Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (23 page)

Straight, Place and Show establishes its lighthearted mood with its opening animated credits that show all three brothers riding one horse. New York
writer Damon Runyon (1884-1946) provided the material on which the
screenplay was based; Merman's two numbers, "With You on My Mind" and
"Why Not String along with Me?" were written by Lew Brown and Lew Pollock. A young Jule Styne was among those credited for his provision of "special extra material."

Richard Arlen and Phyllis Brooks starred as Denny Paine and Barbara
Drake, lovers whose engagement is broken off by Barbara's excessive devotion to her show horse, Playboy. Denny wins Playboy from her in a huffy,
angry bet, and the horse serendipitously ends up at the Ritz Brothers' pony
ring. With Denny's engagement off, society girl Linda (Merman) moves in
on him but retreats to help Barbara regain both horse and the man whom she
still loves. ("Barbara is still a favorite; I catch on," Ethel says in the betting
lingo that pervades the film.) After a zany performance at a steeplechase race, with the Ritz Brothers all riding Playboy (backward), Playboy wins the team
a purse of twenty-five thousand dollars, and Denny and Barbara reunite.

Straight, Place and Show has Merman depicting another clean-cut "Pal
Jerry" kind of woman in Linda, a supporting character whose primary function is to step aside so that the feuding lovers can reunite. Yet it was different
from Ethel's other Hollywood fare in that Linda exudes more warmth than
most of her other character roles. Linda's friendship with Barbara is genuine:
"He loves you. Denny is playing to win; I say this from my heart," she tells
"Babs," with whom she is closer than any of the men-even the comic men,
to whom she was usually relegated in studio movies. Zanuck fought for that
characterization. Responding to script drafts as late as April 1938, he complained that Linda "has been made a bitch where there is no necessity for it
at all. She can still be the clever, smart and sophisticated girl that she starts
out to be with a great sense of humor, etc. and she should end up that way.
We must avoid the feeling there is in it now that she is trying to thwart the
situation."33

Merman performs her two numbers of the movie in splendid voice. For
as much as she later professed to dislike Straight, Place and Show, she conveys
a warmth, dignity, and classiness in song as well as in her overall performance.
One thing that didn't change, however, was that in her songs, she scarcely
moves an inch, something that always frustrated her about performing for
cameras. But here, the stillness registers as sedateness rather than constraint,
as it had in Alexander's Ragtime Band. It's also interesting to note that every
character moves in and out of different classes, as well as ethnic and national
groups; the film has references to a wrestler called "the Terrible Turk/the Maniac of Mesopotamia," and the Ritz Brothers' rivals are three South American jockeys. While hardly a thoughtful movie on this front, at least Ethel's
character is not singled out for that kind of ethnic treatment.

While the script was under development, changes included the title (Sarasota Chips), characters (a Communist was removed), and cast (this, too, was
first envisioned as an Eddie Cantor vehicle). To appease the censorship office,
a number of references had to be removed-too much drinking, double entendres, and so forth. Zanuck's response to the project went from proclaiming, "insane hoke ... this is Mack Sennett ... awful," as he'd scribbled on
the first revised treatment script, to a secretary's note saying, "Mr. Zanuck is
greatly enthused."34 Shooting ended the second week of July 1938, with the
picture going over its $717,ooo budget by about $33 '000.35

Reviews of the "horse opera" were predictable, saying that fans of the Ritz
Brothers' style of comedy would love it, and others would not. Critics tended to describe it as either vaudeville or burlesque-in other words, nothing new.
Ethel's role didn't generate much ink, although one paper referred to her as
"velvety voiced."36 Overall, Straight, Place and Show was a big letdown after
the big success of Alexander's Ragtime Band. Merman despised it and, in her
second autobiography, refused to identify the movie by name, much less discuss it. Fox, too, kept its distance, pulling its commitment to her for the time
being. "We are not optioning," Zanuck wrote in an internal memo.37 In her
memoirs, Ethel would note, "The end of my work in Hollywood also wrote
finis [a favorite expression] to Lou Irwin as my agent.... It was cold down
there on the face on the cutting room floor."31 Irwin was the Ritz Brothers'
agent as well. They, too, released him after Straight, Place and Show was released.

Ethel arrived back in New York on July 19, 1938. To the press, she was typically candid-and sometimes surprisingly indiscreet-about her experiences
on the West Coast. New York fans were always eager to hear her comparisons:

They're pretty crazy out there. I worked two extra weeks on a sequence for the
Crosby picture and then they cut it out. Now they're going to use it in another
picture! ... Sam Goldwyn [is] ... not as bad as the stories about him ... the
fuss the censors made about that picture [KidMillions]! In one scene, a flock of
little kids are shown eating ice cream. When they turn away from the tables, their
tummies are all swollen. The censors passed the scenes showing the boys that way
but they raised a kick about the girls. Imagine, eight- and nine-year-olds!39

Two days after her return, the local papers ran a syndicated photo of her from
Ragtime-notably, not Happy Landing or Straight, Place and Show. And for
the publicity-stunt photo of her holding a lantern on a caboose of a train
when the train started to pull out of the station, the caption gave a wink only
to Ragtime: "She Started a Heat Wave."

Ethel reestablished herself quickly. On August 3, she did a radio version of
Alexander's Ragtime Band as Stella-not Jerry-with guests Walter Winchell,
Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Sophie Tucker. Hugely successful, the broadcast proved a sound way not only to honor Berlin but also to promote the
picture. As one reviewer put it,

Ethel Merman is acknowledged to be one of the grandest musical comedy
singers in existence. She is also an actress of no mean ability, as evidenced by her playing of Alice Faye's role in the Alexander's Ragtime Band radio broadcast. Yet, did you note how obvious were the efforts to cut and play down her
part in the picture? The sequence in which first Merman, and then Faye sing
"Blue Skies" appeared to be a deliberate move to show Miss Merman to disadvantage. The song was perfectly suited to Miss Faye's type of singing and
definitely unsuited to Miss Merman. The title song, "Alexander's Ragtime
Band," was meant for the latter, but Faye got the numberj4o

Back on her home turf, Ethel let it rip; she knew what the local press
would eat up. "Broadway is a'snap' compared to movieland. Out there ...
they treat you like an animal act. The directors and press agents crack the
whip and you go through your paces ... never had a chance to enjoy the socalled California climate. Why, when I got back to New York, the East River
looked like nature's masterpiece."41 Tired of bouncing back and forth with
little time to settle into California, she said that "it got so the Pullman porters
thought I was a traveling saleswoman."42

By no means was Merman consistent in her press reports of the time. Her
eagerness for Hollywood success remains evident: pasted right next to a clipping stating that she wants to stay in Hollywood ("I've always had a gig back
in New York that made me go back and never settle down here") is one, four
days later, entitled "Merman Loyal to New York." "Despite the fact that she
has a long-term contract with zoth Century-Fox," it exaggerates, "Ethel
Merman maintains that her home address will be New York and that she will
commute to Hollywood for the three pix yearly for which she is signed."43
In truth, Ethel would not work again for Fox for over ten years.

Stars in Your Eyes

Hollywood may have been through with her for now, but Broadway was not.
Ethel's next show was Stars in Your Eyes. Late in 1938, producer Dwight Deere
Wiman (1895-1951) announced that he had signed Ethel Merman to star in
a new musical called Swing to the Left. It was to go into rehearsal once he was
done with his current show, Great Lady. Swing was written by J. P. McEvoy
and went into preparation with heavy revisions, eventually becoming the
show Stars in Your Eyes.

Action takes place on Sound Stage 7 of the Monotone Picture Corporation, where a movie called Old Kentucky is in production. There are concerns
about the movie's story, and in order to make it more relevant, it is updated to the present and redubbed New Kentucky. A new writer, John Blake (Richard Carlson), is brought in on the basis of his work in writing a socially conscious documentary called Plain People from the Plains (a reference to The
Plow That Broke the Plains, a film that examined harsh conditions faced by
American farmers in 1936). But not everyone at Monotone is convinced that
the cause-driven Blake is the right man, and he is told in regard to the director: "Wilder's afraid of this scene we're about to shoot. I hope you're not getting too significant-We'll get into trouble!"

Merman plays Jeanette Adair, the spoiled star who is used to getting her
way. Diva Jeanette is dead set against changes or making the picture "rele-
vant"-until she meets Blake. Then New Kentucky briefly meets with her
approval, until Blake writes a big role for ballet dancer Tata (Tamara
Toumanova), with whom he has been flirting. Bill (Jimmy Durante), a pitchman (originally, the role was for a union organizer), provides comic relief
with classic Durante lines. Pitching a mob scene: "I'm walking down the
street today and I bumps into a guy. So I apologizes. But he ain't satisfied. He
demands an autopsy." Elsewhere: "They're on the edge of a precipice!"

Dawson (Richard Barbee), the picture's producer, is getting sick of forcing political relevance into the show. Blake is urged to go back to Nebraska
but refuses. By now, Dawson and Jeanette have both backed out, and
Jeanette has blackballed Tata from getting a job anywhere else. It is left to
Bess, the screenwriter (Mildred Natwick), to get people back onboard and to
convince Jeanette to be the show's new backer. Tata quits. Jeanette gets Blake
drunk in her room, reading Alice in Wonderland to try to seduce him. (Audiences cracked up when she read, "Alice was beginning to get very TIRED of
sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do.") A boozy fantasy number ensues in which Blake imagines he is Monotone's president before morphing into a Russian ruler ... who is married to Jeanette. Once
awake and sober, Blake leaves Hollywood, andTata and Bill plan to make the
film elsewhere.

Music was by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Dorothy Fields; the legendary Joshua Logan directed. It was when Logan was brought onboard that the
show's political and social commentary was excised in order to enhance its
entertainment value. Dancers included Dan Dailey Jr. (Ethel's future costar),
a young Jerome Robbins (her future director), and Alecia Alonzo. Jo
Mielziner again did stage design. Logan loved working with Ethel, calling her
the best instinctive actress he had ever worked with. To show it, he gave her
a small silver cup with the inscription "To Sarah Bernhardt Jr., from josh."
It thrilled her enormously.

Ethel's songs included "This Is It," "Just a Little Bit More," "I'll Pay the
Check," "A Lady Needs a Change," and, with Durante, "It's All Yours." The
last was the show-stopper, and every night Ethel and Durante would try to
crack each other up while they did it, with audiences lapping it up.

Stars'self-conscious story of filming a musical covers the rehearsals, squabbles, love affairs, and constant revisions made during production, and Merman's Jeanette splendidly sends up the kind of star who isn't half as divine as
she thinks she is. At one point, Bess, the screenwriter, trying to make a phone
call during a shoot, tells the party on the line, "Just a minute, Moe, I gotta
be quiet. Sarah Bernhardt Jr. is about to louse up a scene"-a reprise of
Logan's much less ironic gift. Other inside gags include Jeanette using Ethel's
own drink of choice (champagne) to intoxicate Blake; her character's namenot the usual "Nails" and "Flo"-is a light Euro-mash of Jeanette MacDonald and Adele Astaire; lines like "Don't say `yes' until I've finished talking"
conjure up Hollywood's iconic studio moguls, and so forth. But the biggest
bull's-eye was the southern diva Merman depicted, a direct allusion to David
0. Selznick's highly publicized search for Scarlett O'Hara in his upcoming
adaptation of Gone with the Wind.

After previews in New Haven and Boston, Stars opened on Thursday, February 9, 1939, at the Majestic Theatre. It closed 127 performances later on May
z6, Ethel's poorest run. At around the hundredth performance, producers had
actually cut ticket prices in anticipation of the New York World's Fair.

The show did not do well with reviewers: "Apparently Mr. McEvoy's book
was originally intended either as a satire on Hollywood Leftism or on Hollywood's fear of Leftist movements. I am not quite sure which was meant, but
it certainly doesn't matter, since any attempt at social significance was carefully deposited on the stage's equivalent of the cutting-room floor during the
course of the rehearsals and tryouts."44 Though the story didn't enthrall, critics joined audiences in applauding the robust performances of Durante and
Merman (and now Ethel had top billing over him!). Said John Mason
Brown, "If vaudeville is ever revived, it will be by people as magnetic and
courageous as Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman."45 One columnist spoke
of "the return of vaudeville" in Stars, in other shows on the boards such as
Hellzapoppin', and even in the city's nightclub acts: "Billy Rose started the
new trend at the Casa Manana; Strand [is] using acts like Ethel Merman
bringing it back."46 It was the high power of Merman and Durante's performance rather than vaudeville per se that was generating so much enthusiasm.