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to cast her in any of his motion pictures. Whatever the truth, Stanley Kramer cast her as the obnoxious Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of Milton Berle, in "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

Her very last movie role was unusual. It was a self-parody in the film, "Airplane" in which she appears as the figment of a soldier's imagination. He is suffering from shell-shock and believes he is the great singing star herself. She sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses" as the nurses drag her back to the bed and gave her a sedative.

Merman was married and divorced four times, and had two children with her second husband, newspaper executive, Robert Levitt. One of her children, her daughter, Ethel Levitt, aka "Little Bit," died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol in 1967. The chapter in her 1978 biography devoted to her last marriage, which was to Ernest Borgnine, and lasted for 32 days, consisted on one blank page.

In 1983, Merman was diagnosed with brain cancer. On February 15, 1984, a few weeks following surgery, she collapsed and died. Her son, Robert Levitt, Jr. held his mother's ashes as he rode up and down Broadway, passing all of the theaters his mother had played in during her lifetime. A minute before curtain time, all the marquees dimmed their lights in remembrance of her vibrant spirit.

Ethel Merman's name will always be up in lights in the sense that it will be forever synonymous with Broadway's heydey of glitz and neon dazzle. No matter how many years may pass, her essence and her legend live on in all lovers of the American musical everywhere.

We salute you, first lady of song.

Learn more about this author, M Dee Dubroff.
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