Female of the Species

Except for Fanny Brice, as Baby Snooks, no woman comic has ever seriously challenged radio's top funnymen. Most radio comediennes (Mary Livingstone, Portland Hoffa, Jane Ace, Gracie Allen) stick to mixed-doubles family comedy.

Last week, NBC (which had lost almost all of its comedy line-up to raiding CBS) launched a female counterattack with The Ethel Merman Show (Sun. 9:30 p.m., E.D.T.). The program's tenuous story line has dark, bouncy, 41-year-old Ethel Merman, ably assisted by ex-Juvenile Star Leon Janney, trying to sell a new revue to a somnolent backer--Homer Tubbs, the Syracuse floor-mop king.

Dead Cherokee. Essentially, the show is a platform for the display of Merman's singing voice, which ranges from a 100-proof whisper to a strident bellow, her theater-born gift of timing, and her immaculately correct intonation for every funny line. With this bristling arsenal, Ethel puts starch into the feeblest jokes; her rowdy, slam-bang personality is nearly as full-bodied on the air as it was in such Broadway smashes a Annie Get Your Gun, Something for the Boys and Du Barry Was a Lady.

In her opening show she managed to inject a few bars of her favorite song. I Got Rhythm, and gave the full Merman treatment to three others. She portrayed a fight announcer ("Tiger is fighting back! He throws a left -- a right -- another left. Now he's bringing a right uppercut from the floor -- now they're bringing Tiger up from the floor."). She played every character in a "Pageant of American Womanhood" that included Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale and a hilarious Joan of Arc, as well as such authentic native daughters as Barbara Frietchie, Ruby Foo and Miriam, the mother of Irium. As Pocahontas ("better-known by her Indian name, Alka-Seltzer"), Ethel Merman tomahawked a marauding redskin who was stalking Captain John Smith. "Like George Washington, I cannot tell-um lie," she cried triumphantly. "I chop down Cherokee."

Old Defeat. This is Merman's second try at radio. Back in 1935, she went on the air with a program broadcast at the same time as Major Bowes' Amateur Hour and went off, defeated, twelve weeks later. She is leery of television: "I did two shows with Milton Berle. On both of them he had horses in the act -- and everything that goes with horses. We were so cramped backstage that I had only a screen for costume changes and an electrician practically held a light over me while I changed." She added reflectively: "There must be an easier way to make a living."

Since Ethel Merman has earned more than $1,000,000 in ten Broadway musicals (Lindsay & Grouse are at work on an idea for a new one), making a living is presumably not a major worry. One of her friends, puzzled by her offstage venture, asked, "What do you expect to get out of your radio show?" Merman answered shortly: "A sponsor."

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