Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (9 page)

She zoomed to the stars in a single night --a rocket shot
skyward with ammunition supplied by Gershwin.

GUY BOLTON

"I Got Rhythm" wasn't just an opening line or even a
song title; it was a statement of purpose, a rallying cry,
a declaration of everything that the Gershwins, and for
that matter, all of American music, were about.

WILL FRIEDWALD

Girl Crazy and the Big Break

Few legends about Ethel Merman are actually corroborated by historical
record. One, however, is beyond dispute: the evening she became an overnight
sensation, October 14, 193o, after performing "I Got Rhythm" at the opening of Girl Crazy. Without having had a singing lesson in her life, this fifthbilled performer brought the house down when she held the C above middle
C on the word I-and held it and held it. When awarding her a special Tony
forty years later, Peter Ustinov said, "She stepped out to sing and the walls
withdrew two inches." The rest, as they say, is history.

Vinton Freedley, who produced the show with partner Alex A. Aarons,
had discovered Merman during her engagement at the Brooklyn Paramount.
Jimmy Durante, who had worked with Merman at Les Ambassadeurs, had
urged Freedley to check her out, and the producer was so impressed that he
invited George Gershwin to hear her, and the composer was no less impressed
than he. Gershwin immediately arranged for Ethel to audition for Girl Crazy,
the show he and his brother Ira were writing at the time. As Ethel later told
Pete Martin, "It was like meeting God.... Not only was I meeting the Gershwins," she said, "but I had never seen such a tall building before. I was
just a kid, from Queens."' After taking the elevator all the way up to their
rooftop floor at 3r Riverside Drive, she auditioned with "Exactly Like You"
and "Little White Lies," songs that she had been performing at the Brooklyn
Paramount. Then George Gershwin "auditioned" for Ethel the songs he
wanted her to sing from Girl Crazy: "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You,"
"Bidin' My Time," "But Not for Me," "Sam and Delilah," and "Boy, What
Love Has Done to Me." After this, the great composer said, "Miss Merman,
if there's anything you'd like to change, I'd be happy to do so." Stunned, all
she could say was, "They'll do very nicely." Later, Gershwin would give Ethel
part of his original penciled score of Girl Crazy.

A new Gershwin show was a guaranteed event in New York. But Girl Crazy
was anticipated for its talent in other departments as well. Gershwin regular
Allen Kearns was the male romantic lead (this was Kearns's third musical with
them); the dancing stars were the De Marcos (Rene and Antonio); and the female lead was a nineteen-year-old dancer named Ginger Rogers, whom the producers signed on at the salary of fifteen hundred dollars a week. Recalls Roger
Edens, "That was big stuff-she was nice looking, she could act some, but she
couldn't sing-and you have to have somebody to sing a Gershwin score."2 (It
was while working on Girl Crazy that Fred Astaire first met Rogers. Aarons called
on Astaire, playing in a show down the street, to help with the choreography for
"Embraceable You.") Roger Edens accompanied. The main comic part went to
Yiddish veteran Willie Howard in a role originally planned for Bert Lahr, whose
work in Flying High kept him from accepting. Ethel came onboard via the
Palace, where Gershwin had booked her: "Edens says he was only rehearsing,
but they went up there and signed you and found Al Siegel to play for you."3

John McGowan and Guy Bolton wrote the book, whose story follows
Danny Churchill (Kearns), a girl-crazy New York heir whose father sends him
off to the old Buzzards Ranch in Custerville, Arizona, which Dad assumes will
hold no distractions in the form of wine, women, or song. Danny turns the
place into a dude ranch, stuffing it with the very urban vices his father had
tried to preempt: alcohol, gambling casino, and imported New York chorines.
Predictably, Danny meets the love of his life, G-rated postmistress Molly Gray
(Rogers). Ethel portrayed Molly's jaded, experienced counterpart, the worldly
Kate Fothergill, a nightclub singer and the long-suffering wife of a hopeless
gambler-a character type that would stick to her for a decade.

Thematically, Girl Crazy, like many musical comedies of the time, reflected
a country of immigrants, with stories of Americans-in-the-making. Like a
western, it opposed urban communities and values to rural ones: there is New York and there is the frontier West; there are Jewish cab drivers and there are
gentiles. Danny, for instance, travels from New York to Custerville in a taxi
(fare: $742.30), driven by Yiddish-speaking Gieber Goldfarb (Howard). At
one point Goldfarb speaks Yiddish to a completely comprehending Native
American in an ethnic crossover that may have been less offensive to audiences
then than it might seem to twenty-first-century sensibilities.4

Ethel was still engaged at the Palace when rehearsals began. She ran from
one job to the other, just as she had done when working at Booster Brake.
The press took note of her pace, reporting that Miss Ethel Merman didn't
need to take vitamins, but perhaps they might consider taking her. When
Girl Crazy went to Philadelphia for tryouts, the audience response was extremely encouraging, and the group was convinced it had a good show on its
hands. Still, no one was prepared for what happened when it opened in New
York's three-year-old Alvin Theatre.

Composer George Gershwin had been conducting his own work for most
of 193o, and on that warm October night, he did just that with Girl Crazy,
leading an orchestra that included Red Nichols, Benny Goodman, Gene
Krupa, Glenn Miller, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. At the onstage piano
was Roger Edens, sitting in for Al Siegel, who had called in ill, some say with
a case of stage fright. Agnes and Edward Zimmermann were in the audience
to see their daughter; Siegel may or may not have actually come to watch. Producer Alex Aarons, a nervous wreck, hid out backstage in the packed house.

The first act was going well. Merman sang the second to last song as Kate,
in Danny's new Arizona club. "Sam and Delilah" recounts the story of a "loose
woman who falls for a married man and refuses to let him return to his wife
alive" (one reviewer called it a "mixture of Wild West, Negro spirituals and
Broadway `blues'11).5 The audience loved it. Recalled Ethel, "Everybody
screamed and you know, I thought something fell down or something, but it
was only the audience reaction to a young girl coming out singing a song." Ira
Gershwin was especially relieved, since he felt he hadn't done his best with the
lyrics: "placing. . . `hooch' and `kootch' on long full notes of a slow-blues
tune.... I got away with it thanks to Merman's ability to sustain any note any
human or humane length of time. Few singers could give you koo-for seven
beats ... and come through with a terrifically-tch at the end."6

But it was when the twenty-two-year-old stenographer reemerged for the
act's last number that Broadway history was made. Wearing a simple red
blouse and black slit skirt, Ethel sang "I Got Rhythm." Ira's lyrics brimmed
with confidence and gusto-no half-blue lament here. (His quick staccato
words had not been easy to come up with, though: the dummy lyric used for a long time was "Roly-poly / Eating slowly / Ravioli / Better watch your diet
or bust." )7 Merman's voice was perfect for its energetic rhythm and almost
pentatonic sound. With the song's high ratio of notes to lyrics (four notes for
three words for the title refrain alone), a singer without Merman's crisp diction or unable to handle fast pacing would sink like a stone. Ethel sailed.
With galelike power, she gave it her all, holding onto that I-I-I-I for over sixteen (some say up to thirty-two) measures.' One writer said it was "a feat
equivalent to swimming the length of an Olympic-size pool at least twice
without coming up for air." The audience went wild, leaping to its feet, and
cheered for more. "By the fourth bar, the audience was going nuts," recalls
Roger Edens. "She did about ten encores" before the show could go on.9

Dorothy Fields, who was in the audience that night, has said, "I've never
seen anything like it on the stage except Mary Martin when she did My Heart
Belongs. It ... was an ovation like you just can't believe. And she seemed a
little stunned herself, and you know, she stood there not quite believing it.
And encore after encore.... No one had ever held a note like that ... beyond the length of endurance."10

First-act closers are traditionally show-stoppers, but that night "I Got
Rhythm" was less a stopper than an explosion. Shell-shocked producer Aarons
practically collapsed-he thought a gunshot had gone off-and then saw that
the shot was the roar of the crowd. "American audiences don't cheer. Italian
audiences at the Scala in Milan-yes, but American audiences at the Alvin in
New York ... ," he said later to Guy Bolton. i i When the first-act curtain came
down, he, Freedley, Bolton, McGowan, and the Gershwins knew the show
was a hit. An excited George Gershwin ran to Ethel's dressing room to dispense a critical piece of counsel: never, he told her, take a singing lesson.

Later, Gershwin said that he lost three pounds that evening just from
sweat. Merman, by contrast, scarcely realized what had happened. After the
show, she took the subway back home to Astoria and the next day, October 15, returned to the city for a luncheon date at the Gershwins'. Entering
the penthouse, she saw that newspapers were scattered everywhere, covering the piano, the floor, furniture. Had she seen the reviews? No. They read
them to her: "Miss Merman's effect ... was such that there was every reason to believe that they would make her sing it all night"; "... Ethel Merman, whose peculiar song style was brought from the night clubs to the
stage to the vast delight last evening of the people who go places and watch
things being done." The New York Daily Mirror reported that Merman
"tied the proceedings in knots," predicting "this girl bids fair to become the
toast of Broadway.""

Critics struggled to compare Ethel with other singers or to find the words
to describe this "musical fire engine."" "Without losing her personal quality,
she combines a number of the virtues of Libby Holman and Ruth Etting."14
Yet Merman was "not mournful and lugubrious like Libby Holman," not "tearstained and voice-cracked. Rather she approaches the sex in a song with something of the philosopher. She rhapsodizes, but she analyzes. She seems to aim
at a point slightly above the entrails, but she knocks you out all the same."is

For Time, Ethel was simply the show's "biggest asset."16 Of the show, Baird
Leonard opined that it didn't "come within a mile of the score ... [and] just
when you have made up your mind that you are in the wrong theatre, a little
girl, Ethel Merman by name, strolls casually in singing about Sam and
Delilah ... and Girl Crazy becomes what it is, a good show. Miss Merman's
other big number, `I Got Rhythm,' puts her at the head of the class of those
girls who chant in our odd, modern manner."17 Pop pasted the glowing reviews into his scrapbooks, albums that seemed filled with a new mission: documenting the ascent of a Broadway star.

Every Broadway historian and serious Merman fan knows the stories
about Girl Crazy's opening night and Gershwin's advice against singing lessons. Merman told and retold them to reporters for half a century. Both stories helped solidify her image as an untrained natural, her Broadway success
a matter of being discovered, like prospectors digging for gold. Later, she
claimed she "had it easier than Cinderella," her gifts recognized by no less a
prince than George Gershwin. Equally crucial factors were the sustained note
and the force and clarity of her voice while sustaining it. With such colorful
descriptions as the Olympic pool remark, the press was turning the biglunged Ethel into a force of nature, one that was nearly superhuman.

In addition to the voice, there was also Merman's commanding presence
and her rather stunning self-confidence. Guy Bolton recalled in 1960,
"Ethel ... had the same confident stage presence, the same trumpet-toned
voice that she has today. "is Her son remembered in 2004, "She always would
say how much she loved her work, and that she took enormous pride in what
she could do, but she never wanted to be seen as `full of herself.'
. . . What I
would call being full of an appreciation of herself, she'd simply call selfassurance or self-confidence. "'9