The Original Belter

In the days before microphones on the Broadway stage, Ethel Merman's voice would fill a theater. She would hold a loud, long note like a trumpet and make everyone pay attention. I recently read a biography of her life, and it was not an easy one. But, when she was out on stage, or on screen, her personality was bigger than life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7VzlCk1NoE

Here is a "official" bio;
Ethel Merman (January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American actress and singer of the musical theatre. Known for her powerful voice, she was often referred to as "The Grande Dame of the Broadway stage".

Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in her maternal grandmother's house at 359 4th Avenue, Astoria, Queens, New York. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant, and her mother, Agnes (née Gardner), was a school teacher. Merman's father was German American and Lutheran, and her mother was Scottish American and Presbyterian; she was baptized Episcopalian. She attended PS 9 on Steinway Street in Astoria. She used to stand outside the Famous Players-Lasky Studios and wait to see her favorite Broadway star, Alice Brady. Ethel loved to sing songs like "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" while her father accompanied her on the piano and the flute, but he hated the clarinet.

Merman was known for her powerful, belting mezzo-soprano/alto voice, precise enunciation and pitch. Because stage singers performed without microphones when she began singing professionally, she had great advantages in show business, despite the fact that she never received any singing lessons. In fact, Broadway lore holds that George Gershwin warned her never to take a singing lesson after seeing her opening reviews for Girl Crazy. Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics for Merman's Gypsy, remembered that she could become "mechanical" after a while. "She performed the dickens out of the show when the critics were there," he said. He added, "or if she thought there was a celebrity in the audience. So we used to spread a rumor that Frank Sinatra was out front. That whoever, Judy Garland was out front. I'll tell you one thing [Merman] did do, she steadily upstaged everybody. Every night, she would be about one more foot upstage, so finally they were all playing with their backs to the audience. I don't think it was conscious. But she sure knew her way around a stage, and it was all instinctive.

Merman began singing while working as a secretary for the B-K Booster (automobile) Vacuum Brake Company in Queens. She eventually became a full time vaudeville performer and played the pinnacle of vaudeville, the Palace Theatre in New York City. She had already been engaged for Girl Crazy, a musical with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, which also starred a very young Ginger Rogers (19 years old) in 1930. Although third billed, her rendition of "I Got Rhythm" in the show was a breakthrough, and by the late 1930s, she had become the first lady of the Broadway musical stage. Many consider her the leading Broadway musical performer of the Twentieth century, with her signature song being "There's No Business Like Show Business".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icr71H1nb3Q


Merman starred in five Cole Porter musicals, among them Anything Goes in 1934, where she introduced "I Get a Kick Out of You", "Blow Gabriel Blow", and "Anything Goes ". Her next musical with Porter was Red, Hot and Blue. Porter's lyrics also helped showcase her comic talents in duets in Panama Hattie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJ3vqkXqRU

Irving Berlin supplied Merman with equally memorable duets, including counterpoint songs "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" with Bruce Yarnell. Merman won the 1951 Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance as Sally Adams in Call Me Madam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQLjdZ0VL0g

Perhaps Merman's most revered performance was in Gypsy as Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Rose. Merman introduced Everything's Coming Up Roses and Some People and ended the show with Rose's Turn. Critics and audiences saw her creation of Madame Rose as the performance of her career.[citation needed] She did not get the role in the movie version, however, which went to movie actress Rosalind Russell, and an infuriated Merman was quoted as saying: "There's a name for women like her but it's seldom used in society outside [of] a kennel." (Since this is a line from the film The Women, in which Russell appeared, the story may be apocryphal). Merman decided to take Gypsy on the road and trumped the motion picture as a result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s62MrU8mHx4

Merman lost the Tony Award to Mary Martin, who was playing Maria in The Sound of Music. "How can you buck a nun?" mused Merman. The competitiveness notwithstanding, Merman and Martin were friends off stage and starred in a musical special on television and, in 1977, in a one-night-only concert, "Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, Together on Broadway" at the Broadway Theatre in New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG8zxWMPDkM

Merman retired from Broadway in 1970, when she appeared as the last Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, a show initially written for her. No longer willing to "take the veil," as she described being in a Broadway role,[citation needed] Merman moved to television specials and movies. "Broadway," said Merman, "has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to Broadway."

Though she reprised her roles in Anything Goes and Call Me Madam, film executives would not select her for Annie Get Your Gun or Gypsy. Some critics state the reason for losing the roles was that her outsized stage persona did not fit well on the screen. Others have said[citation needed] that after her behavior on the set of Twentieth-Century Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business, Jack Warner refused to have her in any of his motion pictures, thereby causing her to lose the role of Rose in Gypsy, though some believe Rosalind Russell's husband and agent, Frederick Brisson, negotiated the rights away from Merman for his wife. In spite or because of this, Stanley Kramer cast her as the battle-axe Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of Milton Berle, in the comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDu1s0AHLQI

Merman's last movie role was a self-parody in the comedy movie Airplane!, appearing as a soldier, Lieutenant Hurwitz. Hurwitz is suffering from shell shock and thinks he is Ethel Merman. Merman sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses", while the nurses drag her back to bed and give her a sedative. In 1979, she recorded The Ethel Merman Disco Album, with many of her signature show-stoppers set to a disco beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wANKEe3WnKg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xboi81EwFvk

Merman was married and divorced four times:

1. Bill Smith, theatrical agent (1940–1941)
2. Robert Levitt, a newspaper executive (1941–1952)
3. Robert Six, President, Continental Airlines (1953–1960)
4. Ernest Borgnine, the actor, in 1964. They announced the impending nuptials at P.J. Clarke's, in New York, but Merman filed for divorce after just 32 days. Johnny Carson soon quipped on his Tonight Show, "And they said it wouldn't last!"

With Levitt, Merman had two children: Ethel (born July 20, 1942). and Robert Jr. (born August 11, 1945), they divorced in 1952. Ethel Levitt died in 1967 of a drug overdose that was ruled accidental. Merman co-wrote two volumes of memoirs, Who Could Ask for Anything More in 1955 and Merman in 1978. In a radio interview, Merman commented on her many marriages, saying that "We all make mistakes, that's why they put rubbers on pencils, and that's what I did. I made a few loo-loos!" In the latter book, the chapter entitled "My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine" consists of one blank page.

Merman was diagnosed with glioblastoma and underwent surgery in April 1983 to have the malignant tumor removed from her brain. Less than ten months later, in February 1984, the cancer had metastasized and she died.

Theatre
* Girl Crazy (1930)
* George White's Scandals of 1931 (1931)
* Take a Chance (1932)
* Anything Goes (1934)
* Red, Hot and Blue (1936)
* Stars In Your Eyes (1939)
* DuBarry Was a Lady (1939)
* Panama Hattie (1940)
* Something for the Boys (1943)
* Sadie Thompson (1944) (left during rehearsals; replaced by June Havoc)
* Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
* Call Me Madam (1950)
* Happy Hunting (1956)
* Gypsy (1959)
* Annie Get Your Gun (1966) (revival)
* Hello, Dolly! (1970) (replacement)
* Mary Martin & Ethel Merman: Together On Broadway (1977)

Films
* Follow the Leader (1930)
* Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1932)
* We're Not Dressing (1934)
* Kid Millions (1934)
* The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)
* Strike Me Pink (1936)
* Anything Goes (1936)
* Happy Landing (1938)
* Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
* Straight, Place or Show (1938)
* Stage Door Canteen (1943)
* Call Me Madam (1953)
* There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
* It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
* The Art of Love (1965)
* Journey Back to Oz (1974) (voice)
* Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
* Airplane! (1980)

Television
* The Ford 50th Anniversary Show (1953)
* Panama Hattie (1954)
* Merman On Broadway (1961)
* The Lucy Show, two-parter, as herself (1963)
* Maggie Brown (1963) (unsold pilot)
* An Evening with Ethel Merman (1965)
* Annie Get Your Gun (1967)
* Tarzan and the Mountains of the Moon (1967)
* Batman, "The Sport of Penguins", two-parter as Lola Lasagne (1967)
* That Girl, two episodes, as herself (1967-1968)
* 'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gershwin (1972)
* Ed Sullivan's Broadway (1973)
* The Muppet Show (1976)
* Match Game PM (1976), (1978)
* You're Gonna Love It Here (1977) (unsold pilot)
* A Salute to American Imagination (1978)
* A Special Sesame Street Christmas (1978)
* Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979) (voice)
* The Love Boat, five episodes, (1979-1982)
* Night of 100 Stars (1982)

You have to see and hear Ethel to really get a sense of all that she was. There will never be a voice that is so distinguishable, one of a kind...there will never be another Ethel Merman.