Daily Dose

From The Long-Winded Lady, Notes from the New Yorker, by Maeve Brennan

BROADWAY

"Those Broadway lights are selfish. They illuminate only themselves."

From I Look Down from the Window of This Old Broadway Hotel

Daily Dose

From Then and Now: A Memoir, by Barbara Cook

MORE MERMAN

"And then there's this one: a friend of mine played piano in the pit for one of her shows, and during the run, the cast and all the musicians were invited to a party at the very swanky apartment of one of the wealthy Park Avenue - type ladies.  Ethel and my friend happened to be leaving together when he said to her, 'How kind of Mrs. So-and So to have a party for us.'  Whereupon Miss Merman said, 'That cunt, she's so cold you could tap dance on her tits!'"

From Chapter 9, The Music Man

Daily Dose

From Then and Now: A Memoir, by Barbara Cook

MERMAN IN A TURBAN

One of her closest friends was Benay Venuta, who corroborated the following story.  When Benay was Merman's understudy or standby, they would often have dinner between shows.  One day when Benay came to fetch her, Merman was putting on a turban and she was very carefully pulling out little curls all around the edge of the turban.  Benay took one look  and said, 'Jesus Christ, Ethal, what's with the curls?  Don't you know the whole point of wearing a turban is to get that sleek look?'  Ethal replied, 'Fuck you, Benay.  It gives me softness.'"

From Chapter 9, The Music Man

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #35

Mostest

Remember the old Platonic cave? The shadows danced on the wall, suggesting more then they showed, of a world not quite accessible. So it was with Broadway when one was a wee bumpkin boy, imagining whole shows from original cast recordings and the pictures on the album sleeve. If not every song made sense without seeing the actual show, and if sometimes the grainy production snaps failed to explain the sudden chorus of taps, etc., those records were none the less magical instruments, touchstones, the sometimes roughly communicated quintessence of another life, where romance happened "in two," sadness could be belted out and overcome, joy choreographed, lit beautifully, shared and heartily endorsed by applause. I never imagined myself a star -- couldn't dance and couldn't sing much once my voice broke -- but I could see myself seeing and hearing all of that glorious fun someday in New York City. I longed at least for the secondhand. And I knew the shows I knew as well as I knew my name. Still do, some of them.

Because I never made it to see some of those shows, never made it to NYC but as a tourist, because some of the shows I came to know so well were long gone even as I imagined them, I grew up with a weird loyalty to productions and performers I'd never seen, or seen only in rare television appearances, but listened to a thousand times. For me, no one but Mary Martin would ever look authentic in that over-sized sailor's suit. No one but Alfred Drake understood "Fate." No one but Richard Kiley ever climbed that drawbridge into the light and immortality. And nobody is Mama Rose but Merman.

Now, if any of that is mystifying, or if any of the names are unfamiliar to you, I'm sorry, but it would take too long to explain. Drop by sometime, and I'll play you the records. Other than Richard Kiley in about his last revival, I never saw any of these people anyway, so I'm hardly an expert. That's rather the point. The performances that may have meant the most to me, I never saw, only heard. In every one of the musicals mentioned above, I eventually saw other performers, some quite good, some maybe even better than the originals, but none could or can even now displace the voices I heard first.

The Bargain Books table at the bookstore continues to be a source of siren song; with all the books I ought to be reading, I find myself listing as I pass, drawn inexorably to a Hirschfeld caricature on a white dustjacket, and my plans smash again, my direction undone, my duty abandoned. I can't quite remember what memoir in snowshoes I meant to start tonight, or what academic disquisition on salmon I'm meant to be reading. Any interest in the Northwest is lost to me just now. My committee work requires I buckle down and get to that teetering stack of mossy locals sooner rather than later, but tonight, I spent instead with Ethel.

Brian Kellow had an almost impossible task when he took up with Merman. How to communicate the wonder of that voice on the page? Now, Kellow writes regularly about opera, is roughly my age, and so probably never saw Merman in "Gypsy" either, so if anyone has the vocabulary for communicating the strange glory of The Voice in just words, this is the guy. I get him. He gets Merman. The author successfully recreates all that was most wonderful about Merman on stage as best as can be done now, now that she's long gone, for those of us never so lucky as to have seen her in, say, "Anything Goes," using judicious quotes from original reviews, the published reminiscences of costars and critics and fans, and much other solid research. His enthusiasm is genuine and familiar. He's a fan himself. He is happiest, and most articulate, describing the dance of those shadows. Of course, we have The Voice on record, for much of this, but Kellow's book fills in all the background, names the players, recreates the productions and makes everything better by so doing. He can only do so much at this late date, but he does it remarkably well. He gets The Voice.

Worse though for the biographer, as it turns out, than trying to bottle that lightning, was finding much of anything else inside. Ethel Merman: A Life, is the title Kellow used, and in it's blunt simplicity, it says more about the dame than anything longer might have. Ethel lived. That voice, Husbands, lovers, hit shows, disappointing kids, loving parents, she had. But an interior life? Not so much. Ethel didn't read much, even music, and she didn't think much, even about the roles she played. Ethel just was, like the sun. Kellow then can't do much with her private life but describe the blaze. Ethel scorched more often than she warmed. Such a phenomenon is perhaps best studied at a safe distance.

Doesn't matter now. Whatever Miss Merman was or wasn't as a person, as a performer, she was all that, a bottle of beer and a bag of chips. Brian Kellow, like any kid who listened, as I'm convinced he did, over and again, to "I Got Lost in His Arms," and the like, knows better than to question the magic. I've got Merman's "Gypsy" on right now. As Kellow might be to polite to say himself -- though Ethel would have without a thought -- fuck the rest.

Sing out, Baby!

An Open Invitation

Years ago, when I worked off the sales floor doing publisher returns, I kept candy at my desk, whatever was on sale at Bartell's Drug Store, up the block. Coworkers would come by my desk, bringing me books to return, to chat, or because it was widely known that there was in fact, free candy at the Returns Desk. It might have seemed like pandering, because it was. "Would you like a piece of candy?" (-- "Hi there, stranger. Like me!" classic fat kid thinking. Works too.)

If more than one kind of sweet was on sale, there might even be more than one kind of candy on my desk. If, for example, both plain and peanut M&Ms were on sale, I might have one kind in the dish and the other, if no additional dish was available, just in an open bag. Once I came back to the desk to find a note attached to an open bag of peanut M&Ms. The note read:

"An open bag of M&Ms is an invitation to sin."

I kept that note posted on a cork board for many years. Words to live by, no?

Now I keep no candy at the Used Books Desk, at least not in a visible place. Too public. One doesn't need to make that many friends.

But, because the Buying Desk is right off the lobby, I look out every day at tables and tables of Bargain Books; publishers' clearance, remainders, reprints... for a bibliophile, this is very much the ethical equivalent of an open bag of M&Ms. I try very hard to ignore these books every day. I have, for example, made myself pass by all the lovely Lincoln hardcovers we've been getting in for the Bicentennial. I do not need to own another book about Lincoln, even at $7.98. My dears, it's dieting while working behind the dessert table at a smorgasbord.

But some things can not, and ought not be ignored. Ethan Mordden is a writer I've enjoyed since his serial stories appeared in the long-gone Christopher Street Magazine. He's marvelous. Ethan Mordden, you see, is Gay New York. That's right. All of it in one mustached fag. In addition to the "Buddies Stories" and his other fiction, for a decade or more, he's been producing a marvelous history of the American Musical Comedy, each volume deliciously reviewing a decade on the Broadway stage. Pure gay goodness. I bought and greedily gobbled each volume as they came out. But his last, The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of the Broadway Musical, was I understood the last. Then today I spotted, on the Bargain Table, marred only by an ugly black remainder mark of the top page-edge, All that Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway 1919 - 1959. Not fair, I tell you, an eclair right there calling to my sugar-starved greed. I've been so good; reading serious fiction, quotable essays, The New York Review of Books, freaking Bronte, for heaven's sake, all to avoid writing about trivial nonsense on this blog. (--"Hi there, stranger. Like me!")

I broke. $6.98. I will not be rereading anymore of my Jeanette Winterson for the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Book Club tonight. Just dessert for me, thank you.