Word: merman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ethel Merman...
...down, saying she would rather go back to singing at clambakes than be just another face on "the line." She knew she had something special, and soon enough the whole world knew it too. From the opening night of the 1930 George Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, when Ethel Merman, 21, trumpeted out I Got Rhythm-and held a high C for 16 bars-the roar of the crowd was hers forever. When she died last week, after a career that included 14 musicals, and not one singing lesson, Broadway's theaters dimmed their lights for a minute at curtain...
...scripts. To one importunate composer she snapped: "Call me Miss Birds Eye. It's frozen." Yet she could ad-lib with the best. During a performance of Annie Get Your Gun, a prop rifle misfired but, on cue, a bird fell from the rafters. Without missing a beat, Merman held up the dead bird and remarked, "What do you know? Apoplexy...
...fruitful collaboration with Fred Astaire, who was starring with his sister Adele. Other stars soon recognized a good thing. Gertrude Lawrence sang Someone to Watch over Me in Oh, Kay! (1926); in Girl Crazy (1930), young Ginger Rogers sang But Not for Me and Embraceable You, and Ethel Merman razed the roof with I Got Rhythm. Of Thee I Sing (1931) won Ira the first Pulitzer Prize for a lyricist. For George's crowning triumph, Porgy and Bess (1935), Ira contributed about half of the lyrics (the others were by DuBose Heyward). The brothers repeated their success in Hollywood...
Brazelton once wanted to be a veterinarian. At age eight, already an experienced baby sitter, he decided on pediatrics. He went to Princeton, starred in Triangle Club theatricals, even got an offer in 1940 to try out on Broadway for an Ethel Merman musical, Panama Hattie, but he held on to the goal of healing infants. His hero, he says, was Benjamin Spock, and although Brazelton is now regarded as the new Spock, he considers himself more a disciple than a rival of the older...