Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (77 page)

She sings briefly several times: At the very beginning of the show, she is
finishing up "Everything's Coming Up Roses" in a rehearsal. Later, as fans
and neighbors gather outside Ann-Marie's apartment door, she sings a line
from "There's No Business ..." to appease them. Ethel is on the screen for
the majority of the show's half-hour format, suggesting how much Marlo
Thomas, who was the show's producer as well (under the pseudonym Danny
Arnold, so as not to appear too much the woman's libber) revered Ethel. Even
the background music-barely noticeable-plays tunes of Ethel's hits on
Broadway. Ethel's character is utterly devoid of diva attitude. Down-to-earth,
she cooks cabbage just like her mother, Agnes, might have done; in fact, the
show spends as much time on food as on show business: the title of the
episode is "Pass the Potatoes!"

Ethel's second spot on That Girl aired in February 1968 and was called
"The Other Woman." Starting off with the food theme again, Merman meets
up with Ann-Marie and Donald at a delicatessen, where they reminisce about
their previous encounter and the cooked cabbage. But a domestic crisis is
brewing: Ann-Marie's mother is certain that her husband has "another
woman," and that other woman, she's convinced, is Ethel Merman, with
whom her husband has become rather celebrity-struck. The characters have
fun with cracks like, "Lana Turner I ain't" and "He ain't Gregory Peck." Eventually, Mom is persuaded that no funny business is going on between her
husband and the star. "The Other Woman" spends more time with Merman's wisecracking side than the first episode did, and it also presents Ethel
as a magnetic and desirable woman who, like Ethel herself, was able to turn
that appeal and tension into a good-natured joke.

The second series Ethel had shot in June was Batman, the deliriously
camped-up version of the dark superhero comic strip featuring Bruce Wayne, mild-mannered millionaire, and his alter ego, Batman. With his
"boy wonder" sidekick, Robin, they form the crime-fighting duo who keep
the citizens of Gotham City safe from evil. The series had a spirited tradition of featuring celebrity villains-Cesar Romero as the Joker, Vincent
Price as Egghead, Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt alternately as Catwoman,
Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Milton Berle as Louie the Lilac, Tallulah
Bankhead as the Black Widow, and George Sanders as Mr. Freeze. Among
these villains, Romero, Berle, Bankhead, and Sanders had been Merman's
costars. Batman used the "old-timers"-schooled in stagy showmanship and
abundant personality-to great effect, and the veterans played their roles
with gusto.

Ethel appeared in two back-to-back episodes that aired in October, "The
Sport of Penguins" and "A Horse of Another Color." She is Senora Lola
Lasagna, the Penguin's co-conspirator. They join forces to fix the Bruce
Wayne Foundation Handicap horse race. Ethel's steed, Parasol, is a clear favorite, and to boost their betting odds they disguise it as a horse of another
color, with the help of Lola's makeup and some spray paint, and run it under
another name. Of course, their criminal plot is foiled by the dynamic duo,
with help from Batgirl, the heroine alter ego of the police commissioner's
librarian daughter.

Batman is a sparkling romp, filled with brightly colored sets and artifice.
Batman and Robin rely on a "bat shield" for protection; the hokey male
voiceover creates faux suspense ("Will the duo get out?"); Robin exclaims,
"Holy Time Bomb!" when they learn that the Penguin left a loaded parasol
at the library; fights are interrupted with cartoon-styled Pows, Bams, Biffis,
and Splats, and canted film angles abound. Merman as Lola Lasagna seems
at home in this colorful world.

Decked in colorful outfits, broad-brimmed hats, parasols, gloves, and
handbags, Ethel's character recalls the mother-in-law in Mad, Mad World.
The show makes other indirect nods to her established persona, including
even a reference to marital woes. (Lola had been married for three weeks to
a "billionaire South American playboy.... Instead of dying, he divorced
me!") Her role in Panama Hattie is suggested by her garish dress, especially
the prominently displayed parasol; The Art of Love and Happy Landing are
invoked in the gold-digging themes; and even Straight, Place and Show casts
a shadow on the episodes' racetrack theme. Other Merman leitmotifs include her communing with animals, gambling, and scheming with morally
dubious people to get rich quick (Kid Millions, etc.). Such roles and traits
reach far back and give Merman fans "bonus material" that enhances her performance, just as her performance enhances the lighthearted camp of the
series.

At the heart of comic-strip heroes like Batman (who at first was a dark and
brooding figure) is something both serious and camp. For in camp, disguise
and role playing are crucial, and in Batman, the superhero and Bruce Wayne's
only go-between is the grandfatherly servant, Alfred, who also shields Batgirl's
real identity from everyone. Secret identities are potent fantasies, and the
show's various disguises and self-conscious role playing were pivotal to its success. Viewers could enjoy vicariously winning out over forces of evil that in real
life were too powerful to correct, much less conquer. Batman's camp is also derived from its sundry mismatched pairings: the waddling Penguin is angry at
Miss Gordon, the young, attractive human who declined the bird's offer of
marriage; there are odd remarks (like Merman telling her horse, "Looks and
your legs are all we've got left!"); and there are numerous homoerotic subtexts
between Batman/Bruce and Robin/Dick. (When the millionaire enters his
own horse in the race to thwart the villains, he tells Dick, "I couldn't allow my
ward to ride my own thoroughbred. People might think it was funny.")

In December 1967, the last of the summer work aired that Merman had
done before Ethel Jr.'s death. In one of her most far-fetched roles, she played
a missionary on Tarzan. Radie Harris wrote, "Do you believe that Julie [sic]
Styne called Ethel Merman and asked her to play the head nun in a musical
version of `Lillies of the Field'? Retorted Ethel, `What's with this new image
of me? ... I'm just waiting for someone to offer me the role of Mother
Cabrini. "'78

Back to Work

By 1968, Ethel was back on a full schedule. "My daughter Ethel died last
year," she told an interviewer, "I was in such a state of shock. But I don't ever
feel she's dead. I feel she's going to walk in my door any minute. Working
helped me so much to relieve a terribly emotional situation." 79 She started
recording television work for the upcoming months and took part in a birthday tribute to Irving Berlin that aired on The Ed Sullivan Show in May. By
the following year, April 1969, Ethel was presenting the Best Director Award
of a musical at the Tony Award ceremonies. ("I've been wanting to give it to
directors for years," she said, playing Ethel Merman like a pro.)

During this period several short-run revivals of Call Me Madam toured to various parts of the country with Merman and Russell Nype, who always resumed his role as Sally's attache. Richard Eastham played Cosmo, and he and
Nype were squabbling over who was to get better billing. Outside of that
small incident, these tours were largely enjoyable affairs for Ethel, and she
also enjoyed traveling now. "She loved packing, and was really good at it," recalls her son.80 She never had an entourage and was so practical that she
brought her own stain remover whenever she was on the road, as well as her
own lunches and snacks, using the bottom of lunch bags to hide her most expensive jewelry to deter thieves. Ethel enjoyed spending time with Nype and
during the summer often joined him and his wife at their second home in
Kennebunkport, Maine, where they would play cards, go antiquing, and
sunbathe.

During the same period, Ethel also made club appearances in cities such
as Chicago and Fort Lauderdale. She described the work matter-of-factly:
"I'm on for 6o minutes in my act. I conclude the first half with a medley of
my big hits, then bow off and come back to do some more big numbers. I
find I've had to cut some tunes [her act had been longer before], like `Down
in the Depths,' for instance. I love it, but the public doesn't know [the song],
and you've got to be commercial in night clubs, give 'em what they like.""

By this point, the media were acknowledging Merman as a living legend,
with many good-naturedly complaining that all of the words to describe her had
been used up: singular, incomparable, indestructible, lusty-lunged. It seemed that
now it wasn't just Ethel's voice that was defying description, but the woman herself, "Still `Klass with a Capital K,"' as one review ran.82 (Ethel's clippings are
less organized than usual during this time, whether a result of dealing with her
daughter's death, fallout from the Borgnine marriage, or simply from the problems Pop was having with his eyesight is impossible to say.)

Press reports often commented on the difference between the iconic
woman they witnessed doing her show and the one they encountered offstage.
"She is a warm delightful lady who wears her 59 years beautifully. The figure
is lithe, even when enveloped in a black and polka-dotted tent dress."83 "Of
her own fame, she says she's `really very shy.' 1114 Back onstage, though, Merman prompted the same familiar rush of lines:

What a broad! What a belter! What a Merm! Ethel the Great opened the Empire Room Thursday night, and a lot of us are still weak in the knees. Merman
doesn't tell you her age, or how long ago she first sang `You're the Top,' or
about her troubles.... She just stands there and clenches her fists, and tauts her muscles, and opens her mouth and blows the roof off the joint. And then
she struts around the room, and opens her mouth, and blows the roof off the
roof. Ethel Merman is one of the great national wonders, ranking somewhere
between the Grand Canyon and the Los Alamos Proving Grounds. Given a
choice of the three, put your money on Merm.85

Ethel was more circumspect, though still maintained her endless enthusiasm and optimism. "Today I have a whole new audience. The kids who
come to see me weren't around when I did the original Annie Get Your Gun
or Call Me Madam. Everything seems new to the young people and it's
great fun for me."86

She spent more time with Barbara and Michael. Barbara, recalling how
much trouble she and her brother got into, remembers that when Grandma
took them to St. Martin, in the Caribbean, they'd relate mostly with the servants there.87 In June 1968, one of those Caribbean trips turned into a fiasco;
the house Ethel had rented was so remote that it was impossible to feel safe
or have a good time. As Merman told the press, the "nearest neighbors were
fifteen miles away.... We couldn't stand the loneliness"; the landlord had
provided them with a guard dog for protection, "but when the big frightened
animal also joined us in the one bed ... we panicked and came home."88
Barbara remembers one time in Puerto Rico, on their way down to St. Martin; she was about eleven, and she snuggled in bed with Grandma, who told
her all sorts of show stories. It's a memory she loves.

Uncle Bob started coming into Barbara and Michael's life more after their
mom's death. "He always represented fun to us. It was irregular contact, but
we'd be right back as soon as we got together again. It's still like that," says Barbara, who remains very close with her uncle. "Bob was my best friend, and I
think my father resented that."89 At this time, Levitt was living in the San
Francisco Bay area. "He's 22 and unmarried," said one press report, "and, according to Mom, bought his house in Sausalito just so his dog would have
plenty of room." (Ethel underlined "bought" with several firm ink strokes followed with an editorializing question mark.)90 Better yet for Ethel, Bob was
in a committed relationship with someone, living with a young actress named
Barbara Colby, nine years older than he. By the age of twenty-nine, Colby was
a nationally acclaimed and respected stage actress; in 1965 she'd already appeared on Broadway with Anne Bancroft in The Devils. "Barbara was a vibrant
human being, on and off the stage," Levitt says. "And the most amazing thing
about her brilliant vibrancy was its core: she had natural balance. That's what
first attracted me to her. She was a radiant person, with radiant balance."91

In December 1967 Ethel was in the Bay Area doing a benefit for the American Conservatory Theatre, where Bob and Barbara worked, and at the Geary
Theatre, where the star received a telegram from Sausalito. "Have a good time
tonight, we love you, Ganky, Barbara, and Bob."' (Ganky was the young
couple's dog, whom Ethel adored.) Merman was delighted that her son was
"settling down" and genuinely liked Barbara. "When we got married," Levitt
adds, "she liked her even more."93