Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (73 page)

Merman and Borgnine met at a party on November 30, 1963, given by
Ethel's good friendTemple "Texas" Schribman. "Right away Borgnine began
paying a lot of attention to me. I thought he seemed pleasant, but I wasn't
any more interested in him than I was in Ernie Gann.... Next day Borgnine
began calling. We started going out a lot, but I was due back in New York."'
Soon after that, when an interviewer spotted a ruby on her left finger, Merman told her that it "did not signify her engagement. I have romances," she
said, "but no serious ones. IF I were engaged, this would be one big diamond.
I wouldn't be fussing around with rubies."3 Four days later, the day after
she'd spent Christmas with her parents and Bobby, Merman says that Borgnine appeared unannounced at her door in New York and proposed on the
spot. "Don't ask me what I was thinking about when I said yes."4

It was an unusual pairing, but in truth, several aspects of even their public images intersected rather well. Both were down-to-earth, working-class
figures on- and offstage. Neither was a glamorous, refined celebrity, and both
were more appealing for not having tried to be. Yet at the same time, these
two people came from utterly different solar systems: Merman was a stratospheric Broadway star, with a longer, brighter career, which outshone Borgnine's film and TV successes in the '5os and early '6os. Borgnine was at the end of
a second marriage and was nine years younger than Ethel. The flattery of a
younger man's attentions, especially at this time in her life, doubtlessly intoxicated her. But intoxicated she was. Over the holidays, Ethel gave Borgnine a private recording she made of the Gershwins' "Someone to Watch
Over Me" (coupled with "White Christmas") at Nola's in New York City, a
place where nonprofessionals could cut their own records. "Her heart was really into it," remembers Bob Levitt. "It was not a performance but an authentic expression of her longing and her vulnerability. "5 Those feelings resonate deeply for him to this day; for him that recording conveys what he calls
his mother's "inner yearning" for the love and stability that a man and
family-so idealized in her heart-were supposed to provide.

Her heart was as full as it was serious, but the entertainment world was
stunned by what they viewed as an unlikely engagement. Marilyn (Cantor)
Baker remembers learning about it in Los Angeles, where she was visiting her
father. "Daddy was watching the news and called up to me, `Marilyn, your
Ethel has married the plumber."'6

The press printed an interview humorously called "Must Be Love: Ethel
and Ernie Unfamiliar with Each Other's Work," accompanied by a decorous
portrait of the couple. Here Ethel repeats the line she'd used when she was
with Six, that this was the first time she was "really in love." There was tenderness both didn't shy from. Borgnine: "Everybody thinks she is loud and
brash. She's just the opposite. She's soft, gentle and shy. And you know me,
I'm `Marry."'7

Of course, Borgnine's image as Marty was every bit as fabricated as Merman's "loud and brash" one. In fact, although newer on the scene, Borgnine's
image had probably undergone more media cultivation than hers, since Hollywood is and always was more aggressive than Broadway in producing and
marketing "stars." (To promote Marty, for instance, Borgnine appeared at the
opening of a Santa Monica supermarket as a guest butcher, and starlets in
bathing suits greeted him there, holding signs reading "I love Marty.") Marty
was considered an iconoclastic film for depicting an unglamorous hero in a
slice-of-life story and seemed to have more in common with Italian neorealism than with studio slicksterism, despite its well-oiled marketing campaign.'
Marty ended up sweeping four Academy Awards for best picture, director,
screenplay, and actor.

Marty's Anglo-American girlfriend, played by Betsy Blair, is as intriguing
as he is, perhaps all the more because of the attention the character and actress didn't receive. Blair plays a perfectly attractive if unglamorous woman, but throughout the story, male characters refer to her as a "dog." In fact,
Marty's transformative moment-one that implies a future in which he can
move on from his mother-is when he pursues this dog not out of sympathy but from real desire. Given the derision of his buddies and the disapproval of his lonely, self-serving mother and her friends (shades of Momism?),
Marty is depicted as downright heroic for daring to like such a woman.

The role imbued Borgnine with a gruff but ethical working-class image for
the rest of his career, from the 196os sitcom McHale's Navy to his role as a
grieving widower in Sean Penn's portion of the movie zi o9"oz (zooz). Like
any star, though, Borgnine's public persona was not restricted to this one
character trait, and other roles, such as those in westerns from the campy
Johnny Guitar (1954) to the testosterone-fueled Dirty Dozen (1967), made him
into a tough guy easily roused to vicious behavior.

That tough side was enhanced by press reports of the temper Borgnine
purportedly displayed with Chicana actress Katy Jurado, his second wife,
whom he'd married in December 1959. Tabloids had a field day with the
volatile relationship: "Ernest Borgnine and Katy Jurado have wound up fine,
too-at least until the next explosion."9 In a May 16, 1962,, interview, Hedda
Hopper jumped right in: "Are you divorced, separated, or what?" Said Borgnine, "Just separated.... I haven't heard from her since last August. I'm so
engrossed in my work now [McHale's Navy], I couldn't care less," he said, not
referring to Jurado by name.10 Later, Sheila Graham-never a reliable reporter of Mermania-queried: "Is the engagement between Ethel Merman
and Ernie Borgnine still on? I pose the question because Ernie has just sent
in a request to see It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which his intended
plays the kind of nagging shrew that Ernie has spent all his life avoiding."11

Years later, BenayVenuta claimed to have warned Ethel against Borgnine's
alleged volatility and said that Ethel refused to hear it, remaining proud about
and devoted to her new lover. After the loss of Levitt and the abuse of Six, it
was only human that Ethel would protect and defend the romantic choices
she made, and at this point there was nothing wrong with the relationship.
To Ethel's intimates, the feelings they had seemed both strong and ingenuous. "I thought they made a lovely couple," says Tony Cointreau. "They were
made for each other; they were both so down to earth, and they truly enjoyed
each other's company."12

After a six-month courtship, Ethel and Ernie exchanged vows on June 27,
1964, five days after Borgnine's divorce from Jurado was finalized. Ethel wore
a chiffon dress in three shades ofyellow at the wedding, which was held at Borgnine's Beverly Hills home. Reception guests included many of Hollywood's who's who, including the cast of McHale's Navy and Merman colleagues such
as the Bob Hopes, Jack Bennys, Carl Reiners, and Stanley Kramer, Gypsy Rose
Lee, Ethel's mom and Pop, Bobby, and Little Ethel and her young family.
Granddaughter Barbara Geary recalls, "I mainly remember being a kid surrounded by grown-ups. Here was Grandma Ethel getting married at a really big
party. There were flowers all over the place, and I went over to pick one from
an arrangement on a trellis. One of Ernie's associates spotted me and made me
go up to him to apologize and give it back. I did and he got furious. There's a
photo of me running back to the trellis in silent mortification to put the flower
back on."13 When Uncle Bob saw what had happened, he went over to play
with the girl, lifting her up and down by the arms. Somehow she dislocated her
shoulder, and her howls disrupted the proceedings. Grandma Ethel, newlywed,
accompanied the child to the emergency room.

The plan was that after their honeymoon to Hawaii, Japan, and East Asia,
Ethel would move into Borgnine's house. Living in Los Angeles made sense;
as she kept saying, she was through with long-running Broadway shows,
so she had her belongings shipped out west. The press was releasing reports
about Merman's new career options; even before their wedding, Sheila Graham reported that

Ethel Merman will appear in one of Ernie Borgnine's "McHale's Navy"
[episodes] if they have to re-write the whole format to get her aboard. No TV
show in its right mind is going to let all that Ethel-Ernie engagement publicity go to waste. Ethel drops anchor here over the weekend to visit lover boy on
the set-why not put her to work? The day Ernie returned to work after shore
leave with the "Merm" in New York, the whole cast and crew pelted him with
old shoes and rice. And not for a minute have they let him forget that he's now
a sailor with just ONE girl in port. 14

The marriage to Ernie Borgnine is one of the most stupendous chapters in
the Book of Merm. Very early into the honeymoon, Ethel suddenly wanted
out and wanted out immediately. She called her agent, who told her that
it would be a public relations disaster bailing so soon and that the couple
needed to go through with the honeymoon and maintain the marriage for a
few weeks for appearance's sake. "What should I do with the gifts? I can't return them," she reportedly asked Earl Wilson.

When the papers ran an interview with the lovesick Merman and Borgnine in July, it was already out of date, although readers had no way of knowing that at the time:

Soon after this, the news broke. On August 4, Louella Parsons proclaimed,
"Ethel Quits Honeymoon Cottage."" The Los Angeles Times wrote that the
marriage lasted thirty-eight days; the Daily News, five weeks.'7 One reporter
called the marriage "World War III"; Ethel sometimes referred to it as "that
thing" and refused to discuss it. Between March and September 1964, the
Borgnine months, her scrapbooks are uncharacteristically blank.18

Ethel never disclosed the reason for the split to anyone, including her
parents, her son, or close friends such as Cointreau, who today says, "I have
a lot of respect for both Ethel and Ernie for keeping the reason to them-
selves."i9 For strangers, that silence has fueled much speculation, almost all
of it based on the myth of "Merman," or the simple incongruity of the
match, or both. In 2005, during an airing of "Shortest Celebrity Marriages"
on an entertainment channel, Merman and Borgnine still made the "top
ten." The show's explanation was catty invention: by the time of the marriage, it said, Borgnine was more famous than Ethel, and wherever they
went, people were recognizing him, not her, and she couldn't stand being
in anybody's shadow.20 This could not have been further from the truth,
for both stars enjoyed a great deal of visibility from TV and their appearances. According to Cointreau, the two of them actually kidded each other,
affectionately, about being the real apple of the media's eye. Whatever the
private reasons of its demise, the notoriously short union has played a substantial part in Ethel's afterlife as a camp icon. Broadway royalty marrying
working-class "Marty" the butcher could hardly seem more incongruous,
as Cantor's "plumber" comment indicates, and then there is Jeffery Roberson's act as "Varla Jean Merman," which shows how the legacy of the marriage endures.