It is impossible to characterize the quality-or combination of qualities-which makes Ethel Merman the First Lady of Musical Comedy. The public has competed with the publicity agents in lavish superlatives. Merman's gusto is proverbial; but so is her grace, ingenuousness, timing, and what, for lack of any better summary, might be called her animated animal magnetism. Ray Middleton. who played opposite her in "Annie Get Your Gun" said: "She has that indefinable extra something which radiates from wherever she is and send over waves into all her listeners." "She has," wrote another admirer, "the magnificent vitality of a steam calliope in red and gold loping down a circus midway playing the "Entry of the Gladiators." An executive of Decca Records, who has heard her not only in the theatre but in recording sessions, said that she has the greatest musical comedy voice he ever heard. "She's a song-writer's dream. Her timing is unbelievable, her phrasing is perfect, and she can cut through any orchestra like a big brass horn." In a four-age feature story in the New York Times, October 1.1950, Gilbert Millstein wrote: "It is still possible to raise the pulse of mature theatre goers merely by reciting a list of the songs which have come to be associated with her name. The list is unquestionably longer in her case than in that of any other musical comedy actress."
   She was born Ethel Zimmerman, the only child of Edward Zimmerman, an accountant, and Agnes Zimmerman, who was once a choir singer. She went through public school and Bryant High School, learned stenography, and was so able a typist that she became secretary to the late Caleb S. Bragg, an industrialist who happened to have theatrical folk among his friends. Ethel always liked to sing-her voice was notably vigorous when she was a child-and, at the time of the First World War, she sang for the soldiers at Camp Mills, a few miles from the two-family house in Astoria, Queens, in which she was born. Subsequently. she tried singing in a night club, was discovered by Vinton Freedley, the producer, who gave her an important spot in Gershwin's "Girl Crazy," which starred Ginger Rogers. Here she made history with her extraordinary rendition of that out-of-the ordinary ballad, "Sam and Delilah," and the frenzied and unforgettable "I've Got Rhythm." Since that time, Ethel Merman has appeared in a succession of memorable smash hits, including "Anything Goes," "Panama Hattie," "DuBarry Was a Lady," "Stars In Your Eyes," "Something for the Boys," "Red, Hot, and Blue," and the more-than slightly-terrific "Annie Get Your Gun." In the October, 1950, issue of Flair, Robert Rice concluded: "Perhaps the quality that, more than all the others, has been responsible for Miss Merman's steadily increasing renown is her utter conviction. Whatever her interior psychological workings may be, she is, as she faces her public and her friends, a person without qualms. She likes what she's doing; she knows how to do it well; and she doesn't want to do it any differently."
   "Call Me Madam" is the eleventh musical comedy in which Ethel Merman has appeared on Broadway. Reviewers were not slow to see a resemblance to Mrs. Perle Mesta, who is not only a friend of Miss Merman's but was (perhaps by coincidence) the United States Minister to Luxembourg. But, though Mrs. Mesta may have suggested the initial idea to the librettists, Ethel Merman does not play Mrs. Mesta. Her role is the role which she has played again and again with unfailing success-the role of the lusty, lively, exuberant and inexhaustible Ethel Merman.
   Irving Kolodin tells an amusing-and revealing-story about the well-known playwright, Howard Lindsay, of the famous team of Lindsay and Russell Crouse. It seems that Lindsay was vacationing in Colorado, and so was Ethel Merman. He was captivated (as was everyone else) by her charm, high spirits, and gusty humor. "Put her in a show," said Lindsay to himself. "Make her the most American American you can think of!"
   Thus was born the idea of a play about an American lady ambassador to a European court. When Ethel Merman was approached she was not too enthusiastic. She was looking for "a good solid dramatic role." But Lindsay and Crouse did not give up the idea of writing a high comedy which would also be a musical comedy. "Well," said Ethel Merman after a while, "maybe two or three songs."
   The "two or three songs" became a whole score with music by the inimitable Irving Berlin-a laughing score about Americans who "love nothing so much as laughing at themselves." Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune said: "The Irving Berlin songs and a superb production make 'Call Me Madam' the gala that it promised to be." The statement was echoed by Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times: "It is genuine comedy because the character grows and develops in the course of the play and because Ethel Merman puts into it good will as well as swagger self-confidence. In 'Annie Get Your Gun' it was evident that Miss Merman could act as well as perform, for the two things are not identical. What she does to the likeable central character of "Call Me Madam" is further proof of the fact that she can imitate people as fantastic as she is." George Jean Nathan summed it all up when he concluded that Ethel Merman is "Miss Atlas of 1950, who carries the show on her powerful shoulders."
   Here Ethel Merman sings with her usual combination of accuracy and abandon. "There is something about that volume of sound," wrote Richard Watts, Jr., in the New York Post, "in which you don't miss a syllable of the lyrics, that is indescribably soul-satisfying." In these numbers Miss Merman again proves that she is an "illustrious American institution, and one of the joys of the world."
   In this selection of songs Miss Merman is aided and abetted by the vibrant voice of Dick Haymes, the dulcet tones of Eileen Wilson, and the sonorous orchestra and chorus directed by Gordon Jenkins.
   Irving Berlin records, singly and in albums, sell in prodigious quantities. But it is the quality of his music which counts. It is not only a reflection of the times but an expression of the 'need and sentiment of our American lives." George Gershwin wrote: "He has that rich, colorful melodic flow which is the wonder of all those who compose songs. His ideas are endless. His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection. Irving Berlin is America's Franz Schubert." Jerome Kern added: "It is impossible to fix Irving Berlin's position. He has no 'place' in American music. He is American music."