Dame Angela Lansbury: Merman really couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. But boy, could she sing — Page 2

I reminded her.

Bette Davis she ain't, but Debbie Reynolds is a wonderful performer.

As was Ethel.

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This just sounds like hype to me. I think she's doing this for publicity.

You did a disservice to Angela by cutting her comment off where you did.

What she actually said was:


"I've still got [Merman's Gypsy recording] in the cabinet. She was it, even though she really couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. But boy, could she sing. It was the exhilaration in the voice that thrilled any musical lover. Nobody could imitate her. I had to forget my adoration of her. I gave her credit for giving me the excitement of approaching it in my own way, because I knew I couldn't beat her at her own game."

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I always bring this up, but I will again.

There is an tape out there of Gypsy Rose Lee interviewing The Merm. Merman talks about how wonderful Gypsy's mother was and couldn't understand why anyone would call her a monster.

THIS is why Merman is the ultimate Rose. As much as I loved Patti's interpretation she was clearly putting 90's style pop psychology into her performance. Merman played her as if she was doing everything right.

I didn't see Merman in GYPSY, but I saw her twice on tour in CALL ME MADAM and she was amazing! But her concept of acting was entirely different from Angela's--so different, in fact, I'm not surprised Angela doesn't call what Merman did (plant her feet and play everything to the audience) "acting".

But Sondheim is right: Merman was a "great low comedienne". In MADAM, she did 5 minutes in one as Sally Adams trying to learn to walk in a dress with a train.

It remains one of the funniest bits I've ever seen. No dialogue, no song. Just Merman and a dress.

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FWIW, Angela didn't play Madam Rose as a villain either. She even found moments when she could be quite loving with the children. At first I thought it a minor flaw in her performance--a case of an actress wanting to be liked--but I later realized that those moments made the character's overwhelming ambition even more chilling.

By the time she took the silent bow after "Rose's Turn", Angela's Rose seemed simultaneously terrifying and utterly sympathetic. I didn't see Merman in the part, but that's not the sort of complexity anyone has ever ascribed to her, not even in her "role of a lifetime".

The New York Times tweeted a link to a Frank Rich "Conversations with Sondheim" article from 2000 - this bit made me think of this thread :

I could listen to these stories all night, so I prod Sondheim to dish Merman, the star whose career was bookended by Porter's 'Anything Goes' in the 30's and 'Gypsy' a quarter-century later. He doesn't demur: 'I've made a joke that is both glib and I suppose slightly tasteless about her being an illustration of the old anecdote that it isn't remarkable that the dog lost playing chess -- it's the fact that the dog plays chess. What was remarkable was watching a woman who everybody assumed couldn't act, act. Now, it's a limited kind of acting. She didn't quite understand what 'Rose's Turn' was about.'

In a key moment in that legendary 'Gypsy' finale, a musicalized nervous breakdown, Rose is supposed to stutter over the word 'mama' to indicate 'you were seeing a mind crack' -- a device Sondheim says he stole from Jessica Tandy's Blanche DuBois in the last scene of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' But as he tells it, no matter how elaborately Merman was invited to ride the moment emotionally, she had only one question about the stutter: 'Does it come in on the downbeat?' Speaking of the 1974 Broadway revival with Angela Lansbury, Sondheim says: 'That's the kind of moment Angie understands exactly. Ethel never did.'

We can't let Merman go: 'She performed the hell out of the show when the critics were there. Or if she thought there was a celebrity in the audience. So we used to spread a rumor that Frank Sinatra was out front. That whoever, Judy Garland was out front.' Josh Logan, who had directed Merman in 'Annie Get Your Gun,' warned Sondheim that Merman could become mechanical, but 'I was smug enough to think, Well, 'Gypsy,' compared to 'Annie,' is one of the great roles, it's great literature, blah blah blah blah. And of course she did exactly to us what she'd done to 'Annie.'


...the full thing...

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