Free Ethel Merman: A Life by Brian Kellow Page B

hoped to sign on to another show. But not long after arriving, she decided to branch out in another direction—west, to Hollywood.

Chapter Five
     
    E thel took her first stab at Hollywood in the fall of 1933. Lou Irwin, whose business interests were increasingly focused on the West Coast, had arranged a contract for her with Paramount Publix. Once the studio had been known as Famous Players–Lasky, the same company at which Ethel had once caught a glimpse of Alice Brady and other stars in Astoria. Earlier on, it had developed a major distribution wing by acquiring Paramount Pictures Corporation, and now it was one of the biggest film factories in Hollywood, with a roster of stars that included Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins, Sylvia Sidney, and W. C. Fields. Ethel was uneasy about being so far away from home on her own, so it was decided that Mom Zimmermann would accompany her. Mom had never been separated from Pop for any length of time in their entire marriage, but she felt the need to support Ethel in this exciting and somewhat intimidating new venture. They traveled west by train and, like most newcomers to California, were stunned by the miles and miles of orange groves that paved the way to the Pasadena station. Once in Los Angeles, they moved into a Hancock Park apartment building called the Ravenswood, where Paramount’s number-one female star, Mae West, also resided.
    At the time the recommended road to success for a Hollywood novice was to sign a standard seven-year contract with a major film studio. These contracts were loaded down with options, almost all of them on the studio’s side; an unlucky actor might find himself unceremoniously dropped at any moment. For the independent-minded stage actor, long-term Hollywood employment could seem a kind of human bondage, and some of them did their best to negotiate time off to return to the theater. This didn’t always work out to their benefit. “I had a stupid contract,” recalled Jane Wyatt of her early days in Hollywood. “I was supposed to come out in the summer and then go back to New York in the winter to do plays. But of course it didn’t work, because they wouldn’t have the picture ready, and then you’d miss the play.”
    But the seven-year contract did have its advantages: in general, the studios worked overtime promoting their contract players, gradually building their names before the public. Most actors found that such benefits outweighed the annoyances. If the scripts were not always what they hoped for, they were well paid, got to live in luxurious surroundings, and acquired an avid army of fans that they might never have dreamed of during their Broadway days.
    Ethel, however, wasn’t offered a seven-year contract. Instead Paramount handed her a one-picture deal, which she enthusiastically accepted. She figured if Hollywood wasn’t to her liking, the relationship would be over with in one picture. If she did like it and managed to make good, the studio would ask her to stay on longer.
    The one picture was called We’re Not Dressing , based on a 1903 J. M. Barrie play, The Admirable Crichton . The director was Norman Taurog, under contract to Paramount, who had also directed Ethel’s feature debut, Follow the Leader . (In the interim he had won an Academy Award for his direction of the 1931 Jackie Cooper hit Skippy .) The cast was impressive: Paramount’s hot singing star Bing Crosby had the lead, up-and-coming comedienne Carole Lombard was cast opposite him, and George Burns and Gracie Allen had the second leads. The songs were by Harry Revel and Mack Gordon. The problem was that We’re Not Dressing , a knockabout farce centering on a gang of eccentrics marooned on an island, wasn’t very good basic material. Ethel might have been surrounded by some of the studio’s top talent, but she couldn’t quite see how We’re Not Dressing was going to give her much of an opportunity to shine.
    On top of everything else, she didn’t like