For more than fifty years singer and actress Ethel Merman (1909-1984) was a beloved legend of stage and screen. Her first musical appearance, in George and Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy in 1930, resulted in her instant rise from secretary and occasional club singer to Broadway singing sensation. Merman went on to star in a dozen more stage musicals and numerous films and continued to perform into her seventies.

Actress and singer Ethel Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in Astoria, a suburb of New York City, on January 16, 1909. She later shortened her name to Merman because, she said, "If you put Zimmermann up in lights, you'd die from the heat." Merman showed an early interest in singing, and her parents, Edward and Agnes, encouraged her. Edward Merman, an accountant, loved to sit at the family piano and sing, and his daughter often joined him. Even then her voice showed...