Ethel Merman: A Life (9 page)

Porter had written a remarkable score that would go down in history as one of his best. Ethel’s first number was a witty lament, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” with its tricky, restless beguine rhythms. She also had “Kate the Great,” which showed off Porter at his bawdiest. Then there was a duet for Gaxton and Ethel, a dizzying list song called “You’re the Top,” which Porter had composed in Paris after he and a socialite friend had amused themselves one day by devising a list of rhyming superlatives. He decided to turn the trick into a song that played on his love of topical references. Among the names he dropped: Greta Garbo (“You’re Garbo’s sal’ry”), Mahatma Gandhi, George Jean Nathan, even Mickey Mouse, while the sites included the National Gallery, the Louvre Museum, the Whitney Stable, the dam at Boulder. It was a laughably simple idea for a song, and Porter dashed off several refrains, figuring that it would probably come and go quickly.

For the close of the first act, Porter gave Ethel “Anything Goes,” his merry tribute to hedonism that seemed more a backward glance to the reckless twenties than an anthem for the crippled thirties. In the second act, she had one of the few numbers that could be called so-so, “Buddie, Beware,” but finished with the red-hot revival number “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” which exploited her trumpeting high notes better than any other song in the show. Ethel learned them all quickly, and at the first day of rehearsal in New York she performed “I Get a Kick Out of You” so movingly that the entire company broke into cheers and applause.

By the time rehearsals began, Lindsay and Crouse had hurriedly met their ten-day deadline and turned in a first act, which the cast quickly set about learning. It was pandemonium, with lots of daily changes being thrown at the actors. Ethel kept her head down and worked harder than anyone, noting everything on her shorthand pad. “Kate the Great” was dropped because Ethel thought the lyrics were too dirty. Billy’s sweet romantic ballad, “Easy to Love,” had to be put aside, because it proved too rangy for Gaxton, who also lost his original duet with Bettina Hall, “Waltz Down the Aisle.” Porter knew that the show needed a tender moment amid all the comedy and came up with the haunting “All Through the Night,” a descending chromatic tune that Gaxton sang with Hall. There were also some fixes in the lyrics for “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Initially Porter had written a stanza that read:

 

I wouldn’t care

For those nights in the air

That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh went through….

 

But the song had been written a few years earlier, and in light of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, it was thought best to replace the lyrics with:

 

Flying too high

With some guy in the sky

Is my idea of nothing to do,

Yet I get a kick out of you!

 

It was a musical-comedy score of astonishing depth and breadth and variety. One critic later amused himself by imagining what Victor Herbert might have made of it: “He would say, ‘What sort of musician does this fellow Porter want to be? I had my style, the Victor Herbert style, which anybody could recognize…. What is the Porter style which he wants people to recognize as his?”

Lindsay and Crouse, both suffering from sleep deprivation, drafted the second act of
Anything Goes
while the first one was being rehearsed. By the time the company had to leave New York for opening night of the out-of-town tryout at Boston’s Colonial Theater on November 5, the writers were still trying to figure out the last scene. When the scenic designer, Donald Oenslager, asked them whether it would take place indoors or outdoors, they replied that he should play it safe and design something that could pass for either.

The Boston reviews gave little indication that
Anything Goes
had been such a rush job. The
Boston Evening American
called it “the best musical show in years,” and the
Boston Post
found that “in liveliness and beauty, wit and humor, it weaved a spell of genuine enjoyment that far exceeds anything the stage has given us in many a season.” On opening night Ethel was rapturously received by the audience. During rehearsals she had fretted over “You’re the Top,” wondering whether the audience would take to it, since it was so unlike anything that had ever been done. She could have saved herself the worry: “You’re the Top” was a smash, and she and Gaxton wound up singing all seven refrains. After “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” she was called back for three encores. The
Boston Daily Record
didn’t overstate things when it reported that “hers was a genuine triumph,…the most rousing Boston debut in a long time.”

As further tinkering went on in Boston, Crouse was amazed to find Ethel such a quick study. His widow, Anna Crouse, remembered, “She could pick up anything really fast and play it, so that you really saw whether it worked or not…. They could walk in at five in the afternoon with a new scene and she would do it.”

In Boston, Freedley’s mean-spirited side revealed itself. Although Ethel always remained grateful to the producer for discovering her at the Brooklyn Paramount, she was starting to understand why many people in the theater disliked him. “He had the air of commander in chief,” recalled Nanette Fabray, who later appeared in the Freedley shows
Let’s Face It
(1941) and
Jackpot
(1943). “He was the big boss—it emanated from him.” He seldom interfered with the creative process, but he could be appallingly cheap. While the show was still at the Colonial, Crouse as a matter of course came in every night to see it and make the necessary adjustments. Freedley’s way of saying thank you was to send him a bill for his nightly ticket. When Crouse blew up at him, Freedley said, “Oh, all right, I’ll give you a check.” Crouse told him not to bother. “Vinton,” he said, “I’d rather tell people what you did.”

On November 21,
Anything Goes
opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre. The audience, already primed for a hit by the advance word from Boston, loved the show from its very first moment. “I Get a Kick Out of You” received a huge ovation, and Porter went wild over one particular touch that Ethel brought to it. As written, the second verse read:

 

Some get a kick from cocaine.

I’m sure that if I took even one sniff

That would bore me terrific’ly too

Yet I get a kick out of you.

 

Ethel put a fermata over the
r
’s on “terrrrrrrrrrrrrific’ly,” one of those inspired, instinctively “right” moments that she would create throughout her career. During “You’re the Top,” the audience could barely contain its excitement. The reviews were excellent. While allowing that the show was “not suitable to the ears of bashful theater-lovers,” the
New York Herald Tribune
found some of its songs and scenes “almost breathtaking in their splendor.” The
New York Post
raved over Ethel: “She is vivacious and ingratiating in her comedy moments, and the embodiment of poise as well as technical adroitness when she is called upon to ‘put over’ a song as only she knows how to do. Even if there were nothing else to recommend
Anything Goes
to your attention…it would be decidedly worth your while to journey to the Alvin for the sheer joy of listening to her as she projects such a profane spiritual as ‘Blow, Gabriel, Blow’ or as she sings the amusing lyrics of such admirable melodies as ‘You’re the Top,’ ‘Anything Goes,’ or, even more especially, ‘I Get a Kick Out of You.’”

Ethel reveled in the success of
Anything Goes.
It enhanced her status in a number of ways, and she knew it. Not only was Porter the most exciting composer on the scene, but he had written songs that allowed her to show off a new dimension of her talent. Just when Broadway thought it had her pigeonholed as a torchy blues singer, Porter had come along and, as she told an interviewer, “I have a chance to show that I don’t have to sound like the Sandy Hook foghorn.”

Anything Goes
settled in at the Alvin for 420 performances, one of the longest runs ever recorded for a musical comedy at the time. As far as Broadway audiences were concerned, Ethel had unquestionably arrived some time ago. Now she seemed destined to stay for a long time. She was part of the good life—just like Garbo’s sal’ry.

D
uring the run of
Anything Goes,
Ethel became close friends with William Gaxton and his wife, Madeline. They shared many interests, including dancing and professional football, and they often rode together to Yankee Stadium in the Gaxtons’ baby Rolls-Royce, singing every mile of the way. Through the Gaxtons, Ethel met socialite Winthrop Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Company. Madeline Gaxton had cautioned Ethel that Rockefeller wasn’t accustomed to being around showbiz types and that she might want to tone down her language. Madeline needn’t have worried: Rockefeller was charmed and intrigued by Ethel, and the two began going out steadily. They both loved to drink and dance and often wound up at El Morocco until all hours, worrying Mom Zimmermann no end. Ultimately it was a not-too-serious romance that ran its course; Rockefeller seems mainly to have perceived Ethel as having novelty value, and he soon returned to his own social set.

Ethel played happily in
Anything Goes
until the midsummer of 1935. Normally she stayed with a show until its last performance, but she withdrew from
Anything Goes
for what appeared to be a good reason: Goldwyn wanted her for another picture with Eddie Cantor. This one,
Strike Me Pink,
was based on a story by Clarence Dudington Kelland, “Dreamland,” about an amusement park that is being threatened by mobsters. Cantor played a meek college dry cleaner. For Ethel it was essentially a retread of
Kid Millions
—a tough-girl comedy part with songs thrown in—but she was determined to conquer Hollywood as she had Broadway, and she told Lou Irwin to accept the offer.

She was replaced in
Anything Goes
by Benay Venuta, an unknown singer/actress four years her junior. A native of San Francisco, Benay had started her career as a dancer and toured in vaudeville for a time, but
Anything Goes
marked her Broadway debut. She sang in a brassy, all-out style that showed more than a little Merman influence. She very much fancied herself a Merman type and hoped that one day she might have a career that rivaled Ethel’s. She learned the part of Reno in only three weeks, taking over for Ethel on July 22, 1935. She did a competent job, and the show continued until November 16. At first Benay seemed content to follow in Ethel’s footsteps, also replacing her on her Sunday-night CBS radio show,
Rhythm at Eight.
Benay never achieved her ambition to be another Merman, but in the years ahead she would become a member of Ethel’s inner circle. Ethel appreciated her tough, no-nonsense manner and her sharp, catty wit. For much of the time, Benay seemed able to play the role of supportive friend and second-tier actress. Eventually, however, the two women’s friendship would go through increasingly complicated and stormy patches.

When Ethel arrived in Hollywood, she learned that
Strike Me Pink
was not yet ready to go into production. She was making plans to return to New York when she received an urgent call from Lou Irwin. Paramount had purchased the screen rights to
Anything Goes
and was about to go into preproduction. Initially they had passed over Ethel; her
We’re Not Dressing
costar, Bing Crosby, was playing the part of Billy Crocker and had persuaded the studio to cast his wife, singer Dixie Lee, as Reno Sweeney. Lee had been signed for seven weeks’ work at $10,500, but for reasons unknown (possibly the alcoholism that would cut short her career), she was suddenly out. Paramount had been happy enough with the way Ethel had performed in
We’re Not Dressing,
and now, backed into a corner, they asked her to repeat her stage triumph. Delighted to have such an opportunity dropped in her lap, Ethel signed on at a salary of $30,333 for a forty-day shooting schedule.

Filming began on September 4. The studio was buzzing with activity: Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper were starring in
Desire,
and Ethel’s old nemesis Mae West was making
Klondike Annie
on a nearby soundstage. From the beginning, however, it was clear to Ethel that
Anything Goes
was not going to turn out as she’d hoped. Again the spotlight was on Crosby, and again she was confined to the sidelines. The emphasis was on screwball comedy scenes and Billy’s romance with Hope Harcourt, played by a very young, very blond Ida Lupino. Ethel was stuck with one witless line after another—“What’s the idea?” and “What is this, a gag?” and “What are you doing over here?”—as straight woman to Crosby.

Worst of all was what the studio had done to Porter’s score. The year before, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America had instituted the Production Code, to ensure that material deemed morally objectionable got a thorough cleansing before it reached the screen. Producers and directors grumbled and protested, but every single film script had to be vetted by the MPPDA’s director, Will H. Hays, and his colleague Joseph I. Breen. Porter’s lyrics would routinely prove too suggestive for the comfort of the code’s officers, and his references to the denizens of Broadway and café society were considered by movie producers to be too sophisticated to be appreciated by Middle America. In the end, many of the songs he wrote for a particular show would be jettisoned for the screen and replaced with clunky “novelty” numbers by considerably lesser talents.

For the film version of
Anything Goes,
“You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the title tune all managed to survive the cut, but not without changes. Still, jabbing references to Hollywood’s censorship policies did manage to slide by:

 

When New York scenes of fun and folly

Would shock all the gals in Holly-

Wood Studios—Anything goes!

 

“Blow, Gabriel, Blow” was deemed unnecessary and dropped. In its place, Ethel got a ridiculous number, “Shanghai-dee-ho,” written by Leo Robin, in which she cavorted in a silver frock and a headdress made of peacock feathers, surrounded by fifty LeRoy Prinz dancers, all costumed as Chinese slave girls.

Shooting proceeded at a deadly pace. The director, Lewis Milestone, was more at home with sensitive dramas such as his Academy Award–winning
All Quiet on the Western Front
and seemed completely at sea in the world of musical comedy. He frequently showed up late on the set, and on one particular morning not a single shot had been completed by eleven o’clock.

During filming, Ethel had a pleasant surprise: “It’s the Animal in Me,” her big number from
We’re Not Dressing,
was resurrected from the cutting-room floor and thrown into Paramount’s all-star musical extravaganza
The Big Broadcast of 1936.
Most reviewers deemed it the high point of the picture, and Ethel was delighted to be paid for it all over again.

Anything Goes
finally finished $201,000 over budget and seventeen days behind schedule. All told, Ethel worked for twenty-two days, and when she wasn’t needed, she hurried over to Goldwyn to attend rehearsals for
Strike Me Pink.

She began filming the Goldwyn picture on October 19, one day after
Anything Goes
wrapped. By now she was sick of California and aching to get back to New York, and if she had any hopes of succeeding at the Hollywood game, she didn’t do herself any favors with an interview she gave to the Associated Press that month. She complained about Hollywood’s absence of after-dark life; it was a nine-o’clock town, and she missed the nightclubs and great restaurants of New York. “The things that make life worth living just aren’t here,” she said. “It isn’t the people, it’s the place. If you don’t exist in, for and through the movies—well, you don’t exist at all.” The reporter wanted to know how she felt about Southern California’s lovely climate and scenery. “My idea of real scenery is the farm belt of the Middle West…. I get a thrill out of the country around Des Moines.” It was Ethel in full sail, refusing to edit herself, and newspapers all over the country picked up her sharp comments.

To top it all off,
Strike Me Pink
was another dud. Eddie Cantor was disgruntled throughout filming, and complained about being typed as the same dim-witted character. Ethel had one decent Harold Arlen song, “First You Have Me High, Then You Have Me Low,” imaginatively filmed by the brilliant cinematographer Merritt B. Gerstad. In this one number, she came across more strongly than she ever had on screen. She sang it with a soprano mix, hitting meltingly beautiful high D-flats throughout. The picture wrapped in mid-December, and Ethel was happy to return to New York to spend the Christmas holidays with Mom and Pop.

Both films were released in the first part of 1936, to generally undistinguished notices. Reviewing
Anything Goes
, the
New York Herald Tribune
’s Richard Watts Jr. thought that a sharp Broadway show had been turned into a “dull and commonplace musical comedy” and that Ethel did “as well as possible, but it cannot be said that she registers on the screen as magnificently as she does on the stage. I think it is the screen’s fault.”

In the spring of 1936, the press reported that Ethel might reteam with William Gaxton in Broadway’s
White Horse Inn,
but Kitty Carlisle was cast instead. In April, Ethel returned to the New York Paramount, headlining a revue with Little Jack Little and his orchestra. She was billed as “The First Lady of Rhythm,” and in eighteen days grosses came to more than $105,000.

Hollywood loves sequels, but Broadway has usually been less kindly disposed toward them. From
Let ’Em Eat Cake,
the Gershwins’ unsuccessful follow-up to
Of Thee I Sing,
and on through
Life with Mother
to
The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public,
stage sequels have typically had a rough ride. But Vinton Freedley was eager to rekindle the magic of
Anything Goes,
and his 1936 show,
Red, Hot and Blue!,
might well have been subtitled
Anything Goes 2,
even if it sported different characters. Seeking to reunite the show’s winning team, Freedley corralled Lindsay and Crouse to come up with a story line, but the writers misstepped in their pitch to their three prospective stars. They got a yes from William Gaxton by telling him that he would take center stage and that Ethel would have only a glorified singing spot. Backstage at the New York Paramount, they proceeded to pitch to Ethel a show built around her, with Gaxton and Victor Moore in support. Unfortunately for the writers, Gaxton unexpectedly dropped by to see Ethel, overheard the deception afoot, and refused to have anything further to do with the show. Moore, probably out of loyalty to Gaxton, quickly followed suit.

Lindsay and Crouse spent a lot of time kidding their own image. They called themselves “the poor man’s Beaumont and Fletcher” and told the press that they got their inspiration by receiving psychic messages from Neville W. Mudge, a bartender at London’s Mermaid Tavern who claimed to have written all of Shakespeare’s plays. But they took comedy writing very seriously. Unfortunately, with
Red, Hot and Blue!
they came up with an idea more appropriate for an extended vaudeville sketch than for a full-length musical comedy.

Ethel’s part was Madam “Nails” O’Reilly Duquesne, an ex-manicurist–turned–wealthy young society matron. “Nails” is in love with her lawyer, but he is still searching for his lost love, whom he hasn’t seen since she was six years old. He’ll know her when he finds her: As a child, she sat on a hot waffle iron and was branded for life. “Nails” agrees to fund a lottery designed to locate the lawyer’s missing girlfriend. She is helped in this enterprise by “Policy” Pinkle, a convict whom she gets sprung from Larks Nest Prison, where he has a bachelor suite—“three cells and a dungeon.”

Eddie Cantor desperately wanted to get back to New York to play “Policy,” but his film commitments kept him stranded in Hollywood. Eventually Freedley signed Jimmy Durante for the part, giving Ethel a chance to reunite with her old pal from Les Ambassadeurs. For the part of the lawyer, Freedley cast comedian Bob Hope, who had appeared in hits such as Jerome Kern’s
Roberta
and the revue
Ziegfeld Follies of 1936,
in which he introduced Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin’s “I Can’t Get Started.” The supporting cast sounded like Damon Runyon knockoffs: Billi Benner as “Ratface” Dugan, Leo Shippers as “Flap-Ears” Metelli, Bernard Jannsen as “Louie the Louse,” and Polly Walters as Peaches LaFleur. Doubling in two walk-ons was Vivian Vance, who was also assigned to be Ethel’s understudy.

Production was delayed because Porter spent the first part of 1936 in Hollywood working on the score for an Eleanor Powell musical for MGM,
Born to Dance.
When he came east, he brought with him two songs that had been dropped from the picture, “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye” and “It’s De-Lovely,” which he figured he could plug into
Red, Hot and Blue!
As Lindsay and Crouse continued to struggle with the book, word must have gotten out to the principals that the story was having trouble taking shape. On June 20, Freedley and Crouse turned up at Pennsylvania Station to meet Ethel, who’d been in Hollywood to discuss future picture deals. She was wearing a strong perfume, and once inside the limousine, Crouse, trying to be funny, said, “What smells in here?”