A history of The Merm

...as in Ethel Merman. I just finished Ethel Merman: A Life by Brian Kellow. Merman is one of those celebrities whose brilliance will probably fade much sooner than it should because her talent was in live performance, specifically the musical theatre, and few records of her performances exist for the public to see. (And even if we could see them, filmed or taped records of stage performances are almost always dim reproductions of the exciting original event; I suspect you really had to see Merman live to appreciate her.) The two Broadway roles she was most famous for, the leads in Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy, were given to other actresses when Hollywood committed them to film. Most baby boomers like me probably know her from appearances on talk and variety shows, and from her very funny cameo in Airplane! Cast recordings of her shows do exist, and her reputation remains solid among Broadway devotees, but her film and TV appearances, I suspect, don't do her justice.

This book is very readable, and falls in the middle range of celebrity bios: it is not academic or scholarly in its scope, but it does not rely just on gossip or previously published material. Kellow has done a lot of reading and interviewing, and he constructs an easy-to-follow timeline of her life with a good appendix which lists all her shows, movies, and most of her TV appearances. He talks to many of her close non-celebrity friends, which helps to round out her personality, but few direct voices of her actual colleagues or peers are included, which is a weakness; it winds up feeling a bit like a "through the keyhole" story told by "the little people." The book's biggest strength for me was the way it opens a backstage window on the classic-era Broadway musicals. Kellow devotes quite a bit of time to chronicling each of Merman's productions (from the 30's through her stint in 1970 in Hello, Dolly!), from writing to producing to casting to previews to opening night and beyond, and he makes this material come alive. The book made me sorry that Merman's legendary performances are mostly lost to us now, and also makes me want to give Call Me Madam, one of the few film adaptations of her shows that she starred in, another look.