Word: mermes
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...those legendary performances I'd always heard about. Her spirit and the history of the part were always looming over me." There are moments when she seems inhabited by Merman's ghost, either in vocal inflections or in her movements, which are occasionally as corseted and semaphoric as the Merm's. Yet for the most part, Midler makes the role her own. She conveys much less anger than most predecessors, and rather more romance. Her relationship with manager-paramour Herbie (Peter Riegert) is convincingly sexy, which atones for the mediocrity of Riegert's singing. In contrast to the battleship that...
...brassy and absolutely clear singing inspired metaphors like "a chorus of taxi horns," but words never quite captured its unique qualities. Her trademark was the seemingly effortless ability to sustain a note so long that the orchestra could play phrase after phrase of the melody. Said the Merm: "I take a breath when I have to." What she called her "take-charge" manner was so unlike the spun sugar of other musical-comedy performers that composers shaped songs for her. Among the standards that still call her voice to memory are You're the Top from Anything Goes...
...heart attack; in Manhattan. A bootlegger in the '20s, Billingsley opened the Stork in 1929, coddled columnists and flattered the famous. Walter Winchell publicized the joint, Brenda Frazier brought her friends, Ethel Merman came with the show folks (and got a diamond bracelet inscribed "From Sherm to Merm"); pretty girls, famous or not, got gifts of perfume, gold Stork keys, jeweled compacts. In the '50s, arrogance at the door and labor troubles in the kitchen signaled the end that the discotheques finally accomplished...
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