Ethel Merman in the Movies

She may be the biggest female Broadway star of all time and she unquestionably had the biggest voice.  The mouth that roared had its die-hard fans and detractors.  People seemed to love her or hate her.  There were few middle-of-the-road types although I may fall in there somewhere.  I was never a huge fan but her acclaim as a Broadway musical star is beyond question and I was very fond of a trio of her few films.

She was a secretary who made her Broadway debut in 1930's Girl Crazy and never looked back.  Not all her shows were hits but most were.  Let's consider Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, DuBarry Was a Lady, Panama Hattie, Something for the Boys, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam, and her favorite of them all, Gypsy.  She famously said... Broadway has been very good to me but then I've been very good for Broadway.

Most of the great composers of the day wanted Merman to sing their songs... Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and George Gershwin among them.  With her fame quickly came temperament and a haughtiness that was sometimes hard for others to bear.  Her shows always revolved around her character and her.  If anyone had the temerity to forget that, she would see to it it wouldn't happen again.  Most of her leading men were hardly her equals and she had pretty young ingenues for brunch. 

Formidable though she was on the East Coast, it never quite worked out that way for her on the West Coast.  While some of that may have also had something to do with how she talked to and treated people, the main reason is because she wasn't soft and cuddly in the slightest.  She tended to come off as brash and brassy.  Not especially pretty, she didn't photograph all that well.  

I know it doesn't sound like I'm being so soft and cuddly myself but the facts are the facts.  She was simply never quite right for romantic roles on the silver screen which may be why her movie career was sporadic.  It's also worth noting that only two of her Broadway hits did she reprise for the movies.

In the early 30's, she did appear in a series of musical shorts.  She made a bit of a splash opposite Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions (1934) and Strike Me Pink (1936).  He is an acquired taste and I never acquired it.  Both are his usual doofus roles.  Merman is a villainess in the first (Ann Sothern, however, is the leading lady) and she is his galpal in the second.  Some say Strike Me Pink is her best movie work.

Merman wasn't slated to repeat her Broadway role of Reno Sweeney in the film version of Anything Goes (1936) but after some maneuverings, she signed on.  It's a shipboard songfest with Bing Crosby and Ida Lupino along for the sail.  Merman sang the title tune along with You're the Top and I Get a Kick Out of You.

Then 20th Century Fox decided it wanted to try some things with Merman and put her under contract.  She and Cesar Romero were comic foils for ice skater Sonja Henie and studio reliable Don Ameche for some silly nonsense called Happy Landing (1938).  I didn't see it (or any Henie films) but I'm guessing it wasn't a happy landing and it contained no memorable songs.

The best film the lady made in her early movie career was Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938).  I repeat that it was her best film not that she was particularly notable in it.  Ameche, Alice Faye and Tyrone Power are the indisputable stars.  I reviewed it earlier and dearly loved the old chestnut.  Merman is a band singer who doesn't arrive on the scene until the movie's midway point.  Nonetheless, she gets to sing Say It with Music, A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody, Blue Skies and Heat Wave.  What she liked most about making this film was meeting Irving Berlin with whom she embarked on a lifelong friendship.

Top hat and cane in Alexander's Ragtime Band

Fox didn't renew her contract after 1938 and she didn't appear to mind particularly.  She returned to Broadway where she supported no one.  She was in New York in 1943 to film one number in Stage Door Canteen where a platoon of stars played themselves.  And then it would be 10 more years before she would make another film.

She returned to Hollywood and to Fox in 1953 to make not one but two films and two of her best.  As she said... after 14 years away from films, I returned to Hollywood a star.  The perks bestowed on her were certainly more than she ever received on Broadway.  They did fawn over her for her stage roles and never had in Hollywood but that changed this time around.  She was about to make two films, top-billed in both, both directed by Fox stalwart Walter Lang and produced by Sol. C. Siegel, both costarring Donald O'Connor and both with music by Irving Berlin.

Call Me Madam (1953) is undeniably the best movie Merman ever made... nothing else ever came close.  And it was the second of the films she made that she had done on the stage.  In fact, she won a well-deserved Tony for her 644 performances.

Merman plays boisterous (oh?), popular Sally Adams, a Washington D.C. hostess who is appointed as the (woefully inexperienced) ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Lichtenburg.  The musical-comedy results involve a charming general who woos her and her press attaché who wants to canoodle with a penniless princess who must marry for money.  

Everything about the production is gorgeous and glitzy and the indomitable spirit of Merman is present throughout.  George Sanders, as the general, in his only musical, was most impressive.  His solo, Marrying for Love, and coupling with Merman for The Best Thing for You Would Be Me were utterly charming. 

Donald O'Connor, Merman, George Sanders and Vera-Ellen from Call Me Madam

I believe the original work was written with Merman in mind but whether it was or not, never would she play a role so tailor-made.  It is a tour-de-force.  I always crack up when I hear her sing The Hostess with the Mostess.  If one were to do a Merman impression, no song could serve as well.  Her duet with Donald O'Connor as the rather shy attaché, You're Just in Love, is always a hoot.  It's a wonder how a timid singer pulled off such a song with her. 

Being a dance freak, my favorite parts of the film featured O'Connor and Vera-Ellen (as the princess) in their various dance routines but especially the It's a Lovely Day Today number.  Their pairing is nothing short of pure movie magic.

I loved the all-star There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) even though it's hardly a great movie.  I don't care.  Merman, O'Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor and Johnnie Ray were all I needed.  The well-worn story of a family of vaudevillians allowed Irving Berlin to bring back a host of some of his best songs, the very least of which is the title tune, a signature tune for Merman from her Broadway days in Annie Get Your Gun.  She and the wonderfully well-matched Dailey are the parents of O'Connor, Ray and Gaynor.

A number of the songs I was nuts about.  Maybe nuts is the operative word but I still don't care.  The revised version of When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam with O'Connor and Gaynor is great fun.  They join Monroe for a lusty rendition of Heat Wave.  The title tune features a gaggle of singers and dancers and the six leads for the film's splashy finale.  I often haul out my DVD copy and watch just this number.

Others may find more wrong with the movie than I do but there are some casting decisions that went awry.  Singer Johnnie Ray, always a physically awkward performer as I see it, was signed for this, his only movie, on the strength of a whopping best-selling song, Cry.  He was clearly out of his depth here, although migawd, it's not Shakespeare.  The powers that were must have seen the light too for they more or less wrote him out of the story (making him a priest and sending him to far-off lands) until the finale.

Loved the finale... hated Merman's weird dress

Monroe came into the production kicking and screaming.  It was a supporting role and it offended her.  But she wanted to do 7-Year Itch and Fox blackmailed her with this role.  In fact, they rewrote the script to accommodate her.  Her character, who becomes involved with O'Connor, is the catalyst for pulling the family apart.  Of course, I thought she was a total delight as I always did.

What is weird is her pairing with O'Connor.  If Merman and Dailey are well-matched, Monroe and O'Connor are most definitely not.  A woman like that wouldn't come within 10 yards of an O'Connor.  Another story involving O'Connor was that he was getting a divorce during the making of this film and Dailey not only was dating the wife but would end up marrying her.  Boy oh boy, I'll tell you, there's no people like show people.

Merman was bitterly disappointed that she didn't get to reprise Mama Rose in the film version of Gypsy in 1963.  I liked Rosalind Russell in it and thought she did fine work but the overbearing, cunning role seemed more suitable to Merman.  Meow.

Perhaps her large ego was massaged when producer-director Stanley Kramer offered her an opportunity to show off her comedic skills in 1963's It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  In a lunatic plot about various nefarious folks out to grab a $350,000 cache. Merman joined just about every comedian in the business.  It was not my cup of tea and I never saw it.

Adams, Caesar, Winters, Merman, Berle and Rooney in Mad World

The Art of Love (1965) is a feather-brained romantic-comedy that disappeared 15 minutes after opening.  Merman plays an over-the-top brothel owner named Madam Coco La Fontaine in support of James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and Angie Dickinson and nothing but nothing could save this turkey.

It was another 15 years until her final film appearance.  In the hysterical Airplane (1980) she plays a bit part as a military mental ward patient who thinks he's Ethel Merman and offers a rendering of Everything's Coming Up Roses.

She may have been the most unsuccessful famous person to ever work in the movies.  She might have enjoyed more success in television than she did in films but certainly equaled her unqualified success as a Broadway star.  Without a doubt the lady was indestructible.



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