Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (98 page)

PREFACE

i. Cole Porter, "Notes on the Morning after an Opening Night," NYT, 8
November 1936, n.p.

2. KB, phone conversation with author, 5 October 2004-

3. As, so.

4. John Mason Brown, "Ethel Merman Excellent in Panama Hattie," NYP, 31
October 1940, MCNY, SC 8.

5. Anonymous fan, personal conversation with author.

6. Anonymous fan, personal conversation with author.

7. "Stage Door Johnny, Esq.," Enquirer, NYPL, Billy Rose Theatre Collection:
Ethel Merman folder, early 1930s.

8. Anonymous fan, personal conversation with author.

9. Az, 8o.

1o. TC, phone conversation with author, September 2004.

CHAPTER I: BEGINNINGS

I. Nancy Beth Jackson, "Accessible, Affordable and Highly Diverse," 1VYT, 19
October 2003.

2. RL, interview with author, July 2004-

3. Edward's own municipal records are elusive. Because he was born before the
borough of Queens was established, his certificate should be included in the records
for the city as a whole, where other births in Queens at the time are stored. But it is
missing.

4. MCNY, box z.

5• Al, 53-

6. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC, HMC: Pete Martin Collection. In
Ethel's 1955 autobiography, Martin changed this to "Mom was sharper than my dad,"
teaching her how to look after herself and her money. "Mom is the one with the hard
head and the shrewdness, the one who wouldn't let anybody cheat her." Ai, 54-

7. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC.

8. A2, 21.

9. Az, zo-2i.

10. Ai, 54-

H. RL, interview with author, July 2004.

12. A2, 232-

13. Az, zz.

14. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC.

15. MCNY, box 5.

16. Ai, 52.

17. RL, interview with author, July 2004-

i8. RL, letter to author, z8 January 2007.

19. Dorothy Fields, interview with PM, transcript, 27, USC, HMC: Pete Martin Collection.

20. Unidentified newspaper article, NYPL, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, file 2.

21. Ai, 79.

22. Az, 21.

23. Roger Edens, interview with PM, transcript, USC, HMC: Pete Martin Collection, box 20, folder i. Pianist Lew Kessler agrees. "If you give her a lyric, this dame,
she takes this little black notebook and she's got everything systematically written
out. Like I say, she's so organized.... She's got this lyric, and if you give it to her in
the afternoon and she goes home to dinner, she comes back and she just closes the
book. She knows it word for word [and she never looks at it again]. That's the end of it. And if you change two words in that lyric, like `so' to `but' and you go remind
her when she's very occupied mentally, if she sings that song two hours later she'll
have that changed." Lew Kessler, interview with PM, transcript, 17, USC, HMC:
Pete Martin Collection, box i9, folder 3. Al F. Koenig Jr. remembers much the same
thing. Edens sent Ethel privately recorded discs, which she would play until she mastered the arrangement. "That is precisely how she learned Edens' seat arrangement
of `[Blow,] Gabriel [Blow]."' Correspondence with author, December 2005.

24. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC.

25. Az, 9.

z6. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC.

27. Az, i9.

z8. Az, zz.

29. A2, 23.

30. The phrase is Barry Goldberg's, though popularized by David Roediger and
other scholars. Goldberg quoted in Roediger, "In Between Peoples: Race, Nationality and the `New' Immigrant Working Class," Journal ofAmerican Ethnic History
(Spring 1997): fn. ii.

31. Mark N. Grant, The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004). See especially the chapter "Before the Microphone"
and pp. zo-2i. Grant argues that "somewhere between 1900 and 1920, long melodic
verses [e.g., of Victor Herbert] were replaced by short, simple tunes not requiring vocal
agility" (z6); the chorus, not the verse, became the hook for audiences; songs were
written in lower ranges (average height of pitch), in shorter vocal compasses (distance
from low to high notes), and with slightly lower tessitura (with mezzos and belters
now dominant over sopranos). None of this was conscious but, rather, part of an evolution that Grant charts that began to establish the popular musicals, nonlegitimate
song, and vocal style that soon prevailed on Broadway for nearly half a century.

32. Isaac Goldberg, Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music
Racket (New York: John Day Co.,1930),150.

33. "Stage-Door Johnny, Esq," Enquirer, NYPL, Billy Rose Theatre Collection,
Ethel Merman folder: early 1930s.

34. Stacey Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American
Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 102.

35. Stanley Crouch made this point in Broadway: The American Musical, episode
1: "Give My Regards to Broadway," PBS, 19 October 2004 broadcast.

36. Al, 57.

37. Al, 58-

38. Merman claims to have been six (Ai, 56).

39. Az, 19.

40. Al, 59-

41. EM, interview with PM, transcript, USC.

42. Ibid.

43. Az, 21.

44. EM, interview with PM, transcripts, USC.