Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman
by Caryl Flinn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Caryl FlinnEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-30
ISBN: 0520229428
Number of pages: 556
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman
Book Review: It's in the details
Summary: 5 Stars
How about this? A biography of Ethel Merman that really tells the true story of her life. Not all the made up bitch-diva tales that chorus boys have dished about for years, but instead a revealing portrait of an immensely talented, supremely confident and remarkably shy woman.
Ethel Merman...Shy? Yes. Her way of dealing with that shyness was to create the character Ethel Merman: Big Brassy Broadway Belter. Even in the first page of her autobiography she recalls a TV Talk show host asking her if she cried easily. She replied, no not particularly although there was something about weddings that always brought a tear to her eye. But then she added "I should have cried at a few of my own," breaking up the host and convulsing the studio audience and reinforcing her image as the professional brass diva. A more personal and compelling appearance was when Ralph Edwards surprised her on This Is Your Life. A tearful Merman graciously thanks Edwards at the end revealing the side that she seldom showed in public.
Carol Finn does a remarkably thorough job reconstructing the events of Merman's life right down to the moment she collapsed from a stroke caused by an undetected brain tumor. Merman was only 76 when she died in February 1984, spending her last few months as an invalid barely able to speak. Up until then she was going strong and in fact was booked with her concert tours for the next three years. It seemed impossible that her energetic life would be stopped so suddenly and without any warning.
Finn was fortunate to have had the cooperation of Merman's son Bobby who shared may revealing and personal reminiscences of his mother, and she makes extensive use of the Merman scrapbooks. She doesn't gloss over the negative stoies but goes to great lengths to debunk some of the Merman myths. Of the four biogreaphies published since Merman's death, this one gets closer to the real woman beneath that "Brass Diva" exterior.
As Merman herself would often say "How about that?"
Summary of Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman
Broadway star Ethel Merman's voice was a mesmerizing force and her vitality was legendary, yet the popular perception of La Merm as the irrepressible wonder falls far short of all that she was and all that she meant to Americans over so many decades. This marvelously detailed biography is the first to tell the full story of how the stenographer from Queens, New York, became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age. Mining official and unofficial sources, including interviews with Merman's family and her personal scrapbooks, Caryl Flinn unearths new details of Merman's life and finds that behind the high-octane personality was a remarkably pragmatic woman who never lost sight of her roots.Brass Diva takes us from Merman's working-class beginnings through the extraordinary career that was launched in 1930 when, playing a secondary role in a Gershwin Brothers' show, she became an overnight sensation singing "I Got Rhythm." From there, we follow Merman's hits on Broadway, her uneven successes in Hollywood, and her afterlife as a beloved camp icon. This definitive work on the phenomenon that was Ethel Merman is also the first to thoroughly explore her robust influence on American popular culture.
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