Ethel Merman: A Life (48 page)

“Mervyn LeRoy came to see the play nine times…”
Jack Klugman, interview with author, August 5, 2003

“those son of a bitches,”
Richard Grayson, interview with author, March 28, 2005

“I’m really excited about coming to Rochester,”
Rochester Times-Union,
March 21, 1961

“The quality of our notices…”
Richard Grayson, interview with author, March 28, 2005

“a moderately weak musical…”
Christian Science Monitor,
April 25, 1961

“Touring! I’m sold!”
Detroit News,
April 15, 1961

“You’ve got to promise me you’ll do that,”
Richard Grayson, interview with author, March 28, 2005

“She never felt the same way about me after that,”
ibid.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Jackie had a terrible mouth,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 16, 2005

“Ethel, I love you!”
Barbara Seaman,
Lovely Me
(New York: William Morrow, 1987), p. 248

“I just never could go that route,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 16, 2005

“thoroughly repellent,”
New Yorker,
November 17, 1962

“I used to do a take-off on her,”
Edie Adams, interview with author, August 2, 2003

“For filmdom functions…”
Los Angeles Times,
September 23, 1962

“the pleasure dome of the new prefab promised land,”
Nick Tosches,
Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
(New York: Delta, 1992), p. 203

“Up until last year,”
Merman in Vegas,
audio recording, Collectables COL-CD-6193

“Ethel’s act simply did not fly,”
Phyllis Diller, interview with author, November 18, 2003

“Although Ethel is a wonder, she is human,”
Boston Herald American,
June 11, 1963

“He said that he would like to set up a time to audition it,”
Jerry Herman, interview with author, October 11, 200

“My grandmother was a very powerful personality,”
Barbara Geary, interview with author, January 15, 2004

“I felt that she really wanted this to happen,”
Susan Watson, interview with author, February 4, 2005

“What do I have to do to get hot,”
Tom Korman, interview with author, May 4, 2005

“Ethel! I’m here!”
Kaye Ballard, interview with author, August 11, 2005

“redundant, ridiculous, and too insistent,”
Newsweek,
November 18, 1963

“outright disgust,”
ibid.

“You can’t speak against that girl,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 16, 2005

“I can see where she fell, hook, line, and sinker,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, November 17, 2004

“We’re sitting on two chairs,”
Eric Knight, interview with author, May 23, 2005

“He had hit her,”
ibid.

“objected strenuously to that woman,”
Los Angeles Times,
November 19, 1964

“He told me that the real story…”
Barbara Geary, interview with author, January 11, 2004

“It all came down to dollars and cents,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, November 17, 2004

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“She’s like me,”
Bruce Burroughs, interview with author, December 7, 2004

“Imagine that broad not showing up,”
New York Post,
n.d.

“It stinks!”
Valley of the Dolls
(New York: Bernard Geis & Associates, 1966), p. 84

“You’ll never convince me people actually read that shit,”
ibid., p. 96

“Really, people don’t do that,”
Donald Preston, interview with author, September 9, 2005

“I can’t ride,”
Life,
August 18, 1961

“I’m so glad that you’re Bruce’s
leading lady
,”
Ronn Carroll, interview with author, July 8, 2003

“Jesus, they know what I look like,”
ibid.

“She would dumbfound people,”
Jerry Orbach, interview with author, July 20, 2004

“Little Sure Shot is older,”
New York Times,
June 1, 1966

“Benay, this sounds terrible,”
Ronn Carroll, interview with author, July 8, 2003

“I don’t care what you say to her,”
ibid.

“Ethel, he’s just reacting,”
Jerry Orbach, interview with author, July 20, 2004

“Miss Merman, I come in here every day at four-thirty,”
Ronn Carroll, interview with author, July 8, 2003

“Oh, yeah?”
ibid.

“Forget it, kid,”
ibid.

“this terribly sweet…”
ibid.

“I hope you don’t mind,”
ibid.

“Sure, honey,”
ibid.

“really scares me,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“If I had to do all those things,”
Mark Zeller, interview with author, June 17, 2005

“I think that it was kind of unintentional suicide,”
Barbara Geary, interview with author, September 8, 2005

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Ethel was not a person who didn’t like what she had,”
Carleton Varney, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“They don’t know how to sell a gag,”
David Brunetti, interview with author, September 10, 2006

“She cut him dead,”
Arthur Bartow, interview with author, March 29, 2005

“So we did it again,”
John DeMain, interview with author, July 10, 2004

“WHO DID SHE FUCK TO GET TWO DANCE NUMBERS?”
Donna McKechnie, interview with author, July 21, 2003

“It was drinky-poo, drinky-poo,”
John Kenley, interview with author, May 4, 2005

“wanted to do some kind of high-school production,”
John DeMain, interview with author, July 10, 2004

“No, we just want to keep it in the theater,”
Phyllis Diller, interview with author, November 18, 2003

“I tried, in every way,”
Marge Champion, interview with author, October 22, 2003

“This steamroller suddenly happened to the show,”
Marcia Lewis, interview with author, April 30, 2004

“She came down the steps, and they just wouldn’t stop,”
John Montgomery, interview with author, September 10, 2005

“exactly as trumpet-clean…”
New York Times,
April 12, 1970

“Helene—she didn’t commit suicide,”
Helene Whitney, interview with author, July 28, 2004

“She was playing a matinee one day, and she was pissed off at something,”
Biff Liff, interview with author, June 8, 2004

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Grandmother—what does that mean?”
Mary Henderson, interview with author, November 3, 2006

“That’s just like your mother,”
Barbara Geary, interview with author, September 8, 2005

“Oh, my God, I am so embarrassed,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“I found her one of the most difficult people I’ve ever represented,”
Tom Korman, interview with author, June 11, 2005

“You know, Miss Merman,”
Lionel Larner, interview with author, April 25, 2005

“Faggot!”
ibid.

“You’ve seated me next to a fag!”
Carleton Varney, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“more my personal manager than an agent,”
Merman,
p. 254

“Although everybody told me…”
Dr. Albert Attia, interview with author, September 28, 2005

“She would invite a group of us to dinner,”
Kay Armen, interview with author, January 30, 2006

“Mama, I want you to get well,”
ibid.

“Lionel, look at this place,”
Lionel Larner, interview with author, April 25, 2005

“Well, you can’t…”
ibid.

“Ethel, you are the first lady of the American musical theater,”
ibid.

“With Angie it was really a marvelous ending,”
Performing Arts,
n.d.

“I don’t want to look like a Ubangi!”
Lionel Larner, interview with author, April 25, 2005

“Gardiner was crazy about Merman,”
Eric Knight, interview with author, May 23, 2005

“Look at that fuckin’ moon!”
Nanette Fabray, interview with author, April 25, 2005 238

“If there was a kinder, nicer lady, I have never met her,”
New York Post,
July 26, 1975

“I don’t know what to do about Bobby,”
Rose Marie, interview with author, May 3, 2004

“a sad, dull, middle-class lady,”
Benay Venuta, interview with Barbara Seaman, April 17, 1984

“I’ve got something to tell you,”
ibid.

“All I want is to travel first class,”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“Let’s go to the Chinks,”
ibid.

“Missy Merman!”
ibid.

“It’ll be good exposure,”
ibid.

“But you don’t have to be Lucille Ball,”
ibid.

“A big theatrical problem…”
West Side TV Shopper,
August 10, 1983

“With Chowsie?”
Bob Schear, interview with author, July 26, 2005

“Don’t know why / There’s no action in this fly,”
ibid.

“HELLO! What are you doing here?”
ibid.

“I was in the midst,”
Lifestyles with Beverly Sills,
NBC-TV, May 1977

“Jesus. Just look how they’ve fucked up Times Square,”
Bob Schear, interview with author, July 26, 2005

“when we look at the stage,”
Donald Saddler, interview with author, March 23, 2004

“the meaning of a love-in,”
Merman,
p. 260

“Ethel Merman is the bonfire,”
New York Times,
May 13, 1977

“We’ve lost something,”
New York Post,
May May 21, 1977

“HI! I’M ETHEL MERMAN!”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, June 9, 2004

“I was always afraid that she would give them cardiac arrest,”
ibid.

“HI, POP!”
Bob Schear, interview with author, July 26, 2005

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Would you get a fuckin’ look at that marquee?”
Bob Schear, interview with author, July 26, 2005

“She always produced,”
Eric Knight, interview with author, May 23, 2005

“I thought the thunder was the timpani,”
ibid.

“Sorry, can’t sign anything!”
Scott Barnes, interview with author, June 10, 2004

“She’s fuckin’ lip-synching!”
Bob Schear, interview with author, July 26, 2005

“her straight-from-the shoulder manner…”
New York Times,
June 16, 1978

“My book is number eight…”
Dallas Times-Herald,
June 22, 1978

“Why Jimmy?”
Tony Cointreau, interview with author, February 1, 2006

“the warmth of a fjord,”
Village Voice,
August 27, 1979

“Ethel, are you all right?”
Nanette Fabray, interview with author, April 7, 2006