Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman, born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann on January 16, 1908, in Astoria, Queens, New York, was an American singer and actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1930 to 1977. The only child of Edward Zimmermann, an accountant, and Agnes Zimmermann, a schoolteacher, she grew up attending the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, where her parents required strict observance of Sunday services. On Friday evenings, the family traveled by subway to Manhattan to watch vaudeville performances at the Palace Theatre, where Merman observed performers including Blossom Seeley, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and Nora Bayes.

After graduating from William Cullen Bryant High School in 1924, where she had participated in the school magazine, speakers' club, and student council, Merman worked as a stenographer and later became personal secretary to Caleb Bragg at the Bragg-Kliesrath Corporation. During this period she performed at nightclubs, first hired by Lou Clayton, a partner of Jimmy Durante. Concerned that the name Zimmermann was too long for a theater marquee, and with her father's disapproval of alternatives, she shortened it to Merman. A tonsillectomy she underwent during her early performing years initially alarmed her, but she found her voice more powerful afterward.

Her Broadway debut came through the George and Ira Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, which opened on October 14, 1930, at the Alvin Theatre and ran for 272 performances. Theater producer Vinton Freedley had invited her to audition after seeing her perform at the Brooklyn Paramount, and upon hearing her sing "I Got Rhythm," the Gershwins cast her immediately. In the show she introduced "I Got Rhythm," "Sam and Delilah," and "Boy! What Love Has Done to Me!" The New York Times noted she sang "with dash, authority, good voice and just the right knowing style," while The New Yorker described her as "imitative of no one."

Her next Broadway production, Take a Chance, had begun as a troubled tryout called Humpty Dumpty before producer Buddy DeSylva reworked it with additional songs by Vincent Youmans. It opened on November 26 at the 42nd Street Apollo Theatre and ran for 243 performances. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote that Merman "has never loosed herself with quite so much abandon." She subsequently appeared in Red, Hot and Blue, in which she introduced the Cole Porter song "It's De-Lovely," and in Anything Goes, where she performed Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," and the title song.

Annie Get Your Gun became one of Merman's most celebrated Broadway associations. The Irving Berlin song "There's No Business Like Show Business," written for that production, became her signature number. Her performance in Call Me Madam earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1951. She later starred in Gypsy, introducing "Everything's Coming Up Roses," "Some People," and "Rose's Turn," and received a Grammy Award for that production. Her appearance in Hello, Dolly! brought her the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1970. She also participated in A Gala Tribute to Joshua Logan during her long Broadway tenure.

Beyond the stage, Merman appeared in several films, including Anything Goes (1936), Call Me Madam (1953), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). She had first entered film through a contract with Warner Bros. arranged by agent Lou Irwin, and later replaced Ruth Etting in the Paramount film Follow the Leader (1930). Throughout her career she introduced numerous songs that became Broadway standards, among them "Friendship" from Du Barry Was a Lady and the Gershwin standard "I Got Rhythm." Merman died on February 15, 1984, having established a Broadway career that extended across nearly five decades.