Biography: Ethel Merman |

Twenty-two-year-old ex-stenographer and former nightclub singer Ethel Merman achieved overnight superstardom when, in 1930, she first belted out "I Got Rhythm" in the Broadway production of Girl Crazy. Merman's subsequent stage hits included Anything... more
Find videos of Ethel MermanFree Ethel Merman videos- Movies (11)
- Videos
- 1
- 2

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Cast: Milton Berle Buster Keaton Jimmy Durante Mickey Rooney Spencer Tracy   
Tags: Chase Movie Farce Comedy Ensemble Film 
Length: 161min
With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally)...

Cast: Dick Van Dyke   
Tags: Comedy of Errors Comedy 
Length: 99min
Two bohemians come up with a get-rich-quick scheme that goes awray in this comedy scripted by Carl Reiner. Paul (Dick Van Dyke and Casey (James Garner) are two American expatriates living in Paris; Paul is an artist and Casey a writer. Both have been...

Cast: George Sanders Donald O'Connor Vera-Ellen   
Tags: Musical Romance Comedy Musical 
Length: 114min
Ethel Merman reprised her role as a socialite turned diplomat in this screen adaptation of Irving Berlin's hit Broadway musical. Sally Adams (Merman) has made it her business to know everyone worth knowing in Washington D.C., and her penchant for...

Cast: Darryl F. Zanuck   
Tags: Romance Musical 
Length: 102min
Happy Landing was another Sonja Henie moneyspinner from the 20th Century-Fox film factory. The story gets under way when skirt-chasing bandleader Duke Sargent (Cesar Romero) pitches woo to Trudy Ericksen (Sonja Henie) while on a tour of Norway. To...

There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
Cast: Marilyn Monroe   
Tags: Musical Musical Comedy Backstage Musical 
Length: 117min
Like Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), 20th Century-Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business is a "catalogue" film, its thinnish plot held together by an itinerary of Irving Berlin tunes. The story chronicles some twenty years in the lives of a...

Straight, Place and Show (1938)
Cast: The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry]   
Length: 66min
In this musical comedy, the Ritz Brothers inherit a racehorse but are unable to make money from him because they cannot come up with the 1,000 needed to enter him in the big race. The two get involved with the race anyway when they overhear a group...

Cast: Bing Crosby Lewis Milestone   
Tags: Musical Comedy Musical Romance 
Length: 60min
Anything Goes is a fun-filled but hardly faithful adaptation of the same-named Cole Porter Broadway musical, with additional songs by Hoagy Carmichael, among many many others. Set on a luxury liner, the story gets under way when Moonface Mullins...

Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
Cast: Tyrone Power   
Tags: Romance Musical Showbiz Drama Biopic 
Length: 105min
His Aunt Sophie (Helen Westley) and his teacher Professor Heinrich (Jean Hersholt) are sure that Roger Grant (Tyrone Power) will be a famous classical violinist, but Roger's more interested in popular music. He and his friend, pianist Charlie (Don...

Cast: Lucille Ball   
Length: 90min
Brooklyn tugboat worker Eddie (Eddie Cantor), bullied and cowed by his tough-guy stepfather and stepbrothers (a la Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother), inherits 77 million from his uncle, an Egyptologist. Con artist Dot (Ethel Merman) wants to get her...

Cast: Samuel Goldwyn   
Tags: Slapstick Comedy Musical 
Length: 100min
Musical comedy star Eddie Cantor stars in this story, well suited to his talents, as Eddie Pink, a meek gentleman who works as a tailor and has a terrible crush on Joyce (Ethel Merman), a nightclub singer. Eddie buys a book (through the mail, of...
- 1
- 2

Portions of Content Provided by All Movie Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.© 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.