Ethel Merman - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • The character "Helen Lawson" in Jacqueline Susann's novel Valley of the Dolls is based on Ethel Merman.
  • The British Psychobilly band The Meteors recorded an instrumental called "Return Of The Ethel Merman" for their 1986 album Sewertime Blues.
  • Merman is mentioned a lot in the musical series Forbidden Broadway making fun of the wireless microphones and soft singing used in The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical).
  • In the early 1990s, the television program Sesame Street created a parody character called "Miss Ethel Mermaid" (voiced and puppeteered by Louise Gold) she sang "I Get A Kick Out Of U" (a parody of Merman singing "I Get A Kick Out Of You"). The character would reappear in an episode of Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures which is shown as a segment on the American version of Sesame Street.
  • In the film The Producers (2005), the actor playing the part of Adolf Hitler, Roger de Bris, sings the lyric "I'm the German Ethel Merman, don'tcha know."
  • Merman's final on-screen appearance was in the film Airplane! (1980), where she has a cameo as shell-shocked soldier "Lt. Hurwitz", who believes he is Ethel Merman. She briefly sings her classic "Everything's Coming Up Roses".

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