Word: merman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sort of one-man one-woman show. This season he is already booked for the part of the prima donna in Friml's The Firefly. Still he complains that opportunities are limited. ("I was slated for a part as one of the strippers in Gypsy, but Ethel Merman nixed me.") It is a sad thing, says Jones, that "today, female impersonation is a dying art. It goes back to 300 B.C. The Roman, Greek and Japanese theaters relied on it; Elizabethan plays were done...
...feet may be bigger (size 8½) than most of the siren prints left behind in the Hollywood cement; she may have more freckles than the makeup department can cover; she may have a voice she herself describes as resembling "Merman trying to reach the candy stand in the lobby, except when I shift into high, and then it sounds like Lily Pons when she's kidding.'' But she also has a pair of long and memorable legs-"They start from the shoulders," says one admiring choreographer-and she can make them do anything she wants...
...Says June of Ethel Merman's boffo performance as Mother in Gypsy: "She isn't Mother, but she's magnificent...
There is no more potent musicomedy fuel on Broadway than Ethel Merman, and she powers Gypsy with 50 million lbs. of personality thrust. But the show merely quivers on the launching pad. Its book is drab and uninventive; its songs are also-rans, though the trumpet-tonsiled Merman voice is always in the winner's circle. Jerome Robbins' dance spoofs are designed to show how funny-awful vaudeville was, and by sheer glut and garishness turn pretty gaudy-awful themselves. A Mermanly try at playing up Mama's spunk and jollifying her sadism fails when the script...
...damn musical I've seen in years." Said Brooks Atkinson of the Times: "Most satisfactory musical of the season." The critical fan-farenade for what is, at best, a so-so show would be a puzzler if the answer was not blazoned on the marquee. The answer: Ethel Merman. They all love Ethel, but the love is sorely tested in her latest role as the most monstrous stage mother ever seen on stage. Gypsy is inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee's autobiography, but Ecdysiast Lee remembered Mama with the same refined, opera-length-glove finesse that she brought...