This has popped up hereabouts before, but it appeared in my Facebook feed today and I decided it was just what I needed, and perhaps you do, too. A light in bleak times, the Merm...

I had a nice long stroll around Our Nation's Capital yesterday, and I grabbed the opportunity to drop into the National Portrait Gallery and pay my respects to some old familiar faces.

One of the many topics in regard to which I heartily agree with Mr. Ethan Mordden (novelist, raconteur, and entertainment historian par excellence) is the regrettability of the extent to which Hollywood (and, to a lesser extent, the stage) embraced the idea of the New Dance Sensation Number.  This surprisingly long-lived phenomenon consists nine times out of ten of a (frequently quite lavish) sequence based on a (nearly universally) sub-par song in praise of said terpsichory, staged without even a hint of what the damn dance was supposed to actually be.  I mean, face it - based on what you've seen on screen, could you attempt to dance the Varsity Rag?  The Continental?  I thought not.

Along those lines, this one's a lulu - and that's the least of its (many) sins.

It seemed for a while that "What I Did for Love" was going to become one of those inescapable songs, like "Feelings" or the song most usually known as "Mem'ry (from Cats)."  A Chorus Line was, after all, a phenomenal hit, a rare one for the mid-'70s that could be equally adored by aficionados of old-line musicals, those seeking some sign that musicals could still thrive in a rock-n-roll culture, and just the usual theatergoers who like a good story.  But at some point within a decade or so, it kind of went away for a while.  I thought it would be fun to think about that.

After yet another day of enforced office festivities, this is just exactly what I needed...

Let's have this wonderful moment, from 1975, stand as a birthday tribute to the song's creator, dear Mr. Irving Berlin.  If, over his long life, he became something of an American institution, this lady is part of the reason why.  Ethel Merman sang the work of all the greats of her day, of course, and while she did proud by Gershwin and Porter, and later on the likes of Sondheim and Herman, something about an Irving Berlin song fits her like a glove.

And never more, really, than this song, both her trademark and, on its own, a monumental summing up of the show-biz culture that was passing even as the show it's from, Annie Get Your Gun, took the stage.  Seeing the Merm here, fronting a band that can really challenge her, is like watching a racehorse test its mettle.  Within a few bars, she's abandoned even the minimal concessions of scale and gesture she usually made for TV and lets us see, if in an autumnal way, the sheer unbridled staginess of her performing style, her stand-and-delivery way of putting over a song.  Some singers (Peggy Lee, Julie London) seduce you.  Some (Minnelli and her mother, Streisand) sell it to you.  Merman simply puts it out there, look at what I can do (and anything you can do, I can do better - that's more Berlin, actually).

What makes it Camp, though, isn't the song, or the singer - despite the chiffon muu-muu and the hair out to there, Merman is, I think, too good to be Camp.  It's the whole package - the Boston Pops, Arthur Fiedler, the countless genteel households tuning in across the country on PBS, the adoration of the audience, even the hushed tones of Miss Bernadette Peters setting the scene.  It's a tinsel setting for a voice of brass, but the voice cuts through the nonsense to deliver, once more, the goods: the costumes, the scenery, the makeup the props - all there, in front of you.  When she sings it, what Irving Berlin knew as a fact is conjured up again, and it really is like no business you know.

In honor of the great lady's 105th, and just because nothing perks up a drab Wednesday like a little Irving Berlin, I thought it might be fun to survey a few off-the-beaten-track versions of one of the Merm's signature tunes.  Sadly, there's no video evidence for my personal favorite, which is Tyne Daly singing a slow, slow, sad version of the song that, as she herself has said, "makes strong men weep."  Still, there's a surprising variety of takes on the old chestnut.  Sit back and enjoy.


First off, to get thing going on a truly surreal note, here we have the good Damen und Herren of the German Army's Heeresmusikkorps 4 in a swinging instrumental rendition filmed in a garden in Regensburg.  One can only wonder what the erstwhile Israel Beilin would have made of it...


Next up, Welsh songbird Mary "Those were the Days" Hopkin warbles her way through a rather solemn version of the song, as arranged by Beatles' producer George Martin.  Pretty.

Sister 'Retha's unexpected version is sadly truncated, but entirely creditable.  Of any version, hers perhaps approaches the original in terms of sheer lung power.


That said, this magisterial version by tragic UK thrush Lena Zavaroni comes close.  Unfortunately, it segues into one of those uncomfortable "End of Benefit Gala Finale" sway-n-sings, to "That's Entertainment," which rather undercuts the impact.


The lovely and talented Mr. Nathan Lane leads the ensemble through a spirited rendition from Kenneth Branagh's moderately awful go at Love's Labour's Lost.  It's fun, but kind of lumbering.


Here's a version that competes head-to-head in terms of sheer show-biz professionalism.  Rosemary Clooney had the musical chops to give it more swing than the Merm ever tried, and by 1985, when this was taped, she had the backstory to make the lyric work, too.  Terrific.


Still, there's nothing like the real thing.  This one's familiar, I know, but I never fail to marvel at how, for whatever reason, the Muppets bring out something tender and rather magical in the old girl, a rare occasion in her later career in which she backed off from being "Miss Birdseye," unfroze her set-in-stone arrangements, and did something a little different.  The moment she gets to "the closing, when the customers don't come..." is indescribable.

Merman was a warhorse, a trouper, a star virtually from the first moment she set foot on Broadway.  Few performers have ever had a clearer vision of who they are and what they do, and if the price of that, in the long run, was that moments of spontaneity and vulnerability like the above were few and far between, it meant that she had the stamina to delight audiences, night after night, in halls around the world, for decades, live and in person and generally with nothing so vulgar as a microphone in sight.  It's almost impossible to imagine, in a world of spoiled divas and post-teen has-beens, the discipline and dedication it took, being Ethel Merman.  Brava to her, on her birthday and always.

It's a big day at the Café, kids - the 105th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest showpeople who ever lived, the brass-lunged, foul-mouthed, great-hearted self-creation that was - deep breath - Ethel Merman. Let's give it up.

The stage was her medium and the movies didn't ever do her justice, but thank heaven we do have a record of what she was like in action. Here are two clips, separated by something just shy of half-a-century, both of which in very different ways give me goosebumps.

First up, the Great Lady herself, in full flight on the Tony Awards, reprising one of her numbers from Annie Get Your Gun:

That's the diva we all know and love.

It's easy, in watching her make it look so easy, to forget the incredible craft that she puts into a song she's sung a thousand times before. She's an old lady, never a subtle presence, pushing a voice that while still titanic is worn around the edges, and yet she brings a genuine pathos to the song; that little break between the last two words speaks volumes about a life that knew heartbreak as well as triumph.

Once upon a time, of course, even she was young, attractive if not drop-dead beautiful, and, from the moment she first stepped on stage, incomparable at putting across a song.

To prove it, here's "An Earful of Music", from the 1934 Eddie Cantor vehicle Kid Millions. Cantor shows, stage or screen, were all about Cantor, but the audience must have sat up and taken notice of this young sensation, just four years away from having been Queens stenographer Ethel Agnes Zimmerman:
Except for the dress, which definitively proves that Goldwyn's Omar Kiam was no Adrian, she's pretty believable as a girl song plugger in a sheet music store.*

Young or old, she's amazing, irreplaceable, and a very great artist. Merman had a career like no other, and while she suffered the occasional misstep and, especially toward the end, made herself a shade too easy to parody, few performers have ever had a greater hit-to-flop ratio in their favor, had such a hold on their audience for so long, or did more to spread the word about the genius of America's greatest mid-century songwriters. Like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Jules Styne, we're in her debt. Happy Birthday, Merm!

* Now there's a line of work that's dead as the dodo.

First posted four years ago today, and amended only to update the year.  How time flies!

Can you imagine flying the Mermy skies? I'm picturing lots of Manhattans and a crew of cowering stews. Where Bennett Cerf fits in, I can't quite figure out.

Have I mentioned recently how much I loathe travel? At this point - and apologies, by the bye, for the long silence, but being as nice to people as I've had to be for the past week is exhausting - all I want is to be on the plane and back in our quiet little house.

Hell, I'd even sit Mermside to get there that much faster...

(There was, it turns out, a cavalcade of these "If you've got it..." spots for Braniff - and this was, in fact, one of the least odd couples involved.)

You know what I'd like to do to celebrate this festive weekend? I'd like to run over to the Alvin and get a couple of tickets to see Ethel and the Schnozz in Cole's latest, Red, Hot and Blue! It would even be worth putting up with Bob Hope. We could grab a drink at the Algonquin beforehand, and maybe go on to dinner at Sardi's if we can get a table.

Of course, this is mostly what I would like to do every weekend, and have about as much chance on the Fourth of July as any other. I suppose what we'll do instead is put a patriotic ribbon on Koko and have an indoor picnic (as any outdoor activity would run the the risk of second-degree burns). Oh, well...

A varied group, today, of four people united only in having been conceived in the waning days of summer and born nine months later on the same date.

Pioneering aviatrix Harriet Quimby was the first woman to fly the English Channel. Why don't you know that? Probably because she had the misfortune to do so the day after the Titanic sank; even in Edwardian media stunts, timing is everything. A few months later, she was dead in an air crash.

If Harriet's star blazed bright and short, Martha Graham's sputtered on for probably a fair amount longer than was strictly good for her reputation. She was a titan, though, and respect must be paid.

Madame Arcati, in Blithe Spirit, set Margaret Rutherford on the path, but Miss Marple ensured her immortality. Her version of the elderly sleuth may have little or nothing to do with Agatha Christie's, but the five Rutherford Marples are models of light, amusing and economical film-making.

The gentleman of the day is Mr. Irving Berlin, whose work we see here glorified almost into unrecognizability by the good people of Twentieth Century Fox:

But anything that included Merman, a Tyrolean interlude, and a Mitzi Gaynor specialty would probably have been just fine with him. Johnnie Ray? Maybe not so much. I especially like the faded, hand-tinted effect of this clip, not to mention the Japanese subtitles, which add an air of oddity (as if this number needed that...).

And many happy returns to them all, wherever they are. I kind of like to think that Miss Quimby is giving Miss Graham a spin in her celestial bi-plane...

It's a big day at the Café, kids - the 101st anniversay of the birth of one of the greatest showpeople who ever lived, the brass-lunged, foul-mouthed, great-hearted self-creation that was - deep breath - Ethel Merman. Let's give it up.

The stage was her medium and the movies didn't ever do her justice, but thank heaven we do have a record of what she was like in action. Here are two clips, separated by something just shy of half-a-century, both of which in very different ways give me goosebumps.

First up, the Great Lady herself, in full flight on the Tony Awards, reprising one of her numbers from Annie Get Your Gun:

That's the diva we all know and love.

It's easy, in watching her make it look so easy, to forget the incredible craft that she puts into a song she's sung a thousand times before. She's an old lady, never a subtle presence, pushing a voice that while still titanic is worn around the edges, and yet she brings a genuine pathos to the song; that little break between the last two words speaks volumes about a life that knew heartbreak as well as triumph.

Once upon a time, of course, even she was young, attractive if not drop-dead beautiful, and, from the moment she first stepped on stage, incomparable at putting across a song.

To prove it, here's "An Earful of Music", from the 1934 Eddie Cantor vehicle Kid Millions. Cantor shows, stage or screen, were all about Cantor, but the audience must have sat up and taken notice of this young sensation, just four years away from having been Queens stenographer Ethel Agnes Zimmerman:

Except for the dress, which definitively proves that Goldwyn's Omar Kiam was no Adrian, she's pretty believable as a girl song plugger in a sheet music store.*

Young or old, she's amazing, irreplaceable, and a very great artist. Merman had a career like no other, and while she suffered the occasional misstep and, especially toward the end, made herself a shade too easy to parody, few performers have ever had a greater hit-to-flop ratio in their favor, had such a hold on their audience for so long, or did more to spread the word about the genius of America's greatest mid-century songwriters. Like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Jules Styne, we're in her debt. Happy Birthday, Merm!

* Now there's a line of work thats dead as the dodo.

I'm sure it was. As if there could be any question!

Wouldn't you love to know what Irving had just said to get that expression out of the Merm?

I'm glad to see that, even at the Stork Club, she stuck with beer, and apparently straight out of the bottle. You can take the stenographer out of Astoria...

Just ask Ernest and Ethel here...

Now tell me true: could two boys possibly do it worse than they?

(Image unrepentantly borrowed from the divinely erudite House Next Door.)

Do you suppose she ever wondered, just for a moment, just where it all started to go wrong?

I love his chorines and beauty queens, his stiff-shirted old geezers and sugar daddies, his country-club couples and his utterly urbane, utter New-Yorkiness.

flambé!

You just know that restaurant is Le Pavillon, don't you? Imagine a time when French food was - exotic!

His work, of course, went far beyond Mr. Ross's magazine; he achieved the ultimate cachet for a mid-century illustrator: creating the Playbill cover for Broadway shows, those signature images that were meant to freeze in the audience's mind what a show was all about. He did it well:

She never looked Mermier...

I still read The New Yorker (here on the far side of the earth it's passed around like samizdat in Russia used to be), and especially the cartoons. Some still rise to the standards of yore - Roz Chast at her best is every bit as funny, if not as graphically dashing - but somehow... Oh, you understand. It's just not the same.