You're The Top

As a man known for being sexually versatile, this song is not only a long time favorite, but carries special meaning for me.

At words poetic, I'm so pathetic

That I always have found it best,

Instead of getting 'em off my chest,

To let 'em rest unexpressed,

I hate parading my serenading

As I'll probably miss a bar,

But if this ditty is not so pretty

At least it'll tell you

How great you are.

You're the top!

You're the Coliseum.

You're the top!

You're the Louver Museum.

You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss

You're a Bendel bonnet,

A Shakespeare's sonnet,

You're Mickey Mouse.

You're the Nile,

You're the Tower of Pisa,

You're the smile on the Mona Lisa

I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,

But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

You're the top!

You're Mahatma Gandhi.

You're the top!

You're Napoleon Brandy.

You're the purple light

Of a summer night in Spain,

You're the National Gallery

You're Garbo's salary,

You're cellophane.

You're sublime,

You're turkey dinner,

You're the time, the time of a Derby winner

I'm a toy balloon that’s fated soon to pop

But if, baby, I'm the bottom,

You're the top!

You're the top!

You're an arrow collar

You're the top!

You're a Coolidge dollar,

You're the nimble tread

Of the feet of Fred Astaire,

You're an O'Neill drama,

You're Whistler's mama!

You're camembert.

You're a rose,

You're Inferno's Dante,

You're the nose

On the great Durante.

I'm just in a way,

As the French would say, "de trop".

But if, baby, I'm the bottom,

You're the top!

You're the top!

You're a dance in Bali.

You're the top!

You're a hot tamale.

You're an angel, you are

Simply too, too, too diveen,

You're a Boticcelli,

You're Keats,

You're Shelly!

You're Ovaltine!

You're a boom,

You're the dam at Boulder,

You're the moon,

Over Mae West's shoulder,

I'm the nominee of the G.O.P.

Or GOP!

But if, baby, I'm the bottom,

You're the top!

You're the top!

You're a Waldorf salad.

You're the top!

You're a Berlin ballad.

You're the boats that glide

On the sleepy Zuider Zee,

You're an old Dutch master,

You're Lady Astor,

You're broccoli!

You're romance,

You're the steppes of Russia,

You're the pants, on a Roxy usher,

I'm a broken doll, a fol-de-rol, a blop,

But if, baby, I'm the bottom,

You're the top!

When I was in my teens & thinking myself as clever as Cole Porter, I had a game of re-writing lyrics to favorite songs in the manner of. Here is what I did to this Cole Porter favorite:

You're the dregs

You're the slums of Pisa

You're the legs on the Mona Lisa

You're a deep, deep breath of fowl filthy air

You're a children's choir

A forest fire

You're underwear!

Stephen 1970

Coming Up Rose's What?

Ethel Merman in the original Broadway production of Gypsy, 1959

"They've nicknamed her husband the Lizard of Roz, and what they call Rosalind Russell I can't repeat -- but it does rhyme with 'witch,' and you'll find her sort in a kennel!" - Ethel Merman

Rosalind Russell in Gypsy (1962, Warner Bros.)

Everything's Coming Up Roses.. Born On This Day... Gay Icon Ethel Merman

I only saw Ethel Merman 2 times. On Broadway in Hello, Dolly!, a role written for her that she finally played 6 years after the musical opened. She really was an A+ Dolly Levi & she received several ovations the evening I was lucky enough to be in the house. I was in the audience for a concert at The Dorothy Chandler in 1974, supporting her disco album.

She was a bookkeeper's daughter from Queens, who worked as a stenographer by day & sang at local parties by night.

Eventually, she acquired an agent who got her some cabaret engagements in Manhattan, & 22 years old, George & Ira Gershwin asked her to come & sing some songs they had written for their new musical- Girl Crazy.

At the end of the audition George Gershwin stated, "Miss Merman, if there's anything you'd like to change, I'd be happy to do so." Merman: “No, the songs will do very nicely".

Girl Crazy opened in the autumn of 1930 & when she sang I Got Rhythm, the audience went wild, & demanded 10 encores. Afterwards she took the subway home to Astoria, but the next day she went to lunch with the Gershwins who showed her the reviews & explained that she was now a star. George Gershwin told her: "Never take a singing lesson", & she never did.

She had a huge brassy belting voice, but she also had such impeccable diction that every word, every syllable, could be heard in every seat in the theatre. It was this skill that made her so appealing to composers & lyricists. She was adored by the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim & even Igor Stravinsky.

Merman couldn't read music but she was able memorize a song after a few hearings. Cole Porter: "She can sing anything. But I really tailor-made my songs for her because I know her range so well." Her best note was A-natural & he often ended phrases on that note. He knew he could trust her to handle his complicated rhythms & he loved the fact that she could sing "Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do" in one breath.

Producers adored Merman. She almost never missed a show. She demanded high fees, but once the contract was signed, she was utterly reliable.

Merman had a long stage career, from Girl Crazy in 1930 to Hello, Dolly! in 1970. She was still belting out There's No Business Like Show Business when she was in her 70s. She released that disco album & The NY Times reviewed it as: "not quite so embarrassing as might have been feared".

Not really pretty or sexy, Merman was also a bit dim. She never read a book, & when someone asked "Is the Pope Catholic?", she helpfully supplied the answer: "Yes". Her favorite drink was champagne… on the rocks.

She did her own book-keeping & counting pennies; her first agent- Lou Irwin: "3 things are important to Ethel, the first is money, & the second is money & the third is money." She disliked travel & once said that her idea of exercise was sunbathing.

Merman would marry 4 times, never happily, her last marriage, to Ernest Borgnine, ended after 5 weeks. She had 2 children by her second husband, Bob Levitt, but devoted little time to them.

I think the best thing about her was her exuberance and willingness to make fun of herself. At 72 years old, she appeared in the movie Airplane! playing a wounded soldier so traumatized that he believed he was Ethel Merman, & she leapt from his/her hospital bed singing Everything's Coming up Roses.

I have read gossip claiming that she was lesbian & Jewish, but I have found nothing that points to either being true. The writer Jacqueline Susann once stood outside her door yelling "Ethel, I love you!"; but Merman never showed the slightest interest in women. The character Helen Lawson in Susann’s novel Valley of the Dolls is based on Merman.

Although my young wards at my job have never heard of her, she remains a gay icon to men of a certain age, beloved of drag artists. There is an Ethel Merman choir, consisting entirely of Merman impersonators, in San Francisco.

As a kid, I thrilled to her appearances on made dozens of television appearances, guesting on variety series hosted by Perry Como, Red Skelton, Dean Martin, Ed Sullivan, & Carol Burnett, on talk shows with Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, & Merv Griffin. When Merman died in 1984, I lit a candle for her while listening to Gypsy. I do an outstanding imitation of her.

"Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to Broadway."



Her final performance.

Girlfriends

Ethel Merman, Mae West and Judy Garland

Irene Dunne and Barbara Stanwyck

Susan Hayward and Ingrid Bergman

Dorothy Lamour, Gracie Allen and Betty Hutton

Jane Powell, Noel Coward and Zsa Zsa Gabor

Glamour in Unexpected Places

Hedda Hopper

Ethel Merman

Martha Raye

Time Warp

Picture it, New York, 1978: Merv Griffin and his guests -- Ethel Merman, Shelley Winters and Alexis Smith -- discuss Broadway, Chita Rivera, "A Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts," disco, Studio 54, Bob Mackie, and the opening of Smith's cult flop musical, Platinum, in what may be the gayest 13 minutes you'll ever spend in your life.

That Gibson Girl

SSUWAT's good friend Michael O'Sullivan of Mike's Movie Projector recently posed the query: "Who is Virginia Gibson?"

Frankly, we had no idea. But you asked, Mike; we researched. It would seem that Virginia Gibson is the former Virginia Gorski (born April 9, 1928) of St. Louis, MO. A triple-threat singer, dancer and actress, Virginia became a Warner Brothers contract player in 1950, making her debut in the Doris Day box office bonanza, Tea for Two. A year later, Gibson was appearing in a straight, non-musical role with an even more formidable star, none other than Joan Crawford. Goodbye, My Fancy (1951) was a misfire, with a miscast, leaden Crawford in a role originated on the stage by the patrician British beauty Madeleine Carroll.

Lulu Hubbard and Madeleine Carroll in the play Goodbye, My Fancy (1948)

Joan Crawford and Eve Arden in the film Goodbye, My Fancy (1951)

Perhaps the miscasting as a congresswoman visiting her alma mater had Crawford even more on edge than usual; instead of taking the young actresses playing the fictional university's co-eds under her wing (a la her championing of Ann Blyth, who played her daughter in Mildred Pierce), Crawford went on the attack, famously calling out Janice Rule in front of the cast and crew: "Miss Rule," Queen Crawford intoned icily, "you'd better enjoy making films while you can. I doubt you'll be with us for long." Gibson apparently played it safe by staying as far out of Crawford's immediate eyesight as possible: that's her in the below still, to the very far right, next to a rather apprehensive-looking Miss Rule.

The atmosphere was undoubtedly sunnier on the sets of Gibson's next few films: friendly, cheerful, inconsequential, low-budget musicals presumably churned out to finance Doris Day's extravaganzas: Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951) with reliable B-unit bombshell Virginia Mayo; About Face (1952), about hidden pregnancies at a military academy (!), teaming Gibson with Gordon McRae; and Stop, You're Killing Me (1952), a slight Damon Runyon tale with old pros Broderick Crawford and Claire Trevor as Gibson's parents.

Lucille Norman, Virginia Gibson and Virginia Mayo in Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951)


Bill Hayes, Virginia Gibson, Claire Trevor and Broderick Crawford in Stop, You're Killing Me (1952)

Gibson traded up from Warners to go to Metro in 1954, immediately landing a role as one of the lucky seven in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She was paired with the New York City Ballet star Jacques d'Amboise, who, in the full flush of his youthful virility, may have been even prettier than she at the time.

Seven brides: Jane Powell, Virginia Gibson, Norma Doggett, Ruta Lee, Betty Carr, Nancy Kigas, Julie Newmar

Her next MGM feature, Athena (1954), cast Gibson as one of three sisters, once again with Jane Powell, and this time with the indefatigable Debbie Reynolds to round out the trio. Athena is one of those supremely weird, cobbled-together musical curiosities that Metro was putting out at the time, as it flailed wildly in an attempt to do battle with television; the refreshingly straightforward, old-fashioned Seven Brides was, sadly, an exception to the rule in 1954. If Athena is remembered at all today, it's for the campy presence of such bodybuilding talent as then-Mr. Universe, future Hercules Steve Reeves and Mae West plaything Dick DuBois.

Dick DuBois, Debbie Reynolds and Steve Reeves

Jane Powell and Steve Reeves

Once the gold standard of movie musical making, MGM made some of the worst ever between 1954 and 1955, including Athena, Kismet, Neptune's Daughter and Hit the Deck. Obviously, the timing couldn't have been worse for a new musical talent like Virginia Gibson to join the payroll; she was let go, although judging from her imdb.com entry, Gibson was kept fairly busy through 1956 with steady television work, including a regular gig on The Johnny Carson Show (1955-56), a precursor to his work on Tonight.

Virginia Gibson, Johnny Carson and Carson's wife, Joan

From there it was to Broadway, and perhaps Gibson's finest hour: the ill-fated, yet still-talked about Ethel Merman vehicle, Happy Hunting. Although it had tremendous advance sales, and was a respectable hit, the show became more famous for its backstage battles than for anything happening in front of the audience. The bickering between Ethel and her devastatingly handsome leading man, Fernando Lamas, is legendary; he responded to her characteristic scene-stealing, as well as her personal antagonism, by wearing his costumes so tight, that the audiences literally gasped at the sight of his manhood. Even The Merm couldn't steal focus from that. On April 7, 1957, Lamas appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line?; starting at the 3:51 mark, that naughty, naughty Arlene Francis slips and slides around the subject of Fernando's costumes and his manliness, while Mr. Mahvelous himself jokingly quips that the censors wouldn't allow him to be seen on television as he did on stage.

The score, too, had its share of naysayers (the most vocal of whom was Merman!), although in retrospect, it's as bright, entertaining and hummable as any other hit or near-hit show of the period. "Gee, But it's Good to Be Here" is classic Merman all the way, and her duet with Gibson, "Mutual Admiration Society," was popular and catchy enough to become a minor standard on its own. Gibson was nominated for a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and the show ran for a healthy (if emotionally draining) 412 performances. And, because the ghost of Kay Thompson seems to running amok around here lately, we feel compelled to mention that Ethel quietly brought Thompson and Roger Edens in to "spruce up" Matt Dubey and Harold Karr's score, adding "I'm Old Enough to Know Better (and Young Enough Not to Care)" and "Just a Moment Ago" to the song list. Also, Gibson made a final, fleeting film appearance with the divine Kay as one of Maggie Prescott's assistants in Funny Face (1957), which was filmed just before Happy Hunting opened on Broadway in December 1956.



After that, Gibson made a handful of dramatic television guest appearances, before settling in for a nine year run as the host of the ABC Sunday morning children's show, Discovery (1962-71). Presumably, that was more benign than the Merman-Lamas battling she had endured. After that, the trail goes cold; perhaps some SSUWAT-er out there "in the know" can tell us what ever happened to Virginia Gibson?