Ethel Merman: A Life (14 page)

 

Once I owned a treasure, so rare, so pure,

The greatest of treasures, happiness safe and secure,

But like ev’ry hope too rash,

My treasure, I find, is trash,

So make it another old-fashioned, please.

Leave out the cherry,

Leave out the orange,

Leave out the bitters,

Just make it a straight rye!

 

“I thought ‘Make It Another Old-Fashioned, Please’ was the most sophisticated song I had ever heard,” recalled Betsy Blair. “My impression of Ethel Merman was of this tornado on the stage. She was very tough with her equals and her bosses.” At the same time, Ethel was remarkably patient with Betty Hutton’s brash antics backstage. (Hutton had a habit of addressing her fellow players with a loud “HIYA, DOLLFACE!”) Blair remembered Ethel’s treatment of the chorus girls as “perfectly democratic. She didn’t snub us. She knew we were working hard—they had us dancing like crazy.”

Panama Hattie
played four performances in New Haven to rave notices and a box-office take of $13,400, which outdistanced the Shubert’s previous record holder, another DeSylva show—Irving Berlin’s
Louisiana Purchase
. Arthur Treacher’s comedy solo, “Americans All Drink Coffee,” judged by
Variety
to be “a weak sister,” was dropped. The show moved on to Boston on October 7, where several critics found it superior to
Du Barry
. It was too long, with the curtain coming down at eleven forty-five, but the
Boston Herald
predicted, “It isn’t going to be easy to cut. Not when each number meets with so hearty a welcome.”

At
Panama Hattie
’s sold-out Broadway opening night on October 30, Ethel’s dressing room was flooded with telegrams from Joan Crawford, Al Jolson, Helen Hayes, Victor Moore, and many others. The show ran like a well-oiled machine, and the audience received it rapturously, as did the critics: the
New York Journal
ranked it “among the best in her long list of hits…. Miss Merman has never been better, never surer or glossier.”
Theatre Arts Monthly
thought that “her humor displays a new warmth, her attack on the part a new assurance, especially in certain scenes with the small Geraldine, played very capably by a youngster named Joan Carroll.” Only Betty Hutton got hit with a few critical arrows: The
New York Herald Tribune
said, “Miss Hutton should be given one number, if that, in the course of an evening and then be permitted to work off her surplus energies elsewhere.”

Bill Smith was still Ethel’s constant companion, and shortly after
Panama Hattie
’s opening night, with the immediate future looking wonderful, the couple decided to make it legal. (According to Sherman Billingsley’s biographer, Ralph Blumenthal, Ethel informed her ex-lover of her wedding plans by leaving him a curt telephone message.) On November 15, Ethel and Bill were married by J. Warren Albinson, rector of the Trinity Church in Elkton, Maryland. Also in attendance were Mom and Pop Zimmermann and Arthur and Virginia Treacher. A few hours later, Ethel was playing Hattie Maloney on the stage of the 46th Street Theatre.

Ethel’s marriage to Bill Smith marked her first real attempt to break away from Mom and Pop and strike out on her own. For their new home the Smiths had settled on the Hotel Pierre, at 2 East Sixty-third Street. Dorothy Fields supervised the redecorating of a suite to Ethel’s specifications. The only thing Ethel moved from the Century was the display counter—it looked big enough for the first floor of Saks Fifth Avenue—that held her rapidly growing collection of toilet waters. The Smiths moved in and spent their first night together in their new home, before Bill had to return to his job in California the following evening. The plan was for him to wind up his affairs on the West Coast and come east to establish a New York office of Feldman-Blum. To the press, the couple dropped hints that Ethel would retire from the stage when
Panama Hattie
ended its run.

In her autobiography Ethel admits that the tears she shed on her wedding day were not tears of happiness but ones of regret: she already knew that she had made a dreadful mistake. What exactly happened on the morning after that first night at the Pierre is not entirely clear; tight-lipped as ever about her personal life, Ethel never spoke about it to reporters. Her memoirs say only, “Tempers flared. Some ugly things were said.” What is clear is that she was looking for any excuse to get out of a marriage that she already recognized was ill conceived. According to Lew Kesler, it was as simple as this: she and Smith spent the night together, and the next morning he disappeared into the bathroom with his newspaper and cigar. Over an hour later, he was still there, reading and smoking. Ethel, incensed that her bridegroom would indulge in such selfish, insensitive behavior, blew her top. Smith did indeed return to Los Angeles that evening. Fing! Once again she put a decisive period at the end of a major episode in her life.

Or at least an ellipsis. Knowing that the resulting publicity was not likely to be flattering, Ethel agreed to give the marriage half a chance more. She and Smith decided to have a summit meeting in Chicago. Ethel boarded the train at Grand Central Station, dreading the meeting, certain it would accomplish nothing. She soothed her raw nerves by adjourning to the club car for a few drinks before retiring to her compartment. While she was sleeping, the air-conditioning in the compartment was turned on high. Like many singers, Ethel had little tolerance for a sustained blast of cold air, and when she awoke the next morning, her throat was sore and closed up tight, and her muscles ached all over. Feeling miserable, she took a taxi to the hotel, where Smith was waiting in the room with a tray of fruit, champagne on ice, and the bed turned down. When Ethel walked through the door, Smith found himself on the receiving end of her accumulated anger: it was all
his
fault, because if he hadn’t insisted on meeting her in Chicago, she wouldn’t be in such terrible shape. An unholy quarrel ensued, and Ethel took the next train back to New York. Two months later it was announced in the press that Ethel would seek a divorce from Smith, on grounds of desertion.

In the years to come, Ethel said little about this first, abortive marriage. On the rare occasions that she did refer to it, it was only as the first of her four mistakes. But in 1941 she was angry, confused, and embarrassed that things between her and Smith had imploded so quickly. She had always put her career before her personal life. Now, alone again, she was beginning to wonder if that had been such a wise move.

D
uring the run of
Panama Hattie,
an incident took place that would fuel Ethel’s reputation as the toughest, most ruthless star on Broadway. Initially Betty Hutton had three numbers, “Fresh as a Daisy” and “They Ain’t Done Right by Our Nell” in the first act and “All I’ve Got to Get Now Is My Man” in the second. During the out-of-town tryout, more than one critic complained that Hutton’s unique performing style—she was in constant overdrive—wore out its welcome over the course of an evening. The result was that “Nell” was cut before the New York opening. No doubt it was a sensible decision made by DeSylva and the rest of the creative team, but Hutton later complained to anyone who would listen that it had all been Ethel’s doing. In years to come, many in the Broadway community—most of them people who had never worked with her—gossiped that Ethel was one star not to be crossed if you happened to be a member of her supporting cast. If an attractive young actress was cast in a Merman show, her agent was apt to warn her to give Ethel a wide berth and not call attention to herself; otherwise her part was likely to be cut to shreds. These rumors compounded over the years, to the point that many of the girls in the chorus feared they would be fired just because they were prettier than Ethel.

One actress whose experience refuted such tales was another member of
Panama Hattie
’s cast, June Allyson. An energetic young dancer, Allyson was eager to get ahead, and everyone in the company knew it. “June had that ambition, that drive,” remembered Betsy Blair. “Being the smallest one in the chorus, she was last onstage. I remember Tyrone Power and all the movie stars being in the audience, and June always managed to trip and fall down and get up and be embarrassed and adorable as the whole line went off. In my book [
The Memory of All That
] I said, ‘Good for her,’ but at the time we all thought it was pretty crummy.” Ethel, however, seems to have admired Allyson’s go-getter spirit. At one point in the middle of the run, Betty Hutton got the measles and was out of the show for ten days or so, and Allyson took over her part. Normally she dressed on the third floor with the other chorus girls, but Ethel didn’t think this was appropriate for a girl getting her first big break, so she insisted that Allyson share her star dressing room. She even had a large bouquet of spring flowers delivered, which Allyson remembered “made me feel like a star.”

Happy as she was with
Panama Hattie
’s success, Ethel often felt lonely and dispirited. The sense of utter perfectionism that had already made Ethel a legend in the theater extended to her personal life as well. To Ethel a perfect existence was one of order and balance. She didn’t like messes, and when she helped to create them, as in the case of both Sherman Billingsley and Bill Smith, she seemed unwilling to share the responsibility.
Panama Hattie
was still playing to packed houses nightly. It was her eighth Broadway show and her seventh major hit—a remarkable record matched by few if any performers. But when it came to developing a genuine, deep adult emotional life, she had made no progress at all. Ethel approached the dilemma with her usual black-and-white reasoning. She was far from cynical about men and was certain that she would find her Mr. Right in due time, if only she looked hard enough. And in mid-1941 she believed that had finally happened.

It was a Saturday night early in April, and New York was caught in what would be the final snowstorm of the year. Hearst Publications was sponsoring a benefit dinner and art auction that evening at the Plaza Hotel, and Ethel, along with Danny Kaye, currently appearing in Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s
Lady in the Dark,
had agreed to entertain. Once the curtain for
Panama Hattie
had come down, Ethel, as was her habit after the Saturday-night performance, had friends to her dressing room for drinks. By the time she and Lew Kesler, who was to accompany her on the piano at the benefit, reached the Plaza, only Danny Kaye and his wife, Sylvia Fine, were left—with the exception of one lone representative of the Hearst empire, a dark-haired, strikingly handsome man with strong shoulders and a charming smile.

“Where the hell are all the people?” asked Ethel.

The man from Hearst introduced himself as Robert Levitt, promotion director for the
New York Journal-American,
one of Hearst’s biggest newspapers. Both Ethel and Danny Kaye had been under the impression that the affair started around nine and would go until all hours. “I’m terribly sorry I’m late,” Ethel said. Levitt seemed less than conciliatory. “Well,” he said peevishly, “the party’s over.”

Ethel’s temper started to rise as she reminded Levitt that she’d taken the trouble to get dressed up and slog over to the Plaza in the middle of a snowstorm; the least he could do was to take her out somewhere. With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, Levitt agreed, and the party of five adjourned to the Monkey Bar, a popular spot in the Elysée Hotel. The Kayes left shortly, followed by Lew Kesler. By now Levitt was intrigued enough to ask Ethel if she wanted to go to an after-hours spot, and they wound up drinking late into the night at the Club Carr.

On the way home, Ethel asked Levitt if he had any chewing gum. He said no and didn’t bother to stop at an all-night drugstore to buy her a pack. Instead he dropped her at the Century—she had returned there to live after giving up the short-lived honeymoon suite at the Pierre—and let her walk through a snowdrift to get to the curb. As romances went, this one looked like a dead end, but the next day Levitt had a big carton of chewing gum delivered to the Century. Shortly after that he began asking her out to dinner. On one of their dates, troubled by the fact that he’d never mentioned having seen her onstage, Ethel asked him how he liked her current show. Levitt replied that he hadn’t been to
Panama Hattie.
A little more digging on Ethel’s part revealed that he’d never seen any of her shows, because he didn’t think much of musicals. Ethel immediately arranged for tickets for him for the following night. Bob went out drinking with a friend beforehand, had a few too many, and slept through much of the show. But he and Ethel continued seeing each other.

In many ways they were a strange pair. Bob was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family that stressed education and career advancement. (His brother Arthur would eventually become the comptroller of the State of New York.) Early on, Bob was interested in writing and literature, and he developed a profound love of poetry in general and Middle English in particular. He began his journalism career as a reporter on the
New York Journal,
covering Brooklyn politics and community affairs, and he soon advanced to the promotion department when the paper merged with the
New York American
. As did many newspapermen of the period, he liked to drink, and he became known for his sharp, even cutting, wit—whether drunk or sober. “He was a very funny, acerbically funny man,” recalled veteran publishing executive David Brown. “He was able to crack wise, and didn’t respect anyone too much, and was rather liked because of that. Nice personality—but hardly a warm personality.”

Bob’s deep streak of cynicism didn’t always mesh well with Ethel’s flat-out sincerity and earnestness. Another significant gulf between them was the fact that Bob didn’t care much for the company of show-business types and wasn’t afraid to say so. Show business was Ethel’s whole life; she was not terribly interested in the world beyond Broadway and Hollywood, and a social evening with her usually meant lots of gossip about people in the business. Yet she was somehow drawn to Bob’s blasé attitude about her profession, which she considered an indication of his strong character. To her he was another tough guy, albeit a very polished and intelligent one. Bob saw in Ethel a driven, opinionated woman with a lot of raw sex appeal. In no time they developed a passionate attraction to each other, and soon Bob was picking her up every night after
Panama Hattie
’s final curtain. Since Bob had to report to the Hearst offices early in the morning, he would come home after work, sleep for a few hours, then head to the 46th Street Theatre to collect Ethel and take her out on the town until the early-morning hours.

By the fall it was clear to everyone close to Ethel and Bob that theirs was not a fleeting romance. Despite the great difference in their personalities, their interests, their friends, they had fallen deeply in love. Around November, Ethel discovered that she was pregnant. Since rumors had spread throughout the theater community that she had missed performances of
Du Barry Was a Lady
because she had terminated a pregnancy by Sherman Billingsley, she did not want to have an abortion. She and Bob Levitt looked hard at the situation, and things were going so well between them that they decided to get married.

This was a task that required careful maneuvering, since her marriage to Bill Smith had not yet been legally terminated. In mid-1941, Smith had applied for an interlocutory divorce in California, a protracted process that might take up to a year. Eager to have the whole thing behind her as quickly as possible, Ethel had rashly applied for a Mexican divorce. According to Levitt, she hadn’t even bothered to go south of the border to attend to it; the whole process had been completed by mail. Now that she wanted to marry Bob, she was told that her divorce from Smith was not legally valid in the United States. But she and Bob went ahead with their plans anyway and were married quietly by Justice of the Peace Herbert MacDonald in North Haven, Connecticut, on December 18, 1941. Three days later the
New York Times
reported that Ethel had “confirmed reports of her marriage to Robert D. Levitt.” Ethel never specified exactly where the wedding took place and only vaguely maintained that she and Bob had been married in the late fall, for fear that the tabloids would print the truth.

Marriage did nothing to weaken Ethel’s bond with her parents. She couldn’t bear being far away from the Zimmermanns, so she and Bob took another apartment in the Century, a ten-room duplex with a roof-garden terrace. Within a matter of weeks, Ethel’s pregnancy was showing, making it impossible for her to continue in
Panama Hattie
without a complete overhaul of costumes. The show closed on January 31, 1942, after an impressive run of 501 performances.

Not long after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, Bob decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. He went through officers’ training and quickly took up a post as a captain in the Quartermaster Corps for the army’s Port of Embarkation in Brooklyn. Before long he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in charge of the port’s public relations. In his new post, he reported to General Homer Groninger, a longtime military man who played by the hard-and-fast rules of officers’ behavior. Part of official protocol dictated that the officers’ wives entertain at social functions. This was a task that Ethel didn’t relish, no matter how important it was to her new husband, and she informed Bob that she was not about to be caught pouring out tea at the officers’ club or fawning over General Groninger’s wife. The fact that Bob’s spouse was Ethel Merman was deemed irrelevant by the top brass, some of whom had been living far from New York and weren’t even entirely sure who she was.

The situation finally came to a head when General Groninger gave a cocktail party for the officers at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Tired of Bob’s list of excuses for Ethel’s absence from official functions, Groninger all but ordered him to make sure his wife attended the party. Ethel was mostly a champagne drinker, but there was none in sight that day, and what was being offered was manhattans—warm ones. While Bob was trailing after Groninger, Ethel tossed back several of them, all the while giving a cold shoulder to the officers’ wives who attempted to make small talk with her. After cocktails a sit-down dinner was served, with a band playing. While Ethel was eating, General Groninger’s wife approached her and asked her if she would like to sing a few numbers.

“Get out of my way, Cuddles,” said Ethel, “before I spit in your eye.”

Fortunately, Mrs. Groninger appears to have had a sense of humor, because another invitation soon arrived, this one for a party aboard the general’s yacht. It was a balmy Sunday afternoon, and the officers’ party sailed up the Hudson River to Camp Shanks in New Jersey. To pass the time, the general had arranged a marathon of his favorite game, old-fashioned rummy. As he shuffled the cards, he announced to his opponents, “I never lose at this game.” For Ethel this was too much of a challenge to resist, and she proceeded to clobber him in every single hand, picking up fistfuls of cards and playing out every last one. The general, not amused, retired belowdecks.

If she wasn’t an ideal officer’s wife in the realm of social obligations, Ethel did plenty for the war effort as an entertainer. She gave numerous concerts at two of the camps under General Groninger’s command, Camp Shanks and Camp Kilmer. Bob Levitt recalled that as her pregnancy advanced, she was given a smaller and smaller spotlight; by the time she was in her seventh or eighth month, the spot hit only her face. Ethel also spent many evenings singing at the Stage Door Canteen, the nightclub launched by the American Theatre Wing and the United Service Organization to provide entertainment, free of charge, for soldiers.

During this time, she saw a great deal of Josie Traeger and Alice Welch; although they had nothing to do with show business, they were still Ethel’s closest friends.

By the last month of her pregnancy, Ethel had ballooned to an enormous size and grown increasingly irritable. Bob, by all appearances, was a devoted father-to-be and tried to divert her with endless card games and gossip from the outside world. Finally, on July 20, Ethel gave birth by cesarean section to a seven-pound, one-ounce baby girl. She was named Ethel Merman Levitt, but soon the nickname Bob had given her, “Little Bit,” stuck.