Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (27 page)

New Year's, 1939. Ethel saw in the new decade with the city's social elite, playing around as she crowned the colorful former mayor Jimmy Walker with a
paper party hat. Ethel was just a month into her run as Madame DuBarry,
and by now she had more than Bert Lahr pining at her feet. If the 193os had
established her as Broadway's rising star, the 1940s made her its queen. Her
ascent had been as steady as a steamroller. Commanding more salary than any
of her contemporaries in musical comedy, Ethel kept breaking her own records, getting extra salary through the sorts of contract stipulations that stars
had rarely seen before-percentages of a show's run when touring, et cetera.
Producers didn't flinch, since they knew that an Ethel Merman musical was
money in the bank. They could raise ticket prices and still fill the house.
(Tickets for her upcoming Panama Hattie would top at $4.40, compared
with $3.30 for the long-running hit Hellzapoppin .) It didn't matter that Ethel
wouldn't tour; she brought in the dough. She was hardworking, reliable,
healthy, rarely missed a performance or rehearsal, and stayed with shows for
their New York run. Small wonder Lloyds of London liked her so much.

Throughout the decade, Merman's career would continue its unshakable
course: she was on top, period. Her stage work prompted one critic to single
out Ethels Merman and Waters as "uniquely American," high praise indeed
in a country preparing to enter a war to protect American interests.' But the
1940s were also a period of change in the way that Broadway musicals were
written, performed, and marketed, and those changes would affect La Merm.

Ethel enjoyed a gratifying personal life. To fete her thirty-second birthday,
she threw a party for the DuBarry cast and crew, and famous fan friends,
including J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, his companion, dropped by.
Agnes and Pop were still living near her in the 25 Central Park West building, they were still in good health, and the three kept one another up to date, even though Ethel saw less of them, for Ethel was now a regular in the city's
posh cafe society scene, frequenting such clubs as the Stork Club, the Casino,
and El Morocco with Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward, Eleanor Holm,
Beatrice Lillie, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Things were good.

For the first half of the new year, Merman was still dating millionaire
Sherman Billingsley (1896-1966), the charismatic, married owner of the
Stork Club. Billingsley had a checkered past in financial affairs, but small
matter-he was as much a New York institution as the nightclub he owned.
On any given night, the city's brightest stars flocked to the Fifth Avenue club,
and Billingsley adored their luster. He generously showered regulars with gifts
and favors, particularly the women and particularly Merman. Whenever she
opened a show or celebrated the anniversary of one, Billingsley had a case of
Bollinger champagne (her favorite) delivered to her dressing room. Ethel had
developed the unusual habit of taking her champagne on the rocks, but professional gossip Walter Winchell countered that she preferred it warm. (It
seemed all that mattered to the cattier set was that Ethel imbibed it "incorrectly.") Billingsley lavished presents on Ethel for birthdays and other special
occasions; Dorothy Fields reported that he even gave her a yacht, The Seagull, for which she reportedly hired the captain of the yacht of her former boss
Caleb Bragg.

Although the Merman-Billingsley affair was widely known, people around
them were discreet, and Merman and Billingsley were careful not to flaunt
it. For instance, at the Stork Club's New Year's Eve bash in 1939, patrons were
seated at small round tables as a small band performed. Merman and Billingsley had the best seats, in the center of the room next to the ensemble, but they
were at different tables. Ethel was escorted by New Yorker cartoonist Peter
Arno, and Billingsley was busy hosting his guests. Newsreels show the two
casting periodic glances at the other while making merry at their respective
tables.

Merman had had plenty of high-profile escorts. She enjoyed the company
of wealthy men, who doubtless enjoyed the sheen of her celebrity. Frequent
escorts included media mogul Walter Annenberg and Alter (Al) Goetz, a
well-to-do stockbroker who, like Billingsley, was married but, unlike him,
didn't give the impression that he was about to leave his wife. "Al Goetz is
the one guy she was mad about. She was insane about him," said Dorothy
Fields.' They remained close for decades, and Ethel would see Goetz when
she was single. (When she was married, as future husband Bob Levitt Sr.
would say, "It would never enter her mind to cheat; she's really a very straightlaced woman.")3 Trying for a scoop, columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper at one point announced the clandestine wedding of Merman and the
married Goetz. Ethel dutifully glued the reports into her scrapbooks and
probably had a good laugh.

Merm was tougher onstage and as a businesswoman than she was in affairs of the heart. At the time, she truly believed that Billingsley was going to
divorce his wife and marry her. Recalls Fields, "When it got to be one of those
things where I knew Sherman was never going to marry her and leave Hazel
and the kids, I just knew it, I told him so and that's what barred me from the
Stork Club."4 But when Ethel discovered that Hazel Billingsley had become
pregnant in the summer of 1940, she terminated the relationship immediately. "Ethel was a sitting duck for men," says Cointreau, who saw these patterns repeat as she grew older. "She had a vulnerable side and she wanted to
be taken care of. That was Ethel's soft side that people don't see. Maybe they
don't want to see it."5

Ethel was full of contradictions when it came to romance, men, and sex.
On the one hand she was open and matter-of-fact, especially in her on-screen
persona, and offstage she made off-color jokes as if it were the most natural
thing in the world. She also had what her son calls a genuine "inner yearning" for the love and stability that a conventional family life and an authoritative husband were supposed to provide. In many ways, Ethel was a real
homebody-not at all the modern 1930s woman too busy or having too
much fun for marriage. "The picture of Ethel as a [boisterous, partying]
Broadway type is really not accurate ... [it's] a superficial picture," Levitt Sr.
said.' There was something charmingly traditional, almost anachronistic,
about Ethel's expectations of love and marriage. Yet between her strong personality and the pressures of her career and celebrity, Ethel would never become that stay-at-home, subservient wife, however potent that fiction might
have been for her emotionally.

In July 1940, around the time of the split from Billingsley, DuBarry was
still going strong. DeSylva had dealt with the challenge of bringing audiences
into the still un-air-conditioned theaters by giving his key stars, Merman and
Lahr, raises and upping chorus members from forty to forty-five dollars per
week.? Lahr and Merman used their weight to ensure that chorus members
were still paid during their one week's vacation. Apparently, when one of the
show's chorines returned from her vacation, she was sporting a sunburn the
color of "the pigment used on fire engines. There was an audible buzz in the
audiences when she first traipsed onstage." Quipped Ethel, "Honey, they
must have had you on the slow-burner." Seeing the young woman's embarrassment, Lahr said, "Never mind, now, she's a nice kid! As you can plainly see, she kept her pants on, didn't she?" For five minutes the show stopped,
the audience was laughing so hard.'

After a nine-month run, Ethel left DuBarry on August 24, in order to start
rehearsals for her next show, Panama Hattie. DuBarry was moved from the
large 46th Street Theatre to the smaller Royale Theatre, actually to make room
for the upcoming Hattie. Bert Lahr stayed on there, and papers were abuzz
speculating about his next costar. Mae West was again proposed, as was Lupe
Velez. In the end, it was understudy Betty Allen who took over, just as she had
done when Ethel left Take a Chance. (After Allen stepped down in nine weeks,
Gypsy Rose Lee, the future Gypsy, became the next DuBarry.) MGM secured
the movie rights to DuBarry in what must have been an ironic acquisition,
since, according to Gerald Bordman, the script was first developed as a picture but rejected by Hollywood.9 Once again, the studio passed over Ethel,
giving her role to redhead Lucille Ball to help showcase its Technicolor technology. Red Skelton played Lahr's role in the picture, which also featured
Gene Kelly.

Panama Hattie

Hattie had much of the same talent behind it as DuBarry: Cole Porter for
songs and lyrics, Buddy DeSylva as producer, costume designer Du Bois, and
choreographer Bob Alton. Edgar MacGregor was signed on to direct, and
Herbert Fields and DeSylva did the book. DeSylva was well aware of Merman's earning power at this point and, for his new play, rewarded her by giving her billing over the title for the first time in her career. She was delighted,
of course, but she knew that DeSylva knew that that billing helped the show
as much as it did her. Over the course of the new production, Ethel and DeSylva expressed their mutual gratitude through various gifts and affectionate
notes; he even gave Ethel her costumes from DuBarry after the run.

The busy and multitalented DeSylva had two other shows on the boards
that season, DuBarry and Louisiana Purchase. After that, he would return to
Hollywood, where he was first contracted by Paramount for possible adaptation of his shows. Like Zanuck at Fox, DeSylva had a keen eye for topical
themes and big stories: DuBarry played off the Irish sweepstakes; Hattie, the
Panama Canal; Louisiana Purchase banked on the corruption scandal of
Louisiana politician Huey Long. Also like Zanuck-though without his
gruff personal style-DeSylva solicited input from his stars and collaborators,
compensating them well for their efforts.

Panama Hattie was written with Ethel in mind, and it shows. Hattie Maloney is a wise-cracking, fashion-challenged owner of the Tropical Shore, "a
gay and very garish cabaret." Nick Bullett (can a man be more virile?), a former football player, works in the control house of the U.S.-operated Canal
Zone and is up soon for promotion in the military. Nick is a widower, and
his eight-year-old daughter, Geraldine ("Jerry"), was raised by her grandmother until the latter's death. The play begins with Jerry's imminent arrival
in Panama from Philadelphia (meaning: high society) escorted by her English
butler. Hattie and Bullett are dating, to the consternation of the jealous,
scheming Leila, the admiral's daughter, who views Hattie as a gauche lowlife.