Ethel Merman

Lore & Background

Ethel Merman was born January 16, 1908, in her maternal grandmother's house in Astoria, Queens, but she later insisted that the year of her birth was 1912. She was an only child. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant with James H. Dunham & Company, a Manhattan wholesale dry-goods company, and her mother, Agnes Zimmermann, was a schoolteacher. Edward had been raised in the Dutch Reformed Church and Agnes was Presbyterian. Shortly after they married, they joined the Episcopal congregation at Church of the Redeemer, where their daughter was baptized. Merman's parents were strict about church attendance and she spent every Sunday attending morning services, Sunday school, afternoon prayer meetings, and evening study groups for children. Merman's parents insisted she have an education with training in secretarial skills, in case her entertainment career failed. Merman attended P.S. 4 and William Cullen Bryant High School (which later named its auditorium in her honor), where she pursued a commercial course that offered secretarial training. She was active in numerous extracurricular activities, including the school magazine, the speakers' club, and student council, and frequented the local music store to peruse the weekly arrivals of new sheet music. On Friday nights, the Zimmermann family took the subway into Manhattan to see the vaudeville show at the Palace Theatre, where Merman saw Blossom Seeley, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and Nora Bayes. At home, she tried to emulate their singing styles, but found her own distinctive voice difficult to disguise. After graduating from Bryant High School in 1924, Merman was hired as a stenographer by the Boyce-Ite Company. One day during her lunch break, she met Vic Kliesrath, who offered her a job at the Bragg-Kliesrath Corporation for a $5 increase above the weekly $23 salary she was earning, and Merman accepted the offer. She eventually became personal secretary to company president Caleb Bragg, whose frequent lengthy absences from the office to race automobiles allowed her to catch up on the sleep she had lost the previous night when she was out late singing at private parties. During this period, Merman began performing in nightclubs, first hired by Jimmy Durante's partner Lou Clayton. At this time, she decided the name Ethel Zimmermann was too long for a theater marquee, her next ambition to sing in. She co

Reader's Guide

Merman introduced many Broadway standards, including "I Got Rhythm" from Girl Crazy, "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy, and the Cole Porter songs "It's De-Lovely" (from Red, Hot and Blue), and "I Get a Kick Out of You", "You're the Top", and "Anything Goes" (from Anything Goes). The Irving Berlin song "There's No Business Like Show Business", written for Annie Get Your Gun, became Merman's signature song. She is also known for her film roles in Anything Goes (1936), Call Me Madam (1953), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Did You Know?

• Merman introduced the Cole Porter songs "It's De-Lovely" (from Red, Hot and Blue), "I Get a Kick Out of You", "You're the Top", and "Anything Goes" (from Anything Goes).
• She received a Grammy Award for Gypsy, according to the source.
• She received a Drama Desk Award for Hello, Dolly!, according to the source.