Word: merman
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...show's best song, Nobody's Side, has Florence offering words to the wounded ("Never stay too long in your bed,/ Never lose your heart, use your head"), and Paige taunts the lyric into an anthem of cold-steel defiance. Here she evokes the clarion brass of Ethel Merman, the liquid phrasing of Barbra Streisand and the rasping energy of the Ronettes--an electrifying amalgam. Chess reveals Paige as the strongest, smartest voice in today's musical theater...
...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...
...waterfall. But her four marriages all ended in divorce; the last, to Actor Ernest Borgnine, in 1964, lasted 38 days. One of her two children, Ethel II, died of an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates in 1967. Although she made notable TV shows, especially with Broadway Star Mary Martin, Merman had only modest success in the movies, where her outsize performances sometimes seemed unreal. In perhaps the worst career setback, her role in the film of Gypsy went to Rosalind Russell...
...Although Merman retired from Broadway in 1970, after playing the title role in Hello, Dolly, she continued to perform in concerts. Last year she underwent surgery for a brain tumor. Her philosophy to the end: "Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice." -By William A. Henry...