THE ROAD TO GIRL CRAZY

Ethel Merman’s is a switch on almost every theatrical story ever told. There’s usually a lot of rejection, a bit of betrayal, countless auditions, years of cattle calls, pounding the pavement and wearing out shoe leather on sidewalks. In short, it’s about the dropping of a brightly wrapped package down a well. By her own admission, Merman didn’t wear out a single shoe. And the well wrote her a thank you note.

In the 1920’s the agent thing was very different than it is now. In the Bond Building (next to the Palace Theatre) there was a concentration of agent offices. You could sign up with as many as you wanted. A teenaged "Ethel Merman-blues singer," signed up with four or five of these guys and was soon being booking regularly for private parties and small affairs. In September of 1929, one of these freelancers booked her into a brand new club on 57th Street called Little Russia.

One night after an opening at the Guild Theatre, an agent named Lou Irwin and his date were walking along 57th Street towards Fifth Avenue. On the corner of Sixth, he noticed that down in a cellar, a new nightspot had opened. He and his girl went inside to have some supper.

Merman recalled that Little Russia was not the kind of place where you had to be great, you just had to sing while people kept eating, and she was able to sing over their eating just fine. She was hired for two weeks at $60 per week.

When Merman finished her last set that night, she was getting ready to leave when a waiter brought her a card. It was engraved, "Lou Irwin, Theatrical Representative." She stopped by his table. Mr. Irwin told her he represented Helen Morgan and Brian Aherne among others. He told her he liked her voice. Something about being able to hear the words… He asked her how long she had been singing. She told him this was her first real engagement and that she worked days as the personal secretary to Mr. Caleb Bragg of the B.K. Vacuum Booster Brake Company.

The next day, she signed a nine year contract with Lou Irwin.

In November of 1929, Irwin arranged for Ethel to join Clayton, Jackson and Durante as the "singing personality" for their new Broadway nightclub, Les Ambassadeurs. It was a huge break for her, fronting a chorus line of beautiful girls, wearing dresses the club provided and getting her first mentions in the columns. "It wasn’t anything important," Merman said. "Just squibs, such as, ‘Watch the little Merman girl, she’s going places.’"

She was. A terrible sore throat landed her in the hospital. In January 1930, she had her tonsils taken out. It was a scary time for Merman. She had to quit the show at Les Ambassadeurs, and she feared all the positive show-biz momentum would stop, but mostly, she was terrified that having her tonsils removed would have a permanent effect on her voice. It did. When she made her first noise two weeks later, her voice was even louder.

After a bit of convalescence time, Lou Irwin booked her into the Roman Pools Casinos in Miami Beach, Florida for seven weeks. When she came home, she teamed up with a piano player named Al Seigel.

Al Seigel had once worked in the orchestra that backed Sophie Tucker; The Five Kings of Syncopation. But he was probably best known for having been married to Bee Palmer. Palmer was one of America’s greatest singers of popular songs and it was Al Seigel’s musical arrangements that put her at the top. Conventional wisdom held that Al had turned Bee from a shimmy shaker into a headliner. But the stunning beauty just didn’t care about working. She quit show business and their marriage didn’t survive. This is when he met Ethel Merman. He was available to put all his energy into a new collaboration.

They got an act together and broke it in at the Ritz Theatre in Elizabeth, NJ. Lou Irwin got them some gigs around New York City and in the summer of 1930, they were booked for one week into the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre. It was a presentation house that screened a feature film five or six times a day, with a stage show stuck in between. They were a hit. Their one week turned into seven.

On Saturday and Sunday nights, after their four or five shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, they doubled at the Pavillion Royal in Valley Stream, Long Island. It was an 800 seat country night club set in a garden. The Sunday nights were notorious for being filled with important theatrical types. There was a huge buzz about Merman’s performances there. Eventually the buzz filtered up and down Broadway and Big Time Producer, Vinton Freedley decided to catch her act in Brooklyn.

When Ethel came off stage, Vinton Freedley was standing in the wings. He introduced himself with a handshake. She didn’t know him to look at him, but she certainly knew his name. He told her he was impressed with her singing and that he’d like to put her in his new show. There was just one thing she’d need to do. Audition.

A few days later, in between shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, she and Al Seigel jumped into a cab and headed into Manhattan. Ethel had been told to report to 33 Riverside Drive, the home of composer George Gershwin. She was wearing her stage makeup and a short black dress covered with jet beads, ribbons and bows. She was in awe. Not just about meeting the brothers Gershwin, who were at the height of their genius and fame, but also in awe of the apartment building. "I was a young gal living with my parents in Astoria, and to me the Gershwin set-up was something beyond my wildest dreams. George occupied the penthouse on one side of the roof. His brother, Ira, lived on the other side. They had the whole thing sewed up--- all to themselves."

When asked, Merman launched into two numbers from her act, " Exactly Like You" and "Little White Lies." Then George Gershwin asked Ethel if she’d like to hear the songs he and his brother had written for the new show. She smiled and nodded. When he played "I Got Rhythm" he told her "If there’s anything about this you don’t like, I’ll be happy to change it." She smiled and nodded again. She was flabbergasted, she was thinking about how to phrase the music, if asked. She was thinking about how she was sitting in George Gershwin’s Art-Deco bachelor pad. He was puzzled by her silence. Finally he said it again, "If there’s anything about these songs you don’t like, Miss Merman, I’ll be happy to make changes."

Through the fog that wrapped itself around her, she heard herself say, "They will do very nicely, Mr. Gershwin."

She left with a job, signed at $375 a week. She also left with the song that would put her on the map.

I love the Gershwin audition story. I find it quite magical. I hope other performers will back me up on this, but all I ever want to know is: what did she wear? What did she sing? And did she bring her own accompanist? In this story I get my answers! When you think about it, it’s the last audition of Merman’s career. Shows were built around her for the next thirty years. She didn’t have to prove herself to the folks behind the table ever again. The writers and directors had to impress her. She provided jobs in the theatre, not the other way around. As auditions go, it must have been a great one.

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