Table of Contents

preface vii 1 / Beginnings 1 2 / From Stenographer to Star 30 3 / The Early Thirties 67 4 / To Hollywood and Back Again 90 5 / Broadway's Brightest: The Early Forties 113 6 / Forging a Family 138 7 / What Comes Natur'lly: Annie Get Your Gun 150 8 / Call Me Madam 177 9 / A More Complex Image 192 10 / Madam in Hollywood 218 11 / Life with Six 239 12 / There's No Business Like Show Business 255 13 / From Mrs. Six to Mama Rose 278 14 / Gypsy: Ethel Merman's Musical Fable 293 15 / It's a Mad, Mad Schedule 333 16 / The Sixties and the Art of Love 347 17 / After the Big Stem--the Seventies 374 18 / Twilight and Transformation 401 19 / Afterlife 415 acknowledgments 429 a word on the scrapbooks 433 discography 437 stage work 443 filmography 463 notes 473 index 000

About the Author

Caryl Flinn lives and works in Tucson, where she is a Professor at the University of Arizona. She is the author of The New German Cinema: Music, History and the Matter of Style (UC Press), Strains of Utopia, and Music and Cinema (co-edited with James Buhler and David Neumeyer).

Reviews

"This well-written and psychologically astute portrait will satisfy musical theater fans and anyone who loves a snappy comeback." The Advocate "Masterfully analyzes Merman's work on stage, screen and TV with a sophisticated eye for detail that will delight theater buffs." Publishers Weekly

"This well-written and psychologically astute portrait will satisfy musical theater fans and anyone who loves a snappy comeback." The Advocate "Masterfully analyzes Merman's work on stage, screen and TV with a sophisticated eye for detail that will delight theater buffs." Publishers Weekly

Fans of the legendary Broadway star Ethel Merman will be delighted with these two biographies. Merman's own autobiographies (Merman and Who Could Ask for Anything More?) are fun to read and offer plenty of Broadway dish, but serious biographies have been past due. Flinn (women's studies, Univ. of Arizona; The New German Cinema) and Kellow (The Bennetts: An Acting Family) bring her to life and tellingly reveal her enormous achievements and talent. While it's clear that Merman had her share of human frailties, each author finds her to be sympathetic as a woman, mother, wife, and performer, and each clearly holds her in the highest regard for her place in theatrical and film history. Flinn's academic training and scholarly approach are illustrated in the amount of information and detail she includes. For example, comparing the indexes, Kellow lists, as does Flinn, all of Merman's performances and the musical numbers she sang; however, Flinn includes all the musical numbers sung by all the other performers in her shows and a six-page discography. Flinn's notes, which include archival resources and interviews, take up 52 pages; Kellow's run 22 pages and are not as broad in scope. Flinn's access to the multivolume scrapbook collection created by Merman's father over his lifetime, which Kellow does not mention, surely gave her an enormous amount of detailed information. Public libraries will find Kellow's book an excellent and enjoyable resource; all academic libraries and public libraries with theater collections will want both of these titles. (Photographs and indexes not available at the time of review.)-Susan L. Peters, Univ. of Texas, Galveston Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.