In "Call Me Madam," the 1953 movie version of Irving Berlin's hit musical, it was no secret that Ethel Merman was channeling a real person – a wealthy widow by the name of Perle Mesta ...

Characteristically, Mesta embraced the production and befriended its star, Ethel Merman. Renowned for her lavish bipartisan shindigs, Mesta was more than Washington’s premiere party giver.

“I tried to sound like Gene Pitney,” she said in her Edith Bunker-like Queens, Noo Yawk, accent, “and I sounded like Ethel Merman.” She reprised that 1960s song, Pitney’s “I’m Gonna ...

First portrayed by Ethel Merman, she is to that genre’s actresses what Hamlet and Lear are to Shakespearean actors, a sky-scraping, Himalayan peak. As Arthur Laurents, who wrote the show’s ...

LOS ANGELES — Actress Rita McKenzie, who starred in the longest one-woman show in theatrical history when she appeared in “Ethel Merman’s Broadway,” died Saturday. She was 76. McKenzie ...

Rita McKenzie, the actress and singer best known for her boisterous performances in the one-woman show Ethel Merman’s Broadway, died Saturday in Los Angeles after a long illness, her husband ...

A powerhouse stage voice and theatrical personality, McKenzie’s 1988 off-Broadway one-woman show, Ethel Merman’s Broadway, became the longest-running one- woman show in theatrical history.

By Mike Barnes Senior Editor Rita McKenzie, the actress and singer best known for her boisterous performances in the one-woman show Ethel Merman’s Broadway, died Saturday in Los Angeles after a ...

One-time Denverite Ethel Merman released a disco album in 1979 on A&M Records. The Ethel Merman Disco Album came out in 1979. The genre was declared dead a year later. We can't say if that's Ethel ...