Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (17 page)

In many ways, Porter was the utter antithesis of Merman. He led the life
of an urbane, high-society gadabout, and Merman was down-to-earth, comparatively uneducated, and lowbrow. When interviewing him for her
195os autobiography, Pete Martin tried to get Cole to dish some dirt on their
differences: "You are suave, sophisticated; Merman to me is sort of bourgeoisie, she sort of stands for variety shows." Porter didn't bite: "Her ear was
so perfect, she'd drop [words] better than a Frenchman.... she was essentially Broadway and I was not."28 Ethel explained that their relationship
worked well because Cole and Linda were enthusiastic about people "who
had the courage to be themselves."29 Ethel's colorful, down-to-earth side gave
Cole a playful way to rail against the ennui of everyday life and middle-class
convention. So if their relationship was a clashing of class sensibilities, Cole
and Ethel nonetheless shared a common target: staid people and staid lives.
Cole delighted in her brass sparkle and was not the least bit interested in condemning it. He and Linda regularly invited her to their large elaborate
Christmas parties. "Other performers," Cole later told Pete Martin, "couldn't
command the attention of such a drunk crowd." 30

Moreover, Cole simply adored Ethel's talent, and she his. Both were hardtoiling perfectionists who knew how to bring out the best in the musical gifts
of the other. Later, Porter said, "She can sing anything. But I really tailormade [my songs] for her because I know her range so well. Her greatest note
is A natural,"31 so he would end phrases on this note. He was awed by how
Ethel would "flat a note" for comic effect (if "sharping" is "unpleasant," flatting is "funny," something heard to great effect in the lyric "floozy" in DeSylva's "Sam and Delilah"). Porter also admired how she could create blue
notes, "clinkers," as Merman explained to Martin, that get a "wonderful reaction."

Cole also appreciated Ethel's impeccable diction, noting her especially
well-enunciated D's: "A difficult thing for people singing, especially in
America, because our diction is so sloppy."32 He also enjoyed her innate
rhythm and ability to handle his songs' elaborate, often unorthodox rhythms;
only someone like Merman could stress his half-note triplets in "I Get a Kick
out of You."

Why shouldn't Cole and Ethel have adored each other? Their collaboration produced some of the biggest hits of the musical theater. "Sometimes I'd
sing in one breath `Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of
nothing to do'; sometimes I'd break it into two breaths if I was tired, and
breathe after `sky.' Only Cole would notice, "because that was one thing he
loved, that one particular phrase without a breath." Not many vocalists can
instinctively hold the "-if-" of the syllable in "terrifically" (in "I Get a Kick
out of You") to such effect.

What's more, the two didn't stop with professional appreciation. The
Merman scrapbooks preserve a loving cascade of Cole's calling cards, all
handwritten in Porter's delightful knotty scrawl. In the autumn of 1949, for
instance, when Linda Porter was hospitalized with a bronchial attack, he
wrote Ethel, gently asking, "Could you send her a little message?" and Ethel
obliged. On NBC radio's Ethel Merman Show she said, "This is for my pal
Linda Porter" before singing Cole's "You're the Top."33

After Anything Goes, Ethel didn't open a single show for which Porter didn't
send a card and gift. He was almost recklessly generous, something made possible by his wealth, of course, but made real only by his heart. Ethel, for her
part, had such respect for him that she never treated him with patronizing kid
gloves, even after the accident that left him badly injured. Porter did his utmost to keep his infirmity from guests, and when he was no longer able to
walk, his assistants would tell guests to leave the room while they carried him
from one spot to another. He would be placed on the couch, and Ethel would
be the only guest who plunked herself down next to him; others kept a more
decorous distance across the room. No other friend had-or would have been
able to get away with-such casual closeness with the composer.

Two decades after Anything Goes, Porter did confide in Martin that he had
admired Merman before they ever worked together, adding, "I don't believe
she had much faith in me [nor did her agent Lou Irwin]. She had a clause she
wouldn't go into the show unless she approved every number I'd written for
her. To make more sure, she insisted I go over to her family flat where her
Mother and Father and Lou Irwin had to pass on the songs I had." They didn't
pass on "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," which he rewrote to their approval (a big coup,
since Porter was known not to revise his songs). Ethel, he recalled, said she
wanted a more "fluid" melody. "I remember she talked with somebody connected with the show and they told me only afterwards that she didn't think
that `You're the Top' would register. It was different from anything that had
been written, you know" 3'I Anything Goes was the first score written with
Ethel's voice specifically in mind, and her role, Reno Sweeney, another brassy
nightclub singer, was also the first to be expressly written for her.

If there were any tensions in the cast during the show's run, no one let on.
Ethel especially enjoyed Bill Gaxton, the show's most established star, who
reportedly insisted on sharing his top billing with her and Victor Moore.
(Gaxton's wife, Madeline, remained one of Ethel's closest friends, long after
Gaxton's death in 1963.) During the 1934 holiday season, Bill and Madeline
elicited Ethel's help in selecting their customized Christmas card, settling
on "The Gaxtons say `You're the Top."' (Pack rat Ethel saved all three mock-ups.) During the run, Ethel also enjoyed a warm relationship with
Freedley, ofwhom Porter said in more bitter years, "He has every background
to be a very nice man and is essentially not."35 But all were riding high. Onstage and on radio, Freedley would introduce his protegee: "Nobody who has
heard her could ever ask for anything more!"36

In December 1934, the principals of Anything Goes were feted in the
Caprice Room of the Hotel Weylin, an event for which set designer Donald
Oenslager had copied one of the show's sets. That month, Ethel also attended
a postshow birthday party with Cole, hosted by fiber-hostess Elsa Maxwell
at the Waldorf-Astoria. The theme was a Turkish ball, and the four hundred
guests, including Ethel, came in costume or were supplied with one at the
door. Maxwell positioned herself by the fifteen-foot birthday cake and sang
Porter's "I Have a Shooting Box in Scotland," which he had written at Yale
for a show called Paranoia.37

Anything Goes cost $59,000 and made about $480,000, and it gave Ethel's
star power a huge boost.38 A gossip column reported that she'd rejected work
on a Fox picture with Maurice Chevalier to stay on the boards with Anything
Goes.39 People started speculating about who would reprise the Merman role
in London-Gertrude Lawrence? A brief dance craze based on the show
called The Merman appeared in New York, and in 1934 Ethel was named the
most imitated singer in clubs.40 By this point, the press was beginning to refer
to Ethel as La Merman or The Merman, showing affection for and possessive pride in their homegrown star. Her acting and comedic skills began to
get more attention, too. "The caliber of Miss Merman's performance is such
that she is no longer merely a thrilling `torch-singer' but a comedienne with
few equals. She has an ease and a natural sense of comedy."41 None other than
former Broadway song-and-dance man James Cagney also took note of her,
praising Merman's work in Anything Goes.

During the run, Ethel recorded "You're the Top" and "I Get a Kick out
of You" with Johnny Green's band. (Cast recordings would not be standard
practice for another ten years.) On March 4, 1935, she and Gaxton helped
dedicate radio station WOR's new fifty-thousand-watt transmitter in a publicity appearance perfectly suited for the young "leather lunged diva."42
Freedley introduced the pair; then Merman sang "I Get a Kick out of You,"
and Gaxton, "You're the Top," the easier song to sing. After the Valentine's
Day show-its ninety-ninth performance-Merman replaced torch-singing
queen Libby Holman as top-billed singer at the Central Park Casino in a
fifteen-minute show at 1z:3o A.M. "They eat it up," she told the Brooklyn Eagle. "I begin with the chorus of `Rise and Shine' from Girl Crazy and `Life's Just a Bowl of Cherries' . . . and then there's a hot piano break and I go into
`Dahlia's a Floozie."'43 Two days after her Casino opening, Lux-the soap of
glamour-took out a full two-page ad in the New Yorker: "Anything Goes is
Top on Broadway ... and Lux is top in its wardrobe room."44

With its abundance of tie-ins and promotional gimmicks, Anything Goes
was no different from other shows. Porter later recalled the song-writing contests Freedley had set up, asking people to write a refrain to his lyrics to win
a pair of tickets to the show. (Freedley and Gaxton were judges, and possibly
Ethel, but not Cole.) In addition to Ethel and Lux, Gaxton endorsed Dunhill's Charbert's eau de cologne, "the Gentleman's Toiletry," sold in the shape
of a flask bottle. Macy's ran a full-page ad promoting its fashions along with
Anything Goes.15 Ethel gave more interviews than ever and, by now, was
clearly quite relaxed with the press, greeting them in loungewear and offering them highballs with an informality that U.S. celebrity no longer knows.

Critics were taking note of not only her talents and her celebrity but also
her energy and busy schedule. Wrote one, "By the time the afternoon notices
of `Anything Goes' were on the newsstand it was apparent that for the moment, at least, Miss Merman was also Miss America, Miss Manhattan, Miss
Lux-Lifebuoy-and-Rinso, Miss Alkaline Side and all the various other indorsement [sic] aliases which are the prerequisites of celebrity."46 The piece
went on to say that Ethel was now posing for photos and portraits just three
times per day. Another wrote, "She is encored to exhaustion in several songs,
which will be hits of the year. `I Get a Kick. .. ,' `You're the Top,' `Anything
Goes,' and `Blow, Gabriel, Blow. -47 The encore tradition, which had begun
so explosively for Merman with Girl Crazy, was picking up even more steam.
When she was in Boston for previews, reviews reported, "Although it was
long after ii o'clock the audience insisted upon recalling Miss Merman more
than half a dozen times after her singing of the lively ditty called `Buddy Beware."' During the run, Ethel was also a desired radio guest. By 1935, she had
appeared three times on The Rudy Vallee Hour and had made frequent appearances on the popular Rhythm at 8, recording one session with Al Goodman's Orchestra on August 7.

The figure of Ethel Merman is so entwined with vitality that it is surprising
to see just how much energy the woman actually had. Merman seemed to be
utterly inexhaustible, making endless appearances at clubs and benefits during the early and mid -1930s. In some ways, the New York entertainment world
was not terribly different from what it is today, with performers given daunt ing promotion schedules. There were the endless publicity stunts, which for
rising, not fully established stars like Ethel were especially gimmicky; trade
papers featured Ethel's name in crossword puzzles or in quick quizzes about
current events and personalities.

Merman has always, even in death, been dogged by the question of how
"into" her hard work she was, whether she walked through her shows,
whether her performances were reliable to the point of being perfunctory.
Did she sing full out, every show, every rehearsal, pulling back only for quieter numbers? Today, the word from casual Merman fans on the street is split,
some maintaining that her performances (or at least her attitude) became
dulled during long runs. It scarcely helped when Ethel, always matter-of-fact,
told reporters that while she was singing, she'd often think of what to add to
her grocery list, and in Anything Goes she took up Gaxton's challenge to keep
brittle in her mouth for an entire performance, songs and all. But most
people, especially those who knew Merman, believe there was nothing rote
or unprofessional about her working habits. When Martin interviewed her,
he told Merman what Cole Porter had said about her: "When you are singing
for twenty people you give it just as much and put out just as much, as if you
were singing for z,ooo people, or zo,ooo people; that when you're singing,
you're transfixed, as if you are in a form of Heaven."48 Whether transfixed or
reflecting about her groceries, Ethel gave it her all, and this is what people
who had actually seen her always recall, ranging from close friends such as
Tony Cointreau to people who never knew her offstage.

Ethel left Anything Goes in July 1935-past the "Red Day" that the press
had predicted-and was replaced by Benay Venuta (1911-95), a Broadway
performer who often played roles carved out by Ethel and who would be
friends with Ethel for much of her life. Following Merman in Anything Goes,
Venuta had some big shoes to fill but did just that starting July 22, 1935,
singing the show a tone lower than her predecessor. Vivian Vance-the future Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy-had been Merman's understudy, and she
stayed on as Venuta's. Victor Moore stayed too, reportedly turning down a
lucrative movie deal with Zeppo Marx to keep the show going. Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Perhaps [Venuta] will not object to the statement that Our Ethel
can have no successors. She is unique.... When a singer has that much magnetic authority over a song it appears to become her property: the theatregoer
forgets that someone else wrote it."49Anything Goes ran to a total of 420 performances, a strong run. Soon, it would be staged in London, filmed in Hollywood (twice), and, in the'5os, truncated for television-Ethel appeared in
two of those televised versions.

As early as January 1935, Vin Freedley was in Los Angeles negotiating the
show's film rights with Paramount. He received a reported eighty-five thousand
dollars, plus to percent of gross, once rentals passed the one-million-dollar
mark. 5' Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) was set to direct, and,
at the time of the deal, Paramount was eager to use Bing Crosby for Billy Gaxton's role. Beyond that, however, casting wasn't settled. Rumors buzzed:
Moore's "Public Enemy" would be played by W. C. Fields and then Frank Morgan and Charlie Ruggles (who got the part). Maybe Queenie Smith was going
to take over the Ethel Merman role? Speculation abounded.