Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (29 page)

Mrs. Smith

Soon after Hattie had gone into rehearsals, Arthur Treacher and his wife, now
good friends of Ethel, introduced the star to William Smith, the film agent
who represented Treacher. Smith was apparently not much more colorful
than his name, but in less than three months, he and Ethel Merman were
married. On November 15, 1940, after the matinee performance of Panama
Hattie, they took the train down to Elkton, Maryland-where East Coast
celebrities went for quickie marriages. Ethel's age was given as twenty-eight;
Smith's, thirty-nine. Witnessing at the clerk's office were her mother, her father, and the Treachers. Once the papers were signed, the newlyweds returned
to Penn Station, where Smith carried Merman off the train for awaiting photographers. Then the newly minted Mrs. Smith did her evening show.

Trying to pump up the bland union, Dorothy Kilgallen reported on November 4-over a week before the event-that Merman might have married
"handsome Hollywood agent" Bill Smith.24 Ed Sullivan was the first to report the actual union, the day after it had occurred-evidence that he and
Ethel were on good terms. (Of all the gossip columns of the period, his is the most factual as far as Merman stories were concerned.) After the nuptials
were announced, the Hollywood Reporter reported, a tad improbably, that
Ethel was planning to live in Hollywood with Smith after the run of Panama
Hattie.25 Other Los Angeles papers chimed in, gloating, "Ethel Merman Now
Mrs. W. B. Smith: Blues Singer Becomes Bride of Local Actors' Agent.""
Every press report mentioned the bicoastal nature of the alliance, and while
Los Angeles papers predicted a West Coast residence for them, New Yorkers
banked that the couple would remain there. Manhattan's tony Pierre Hotel
comped the newlyweds with their own apartment for a year, which Dorothy
Fields had decorated while the couple was out of town.

The Smiths never moved in. Their marriage was as short as their
courtship. According to Bob Levitt Sr., Ethel told him that in reality it lasted
only a few weeks. In just four months, in March, papers were reporting that
the marriage was on the rocks, and Smith soon instigated divorce on grounds
of desertion, which Ethel did not contest. The papers duly noted the dissolution of the union, but there wasn't a whiff of scandal. Ethel was benefiting
from the solid relationships she'd cultivated with writers and columnists such
as Sullivan. Although she was not the only star who actively fostered good relations with them, she was able to keep her career freer from scandal longer
than most. Gossipers never directly referred to her well-known affair with
Billingsley, for instance, and even oblique references to her being escorted by
a "famous restaurateur" were rare. So although the divorce from Smith had
the potential to damage her all-American image, it did not. It was a divorce,
not a scandal.

Other factors helped too. Sex and romance were not what made Ethel
Merman big; her vitality was. "You'll never hear a break in her voice, indicating that life is just too, too much. Even when she sings one of those tearful bits, bewailing the loss of a man, she does it with a sly verve which suggests she'll get over it," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer.27 And so Ethel, who
often played vibrant women who didn't quite need men, was being given an
almost asexual veneer that made her actual romantic entanglements almost
uninteresting. Serious surgery would have been bigger news than a divorce;
after all, physical weakness seemed more scandalous and unlikely than a matrimonial misstep.

For her part, Ethel didn't dwell on the marriage or its failure. She and
Smith simply didn't hit it off and were not a good match. She never denied
that it was a rebound marriage to get back at Billingsley, who was stunned
when he heard the news. Bill Smith does not figure in either of her autobiographies, and she preserved few records of their union. One, a telegram from Buddy DeSylva-who affectionately signed his notes "the Boss" or
"Buddo"-advised Ethel not to go to Chicago for a romantic reconciliation:
"It is extremely bad flying weather at present," he writes. "I am not speaking
selfishly for Panama Hattie but for Mermo. When you won't let Bill fly and
you want to fly yourself, I'd like to ask you when you are going to get
smart." "g According to Tony Cointreau, Ethel "always spoke well of him."29
Bill Smith lived out the rest of his life as a publicist at Fox, passing away in
1983, just two months before Ethel.

War and Changes in American Entertainment

Despite the official isolationist policy of the United States in the years and
months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, entertainment industries on both
coasts were revving up their engines, eager to assist the international community (or give the appearance of wanting to assist) and to get on the right
side of their own government, just in case. In New York the American Theatre Wing operated the Stage Door Canteen on 44th Street, where servicemen could go for coffee or a meal, enjoy the company of young women,
and take in shows by stars of the entertainment world. Ethel and other
Broadway luminaries frequented the establishment after their shows or on
days off, singing hits and performing routines from their shows. The Hollywood Canteen on the West Coast functioned much the same way.

A patriotic wave was flooding the entertainment world in other ways too,
namely, in the form of rallies, bond fundraisers, and other relief efforts. To
be sure, almost all ofAmerican mass culture (ads, songs, radio shows) and the
ideology behind it (patriotism, proper gender roles) were permeated by the
imminent threat of military conflict. It was clear that American isolationism
was becoming less a position that escaped the war than a fantasy made untenable by it, as an awkward remark of New York mayor LaGuardia reveals.
At a rally for Finnish relief that Ethel attended in January 1940, LaGuardia
called the Nazi invasion of Finland "one of the cruelest acts in history,"
adding, "The American people will respond as they always have responded.
They will do their part. They are not taking sides." 30

Unlike today, a time when news reports and popular American entertainment collide to the point of indistinguishability, the media in 1939 were not
predisposed to blurring lowbrow forms with such serious events as the war.
Yet Ethel's scrapbooks show the inevitable connections between them, even
if those connections were produced by a simple casual reference. An untitled 1939 clipping, for instance, mentions Germany's repeated threats to the
United Kingdom and a bombing in a Munich beer hall ("Why wasn't the
bomb placed there a year ago, when all the Nazis were there?") and goes on,
"It is not considered good newspaper tactics to knock down one's story, but
in this war, apparently, anything goes, as Prophetess Ethel Merman sang so
sweetly only yesterday, on Broadway."31 (Read in hindsight, it seems far too
casual a remark for the grim events at hand.)

Although the war has a strong presence in the Merman scrapbooks, it's
only as an afterthought, one nearly as casual as the "anything goes" remark.
A photo taken in May 1940 shows Ethel relaxing at a restaurant table with
Noel Coward, who was "away from Paris blackouts for six months." The
Hartford Times ran the story "Comedians Take Broadway's Mind off World
Strife" with the subheading "Serious Dramas in Minority as War Grows
Worse."32 The sole reason these clippings are in Ethel's scrapbook is that they
make references to her. Not a political creature by nature ("Mom didn't have
a political bone in her body," says Levitt Jr.),33 Ethel, like many Americans,
was less interested in pondering the issues than in supporting political positions that felt right to her.

Part of what seemed right was doing benefits. Pop preserved pages and
pages of announcements, receipts, cards, thank-yous, and press clippings
documenting his daughter's work on stages and radio and at rallies, events,
the Canteen, and other venues where she maintained the tradition she'd
begun in the 1930s, pursuing it with even more energy now. Between January and May 1940, for instance, she appeared at a star-studded benefit on
Broadway for the Finnish Relief Fund and a production of DuBarry benefiting the Actors' Fund, and she did work for the Associated Actors and
Artists in America. On March 24, she and Bert Lahr shivered in very cold
weather riding in the Easter Parade, an event aired on radio; on April 21,
there was a municipal benefit for France at the Waldorf-Astoria; and, on
May to, an Allied Relief Ball was held, at which, for five dollars, attendees
could get a drink and enjoy headliners such as Merman, Cantor, Beatrice
Lillie, and emcee Noel Coward. The event raised nearly forty-five thousand
dollars .14

Ethel's wartime benefits were not only good publicity but also came from
the heart. Her work ethic extended to a strong sense of civic duty, of doing
one's part for others and for country. It was nothing more or less than that.
Yes, she was enthralled by the big brass and heads of state she now rubbed
shoulders with, but even her awe of them was ingenuous, rooted in her upbringing and the attitudes of Mom and Pop. They had given their daughter an old-fashioned, if simple, respect for their station. For as self-centered and
tight with the penny as Ethel could be, she always gave back in these other
ways, something clear from the letters of gratitude she saved from servicemen
who recalled a kind word or song sung when she visited them in the hospital or how a letter from her had cheered up a dying child. Ethel maintained
her feverish pace of charity work throughout the 193os and '40s, and, although that work tapered off somewhat after the war, she continued doing
benefits for groups whose causes she supported for the rest of her life.

Irving Berlin and Merman: Broadway Superpatriots

When he was asked to describe the place of Irving Berlin in American music,
Jerome Kern said, "Berlin has no place in American music, HE IS AMERICAN
MUSIC."35 Few composers offer the spirited celebration of Americana that
Irving Berlin does in classics such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "White
Christmas," and "God Bless America." "Irving Berlin helped write the story
of this country by capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape
our lives," Walter Cronkite said in a tribute to the composer near the end of
his life.36

Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, joined the U.S. Army in World War
1. Afterward he put his experiences to song, mounting the Broadway revue
Yip Yip Yaphank (1918). Theatergoers found it a bit too old-fashioned and
sentimental, so Berlin put one of his songs, "God Bless America," on ice until
the late 1930s, when he had to be encouraged to try it again. But reusing earlier material was not a problem. When Sgt. Irving Berlin (as programs list
him) opened his This Is the Army, on July 4, 1942, he recycled Yip Yip songs
such as "Mandy" and "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." Some
may take this as a sign of Berlin's opportunism or his self-promotion, and,
to be sure, Berlin was obsessed about his work remaining viable in the public eye. Cole Porter told of a game he would play by taking bets on how long
it would be before Berlin steered a discussion to one of his songs, no matter
how far from the topic at hand. The usual time? Under five minutes, Porter
laughed. Porter said he'd experimented once by bringing up the Dalai Lama,
and it didn't take Berlin any longer to bring the discussion back to his work.37
Self-absorbed or not, Berlin's patriotism was as ingenuous as it was generous.
After cutting short This Is the Army's Broadway run, he toured with the army
and the USO, handing over all proceeds-nearly ten million dollars-to the
army.38

By no means was Berlin alone in supporting the cause or in writing nationalistic jingoes-Rodgers and Hart did "Keep 'Em Rolling"-but his were
especially enjoyable. "When That Man Is Dead and Gone" tells the story of
Satan, who arrives on earth in the form of a small man with a dark mustache.
Bill Robinson danced to it once on top of a large Nazi coffin in a September
1941 rally at Madison Square Garden,39 and Ethel sang it (and "Keep 'Em
Rolling") on several occasions.

Berlin's celebrations of America were the ideal vehicle for Ethel, both as a
vocalist and as a public figure: she presented the material with a contagious enthusiasm that could easily lift morale. (Kate Smith's "God Bless America" may
have been too hymnlike for Ethel's energy.) Ethel's close connection to Berlin
in fact facilitated the patriotization of her own image. Even their backgrounds
were similar: Both had entertained World War I doughboys, when Berlin was
a young composer-soldier and Ethel, a child, sang on Long Island. Both had
grown up in the New York of central and east European immigrants and held
close to their roots all their life. Like many celebrities of such humble beginnings, Ethel and Berlin were happy to make life better for others if they could.
Eddie Cantor was the same way, going so far as to put his career on the line
to improve labor conditions by leading the huge strike that led to the establishment of Actors Equity in 1919. Berlin, more conservative (disapproving of
the formation of the "union" ASCAP, the American Society of Composers,
Authors and Publishers), was into flag waving, morale building, and celebrating some of the hokier nuggets of Americana. Ethel's style was closer to
Berlin's, sharing his lifelong passion for country, middle-class comforts, and
opportunities without undue introspection or desire for change.

Ethel performed frequently at the Stage Door Canteen and visited naval
yards (as early as 1931, she and the principals of Girl Crazy performed for the
USS Salt Lake City crew when it was anchored off the Upper West Side);40
she christened military vessels, posed with sailors, and even presented a
Brooklyn crew with a mascot goat. Merman sang to soldiers as they pulled
out of dock and posed with Russian gunmen from Stalingrad relaxing on
leave at the Canteen. She often gave tickets to military personnel to see her
shows and was especially generous to hospitalized members and their children. Although she stayed in New York-unlike performers such as Marlene
Dietrich or Bob Hope, who traveled extensively-Merman's patriotic efforts
were given exposure well beyond the region, thanks to newsreels, radio, and
syndicated photos and stories.