Free Ethel Merman: A Life by Brian Kellow

vaudeville, as in radio, there wasn’t the great gulf between “high” and “low” culture that would eventually blight the American entertainment scene; at the Palace, Ethel’s co-players ranged from comic Jack Haley and comedienne Patsy Kelly to Metropolitan Opera soprano Frances Alda. Many offers of Broadway shows soon followed, including one by the Gershwins that never materialized. Ethel sifted through the possibilities but didn’t say yes until she was approached by Buddy DeSylva and Laurence Schwab.
    Their show was called Humpty Dumpty, and it was another revue—sort of. Humpty Dumpty could not have been more self-referential: its plot hinged on the pitfalls of putting on a revue. The main backer was played by dialect comic Lou Holtz, and its various numbers aimed to spoof famous figures in American history, including Betsy Ross, Miles Standish, and Abraham Lincoln. Initially no one seems to have thought that a spoof of Lincoln sounded like a particularly bad idea, and DeSylva had high hopes for the show. To write the score, he had hired Nacio Herb Brown and Richard Whiting, both of whom had left Broadway for Hollywood, where the sound revolution had kept them busy turning out movie musicals.
    In the 1930s, when the financial stakes were so much lower than they were to become in future decades, musicals were often thrown together quickly. In many cases the book and score didn’t exist in any kind of reasonable form when the stars signed their contracts, and sometimes the show was still being written while rehearsals were under way. Work was fast, frenetic, and often trial-and-error.
    Humpty Dumpty was a prime example of such a show, and Ethel recalled that “no word has been invented to describe” the condition of the original book. Rehearsals began in August 1932, and on September 12, Humpty Dumpty opened in Pittsburgh—and promptly closed. Ethel was furious. She hadn’t had a failure yet, and now it looked as if her perfect record had crumbled. Assembling the dispirited company for a passionate pep talk, DeSylva told them, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know this show is going to be a hit. We just have to work it over again. We’ve got great songs, great performers, but there’s something wrong. We’ve got to keep working. We’ve got to take a chance.” In a split second, he knew he had the title for his beleaguered production. Humpty Dumpty was rechristened Take a Chance, and the determined company headed back to New York.
    For several weeks frantic rewriting went on. A number of cast members were dropped, including Lou Holtz, who stayed on to help rework the piece. Most of the historical episodes were scrapped. The book, still extremely loose, now focused on a pair of tinhorn gamblers (Jack Haley, Sid Silvers) who leave the small-time carnival circuit behind in hopes of finding bigger pickings in the legitimate theater. Their lady friend aspires to be a singer, and her love interest, a Harvard man (baritone Jack Whiting), having distinguished himself in productions of the Hasty Pudding Club, decides to try his luck as a show-business professional. As in Girl Crazy , Ethel was cast as a tough nightclub singer. It was a secondary role, but she had the best songs: “You’re an Old Smoothie,” a duet for Ethel and Jack Haley, and “Eadie Was a Lady,” a blowsy comic saga of a loose woman that owed a little to “Sam and Delilah” and a little to “Frankie and Johnny.”
    The only one not participating in the show’s overhaul was Richard Whiting, who had lost heart, despite his admiration for Ethel. His daughter, the distinguished pop singer Margaret Whiting, remembered, “My father told me later she was a shining star. She could be tough, but she could be magical. She came out on the stage and took a bow and then she went on with it. She was like a royal lady.” Already Richard Whiting was plagued by a worrisome heart condition and high blood pressure—he would die in 1938 at forty-six—and he