DVDs: '60s Merman

VAI, the company that recently provided on DVD the first commercial release of the Ethel Merman-Mary Martin Ford 50th Anniversary Show duet, now gives us a Merman program from "The Bell Telephone Hour," a series that ran on NBC from 1959 to 1968. Varying from weekly to biweekly to occasional specials, "The Bell Telephone Hour" offered musical theatre, opera, ballet, classical, and popular music, with episodes often grouped around a theme or person.

The main feature of the new VAI release is a January 28, 1964 "Telephone Hour" salute to Cole Porter, in color and performed live but without a studio audience. The star of five of Porter's Broadway musicals, Merman hosts the show. She's joined by singers John Raitt and Martha Wright, dancer-singer Gretchen Wyler, popular pianist Peter Nero, and ballerina Jillana.

Bedecked in purple, Merman opens the show with a powerhouse, six-song medley commencing with -what else?-"Another Op'nin', Another Show," and going on to include "Ridin' High" and "It's De-Lovely." She then turns the show over to Raitt and Wright for a sequence of love songs; they're both excellent vocalists, although Wright, who replaced Mary Martin in Broadway's South Pacific and The Sound of Music, is on the dull side.

Wyler heats up the proceedings by singing and dancing "Don't Fence Me In" with a male ensemble. One of Broadway's top dancing ladies, Wyler was the featured comic star of Porter's Silk Stockings, then went on to replace Gwen Verdon in Damn Yankees and Chita Rivera in Bye Bye Birdie.

Then Merman returns, this time in black and in tremendous form, to deliver a romantic medley embracing "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Easy to Love," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to," "What Is This Thing Called Love?," "Do I Love You?," and "You Do Something to Me."

In order to achieve the stated goal of presenting more Porter songs in a single hour than any previous program, the show closes with a lengthy medley featuring Merman, Raitt, Wright, Wyler, Nero and ensemble, bringing the total number of songs featured up to fifty-two. During the sequence, Wyler gets to recreate a bit of her Silk Stockings number "Stereophonic Sound."

And that's not to mention Jillana dancing to "Begin the Beguine" or Nero pounding out a medley or two. For its vintage, the video looks quite good, but then I can't understand anyone complaining about shortcomings in quality when it comes to material as rare as this.

As a bonus, the new DVD also gives us excerpts from another "Telephone Hour," this one taped on January 29, 1960. It was a special program called "The Four Of Us," and co-starred Merman on Broadway in Gypsy at the time, Bea Lillie, Ray Bolger, and Benny Goodman. Here, we get only Merman's musical contribution, an elaborately staged, ten-minute ragtime medley, with the star in huge voice and in a get-up that may put you in mind of her Harmonia Gardens Hello, Dolly! outfit.

Accompanied by singers and dancers, the sequence has Merman swaggering through such songs as "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Sweet Georgia Brown," "After You've Gone," and "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street," and even sharing a dance with some chorus boys. Appended after this sequence is Merman doing "I Got Rhythm," taken from another segment of "The Four of Us."

This is followed on the DVD by twenty minutes of assorted alternate takes from the ragtime sequence. These serve to demonstrate how vocally consistent Merman was: She's equally spectacular in all versions of the same number, seeming to have at her disposal an endless supply of voice. It's also fun to see the expression on Merman's face when a take is abruptly aborted.

The material on this disc may not rank with the more important television documents of musical-comedy performance, such as the Merman-Martin Ford 50th medley. Still, the mere fact that such material is finally being pursued for release places a disc like this pretty much beyond criticism. And Merman in her prime is always worth catching. VAI has announced its intention to release additional musical-theatre material from "The Bell Telephone Hour" as well as from other sources.

THAT GIRL: VOLUME ONE Anchor Bay

Speaking of '60s Merman on DVD, you may want to rent "That Girl": Volume One, a disc that offers nine episodes from the Marlo Thomas sitcom about an aspiring New York actress that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. That's because the disc contains the episode of September 7, 1967, entitled "Pass the Potatoes, Ethel Merman," in which Ann Marie gets a one-line role in a Merman show.

The show is said to be a revival of Gypsy, and we do see Merman rehearsing "Small World." But she's surrounded by the chorus when she sings it, hardly the way the number goes in Gypsy. Nor is Ann's one spoken line a line from Gypsy. At the end of the episode, Merman is seen belting "Everything's Coming Up Roses," but in what looks like a concert setting rather than in a performance of Gypsy.

In the episode, Ann finally gets over her nerves about being around the great star. When they learn that Merman is alone in town and staying at a hotel, Ann and her boyfriend Donald Ted Bessell invite Merman over to Ann's apartment for dinner. Rather than have Ann do the cooking, Merman takes over in the kitchen, volunteering to make stuffed cabbage for the kids.

There's an amusing argument scene between Merman and Lew Parker, who played Ann's father and who had appeared with Merman in her first Broadway show, Girl Crazy. Shortly thereafter, Merman, still in the kitchen, is seen teaching Ann how to conquer stage nerves and grab an audience, illustrating how to belt out a song by delivering a bit of the same "After You've Gone" that's heard in the "Telephone Hour" ragtime medley.

While one may wonder if Merman was as close in real life to the walk-on players in her musicals, this episode nicely captures the star's down-to-earth, no-nonsense personality. And it even manages to deal affectingly with the lonely life of a big star. Written by Jim Brooks, this second-season opener went over so well that Merman was invited back the following year to star in another episode of "That Girl," this one having Merman accidentally becoming the "other woman" in the marriage of Ann's mother and father. Perhaps a subsequent "That Girl" DVD will provide that episode as well.

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