Ethel Merman: A Life
by By Kellow, Brian
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Entertainment & Performing Arts

More than twenty years after her death, Ethel Merman continues to set the standard for American musical theater. Every actress who dares step into one of her roles is inevitably held up for comparison with the original (and usually found wanting); every new theater-filling voice is measured against her sheer sonic marvel; every interpreter of the Cole Porter canon must take account of the singer who the awestruck songwriter said sounded "like a band going by." Those who witnessed her onstage remember her as the greatest performer they'd ever seen; the rest of us make do with the original cast recordings, the handful of films she made, and the apparently endless trove of anecdotes about this famously strong-willed, fearsomely blunt, and terrifyingly exacting woman.We know, in short, the legend, but who, really, was Ethel Agnes Zimmermann? Brian Kellow's superb biography is the first account of her life to examine both the artist and the woman with as much critical rigor as empathy. The result is the fullest portrait yet of this show-business phenomenon. We follow Ethel from her childhood in Astoria, Queens, and her first jobs as a crack secretary, to her earliest singing engagements in nightclubs and vaudeville, to her star-making performance of "I Got Rhythm" in the Gershwins' Girl Crazy. For the next thirty years she conquered Broadway with her astonishing voice, immaculate enunciation, and near-faultless pitch, all employed in an unmatched series of successes, from Anything Goes to the spectacular Annie Get Your Gun. And finally, there was Gypsy - Merman was a canny enough professional to recognize immediately not only that the show had an outstanding book and score but also that Rose was the role of a lifetime. What she did with that role, of course, was to make every kind of history that matters.Kellow adds immeasurably to our understanding of Merman by examining her in the context of the dramatic changes that Broadway underwent from the 1930s through the 1960s, but more significantly by stripping away the accumulation of years of rumors and apocryphal stories to uncover the surprisingly fragile woman behind the often overbearing star. Through dozens of interviews with her colleagues, friends, and family members, Kellow reveals many surprising facets of Merman: her bitterness at Hollywood's neglect of her, her generosity toward younger performers, her poignant determination to keep her career alive long after the Broadway she knew disappeared, and her indomitable, and ultimately frustrated, search for love.