supposed to think [he and Hall] had stayed ... out until four or five in the
morning, necking. Afterward, Billy was to make an entrance into his stateroom, find Victor Moore.... The trouble was Billy had forgotten that he was
to go into the next scene without changing costume, and in making his quick
run from the poop deck he'd absent-mindedly taken off his trousers. After
leaving the girl on deck, he entered the stateroom with his trousers draped
over his arm, and said, `What a night, what a dawn, what a sunrise!" " Surprisingly, the Boston censors didn't make anything of it. The show went off
without a hitch; in fact, critics raved. "Here is the best musical play in many
years, not moons," wrote George Holland, who predicted Anything Goes
would run until "Red Day" (May Day), when Ethel would be returning to
Hollywood for her contract with Goldwyn."

More raves greeted the show when it came to the Alvin Theatre on Broadway. "Anything Goes ... Everything's Right," said one.24 The principals
scored, and critics singled Ethel out for high praise. Ethel Merman sang with
"magnetic authority," said Brooks Atkinson.25 Another reviewer wrote, "Miss
Merman runs away with the show. The explanation is a simple one-Miss
Merman has almost an exclusive on the Porter songs. But while the songs are
largely responsible for the high rating that musical attains, it is also true that
the songs are the sort that require the right delivery. And Miss Merman is
roo% right. She stops the show before five minutes have elapsed ... and then
proceeds to tear them apart all evening."26 Merman's singing and Porter's
writing were singled out for their accomplishments. Said one reviewer, this
was not just the usual "Al Siegel arrangements.... the Porter lyrics are trickier than a Japanese wrestler, yet as this girl sings 'em not a syllable is lost and
not an inflection misplaced."27 Porter's "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "You're the
Top," "I Get a Kick out of You," and "Anything Goes" would remain permanently linked to Merman-and she with them. For John Mason Brown
on his third viewing of the show, Merman was "still sunshine on Broadway
incarnate ... the perfect interpreter of Cole Porter."