The ETHEL MERMAN Only I Knew

THE FIRST LADY OF MUSICAL COMEDY WAS ALSO A DOTING GRANDMOTHER WHO TOLD NAUGHTY JOKES!

Ethel Merman had a confidence as rock solid as her powerhouse vocals in musicals such as Hello, Dolly! “If somebody had said to her, ‘You know, you have to go on diet pills,’ she would have been like, ‘Oh, kiss my a—!’,” Barbara Geary, the diva’s granddaughter, tells Closer, noting that Ethel’s early years singing in nightclubs helped to forge her nerves of steel. “As a woman, you get a different kind of experience. You have to really be able to handle yourself…. She just didn’t take any sh— from anybody.”