Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman by Caryl Flinn Page A
Authors: Caryl Flinn
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liveaction photography, something that mainstream studios rarely explored
until decades later. The Fleischer Brothers routinely inserted popular performers like Cab Calloway and Rudy Vallee into their cartoons. Paramount was able to get the singers to appear at reduced rates by booking their
live acts into the company's film theaters shortly after the shorts were released, enhancing visibility for everyone concerned. In their Let Me Call You
Sweetheart, Time on My Hands, and You Try Somebody Else, Ethel was the featured guest star of their animated flapper heroine Betty Boop, who had also
hosted Calloway and Vallee. For the most part, Ethel was rarely required to
"interact" with animated portions. You Try Somebody Else, for instance, starts
with live-action footage of Ethel on a house porch, singing the eponymous
song, whose lyrics suggest that she and her lover should try new partners and,
when the experiment fails, they'll "be together again." Ethel isn't giving a terribly emotional performance, resembling a schoolteacher recounting a story
more than an emoting vocalist. But even though she moves little, there is a
twinkle in her eye. The song "You Try Somebody Else" is equally cut adrift
from the animated action, which follows a goofy prisoner, released and then "brought together again" in jail after Miss Boop frustrates his attempt to
burgle her home. Merman, still on her porch, closes the film, exhorting viewers to sing along as the bouncing ball jumps atop the lyrics on the bottom of
the screen. After a few verses, cartoon hieroglyphics replace words (a drawing of an eye standing in for I), lending a goofy, surreal air to the proceedings. Time on My Hands also features crazy, creative animation (fish, worms,
Betty Boop as a mermaid under water) sandwiching Ethel, who sings the title
song while seated on the hands of an oversized clock, poised and quietly
glamorous, quite unlike Harold Lloyd, whose famous dangling-from-a-clock
sequence of Safety Last! (1923) the setting evokes.
In Song Shopping (1933), Ethel was given featured billing and performs
without La Boop. This short gives a wonderful sense of what Merman's performance at the time might have been like. It opens and closes with animated
follies of music-making animals at a "song shop," where notes are made out
of swatted flies and watermelon seeds, broken records spit out of a meat
grinder, mice's curled tails become G clefs, and so forth, and we see a clever
cartoon take on the mass production of popular songs. After this introduction,
the live-action footage of Ethel begins, accompanied by Johnny Green, now
a rehearsal pianist, arranger, and conductor at Paramount. She sings Coslow
and Harling's "Sing, You Sinners" and then introduces Green's own "I'm
Yours" as one that the audience can follow along with the bouncing ball. After
this, Ethel playfully tells Green, "Here's one they'll sing, one you didn'twrite!"
and reprises "Sing, You Sinners" in a more syncopated, animated rendition directly facing the camera. Song Shopping is a rarity for showing Merman not as
a character but as singer Ethel Merman, enjoying banter with Green and lighting up the number with her lively style. Song Shopping is a rarity in another
way also, having been long unavailable for viewing.44
Paramount also distributed Ethel's other, non-Fleischer shorts. The stories
hew more or less to the same formula: a down-and-out young woman about
to be sentenced for a crime or forced to cope with a philandering husband,
an absent lover, or an overbearing father, but thanks to a last-minute change
for the better, the situation ends on an upbeat note. This narrative movement, slim as it is, allowed each short to include different types of songs to
be performed; in most, the first song was a plaintive, blues-inflected ballad
and the second is a rousing cheerer-upper, the musical corollary to the thin
story's happy ending (in Be Like Me, Ethel sings the same piece
until decades later. The Fleischer Brothers routinely inserted popular performers like Cab Calloway and Rudy Vallee into their cartoons. Paramount was able to get the singers to appear at reduced rates by booking their
live acts into the company's film theaters shortly after the shorts were released, enhancing visibility for everyone concerned. In their Let Me Call You
Sweetheart, Time on My Hands, and You Try Somebody Else, Ethel was the featured guest star of their animated flapper heroine Betty Boop, who had also
hosted Calloway and Vallee. For the most part, Ethel was rarely required to
"interact" with animated portions. You Try Somebody Else, for instance, starts
with live-action footage of Ethel on a house porch, singing the eponymous
song, whose lyrics suggest that she and her lover should try new partners and,
when the experiment fails, they'll "be together again." Ethel isn't giving a terribly emotional performance, resembling a schoolteacher recounting a story
more than an emoting vocalist. But even though she moves little, there is a
twinkle in her eye. The song "You Try Somebody Else" is equally cut adrift
from the animated action, which follows a goofy prisoner, released and then "brought together again" in jail after Miss Boop frustrates his attempt to
burgle her home. Merman, still on her porch, closes the film, exhorting viewers to sing along as the bouncing ball jumps atop the lyrics on the bottom of
the screen. After a few verses, cartoon hieroglyphics replace words (a drawing of an eye standing in for I), lending a goofy, surreal air to the proceedings. Time on My Hands also features crazy, creative animation (fish, worms,
Betty Boop as a mermaid under water) sandwiching Ethel, who sings the title
song while seated on the hands of an oversized clock, poised and quietly
glamorous, quite unlike Harold Lloyd, whose famous dangling-from-a-clock
sequence of Safety Last! (1923) the setting evokes.
In Song Shopping (1933), Ethel was given featured billing and performs
without La Boop. This short gives a wonderful sense of what Merman's performance at the time might have been like. It opens and closes with animated
follies of music-making animals at a "song shop," where notes are made out
of swatted flies and watermelon seeds, broken records spit out of a meat
grinder, mice's curled tails become G clefs, and so forth, and we see a clever
cartoon take on the mass production of popular songs. After this introduction,
the live-action footage of Ethel begins, accompanied by Johnny Green, now
a rehearsal pianist, arranger, and conductor at Paramount. She sings Coslow
and Harling's "Sing, You Sinners" and then introduces Green's own "I'm
Yours" as one that the audience can follow along with the bouncing ball. After
this, Ethel playfully tells Green, "Here's one they'll sing, one you didn'twrite!"
and reprises "Sing, You Sinners" in a more syncopated, animated rendition directly facing the camera. Song Shopping is a rarity for showing Merman not as
a character but as singer Ethel Merman, enjoying banter with Green and lighting up the number with her lively style. Song Shopping is a rarity in another
way also, having been long unavailable for viewing.44
Paramount also distributed Ethel's other, non-Fleischer shorts. The stories
hew more or less to the same formula: a down-and-out young woman about
to be sentenced for a crime or forced to cope with a philandering husband,
an absent lover, or an overbearing father, but thanks to a last-minute change
for the better, the situation ends on an upbeat note. This narrative movement, slim as it is, allowed each short to include different types of songs to
be performed; in most, the first song was a plaintive, blues-inflected ballad
and the second is a rousing cheerer-upper, the musical corollary to the thin
story's happy ending (in Be Like Me, Ethel sings the same piece
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