"History never looks like history when you are living through it." - John W. Gardner
This Week in History presents summaries of a few selected historical events for each calendar week of the year.
October 12 - Here's your coffee and danish, madam ambassador (1949)
Denmark. It's a tiny country in the north of Europe, easily overlooked among larger and more powerful nations like Germany, France and Britain. What are the odds that such a minor player would produce not just one but two firsts in U.S. history?
On this day in 1949, President Harry Truman appointed Eugenie Anderson as the United States' first female ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, to represent our government in the sovereign kingdom of Denmark. Anderson served a little more than three years in the post before being succeeded by a career diplomat, Robert Coe.
Eugenie Anderson
Eugenie Anderson's professional ambitions originally focused on music. From her childhood home in Iowa, she journeyed to New York City to study at the famed Juilliard School, hoping to become a concert pianist. Sidetracked by marriage in 1929, she ended up becoming a strong female figure in international affairs and politics.
Having witnessed the totalitarianism of Hitler's Germany during a trip to Europe, Anderson became a public speaker against the isolationism prevalent in the United States. She worked on behalf of the League of Women Voters and was a key figure in merging the leftist Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party into the Democratic Party, forming the state affiliate still known as the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Elected as a national officer of the Democratic Party, she supported Minnesota's "favorite son" Hubert Humphrey in his campaigns for the presidency in 1952 and 1960. At a time when women in national politics were still a rarity, President Truman struck a daring blow for equality with her appointment to the ambassadorship.
Anderson later served as ambassador to Bulgaria on appointment by President Kennedy. His successor, President Johnson appointed her to a key position at the United Nations.
However, the story of America's first female ambassador doesn't end here, nor did it begin here.
Sixteen years earlier, in 1933, Ruth Bryan Owen was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as ambassador to Denmark. At that time, our embassy to the Danish realm was considered of lesser importance than similar embassies to more powerful nations and thus was considered to be a legation. The ambassador for such posts was formally known as a minister plenipotentiary in diplomatic parlance, a ranking below the full ambassador plenipotentiary. Thus, Owen was the United States' first female ambassador of any rank.
Owen was the daughter of the famous statesman William Jennings Bryan. Her father's larger-than-life presence must have had positive influence on her: Ruth was no shrinking wallflower. She served as a nurse in the Middle East during World War I, later traveled the world, and became a pioneer in the film industry, directing and producing Once Upon a Time/Scheherazade in 1922.
Ruth Bryan Owen
Elected to the House of Representatives in 1929, she was one of
only nine women in that body at that time. She had to assert her constitutional rights as a citizen in the face of anti-female discrimination in order to claim her seat. It was contested on the grounds that she had forfeited her citizenship by her marriage in 1910 to a British army officer, Reginald Owen.
The Cable Act of 1922 and the Expatriation Act of 1907 made women second class citizens. They were deemed to lose their citizenship if they married foreigners, a penalty not imposed on men who found foreign brides. The House ultimately decided in Owen's favor and she took her place as a congresswoman but the unfair legislation was not repealed until 1936.
Owen represented the United States at the post-World War II international conference which led to the formation of the United Nations. President Truman subsequently appointed her as alternate delegate to the U.N. in 1948.
Denmark yet again features in our story. Widowed in 1928, Ruth Bryan Owen later married a Danish military officer she met during her post as ambassador. Owen passed away at their home in Copenhagen in 1956, bringing our tale of women ambassadors to the land of Hans Christian Andersen to a close.
Keep reading below the orange historical marker about more events during the third week of October.
October 14 - The voice that brought down the house (1930)
George Gershwin had little reason to be nervous before the opening of his latest Broadway musical. An internationally acclaimed composer of classical music, this would be his tenth popular work to premiere on the Great White Way. His romantic leading lady was the very talented Ginger Rogers, not yet a superstar but already experienced and well regarded. Her choreography had been coached by her soon-to-be artistic partner, Fred Astaire, so it was flawless.
The leading man was Allen Kearns, a seasoned veteran of both stage and screen. The orchestra, which Gershwin himself would conduct, included famed virtuosos such as Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa. With such a bountiful cornucopia of talent and experience, what could go wrong?
As he lifted his baton to begin the overture, the only bit of concern he might have had would be about the second leading lady. She was just 22 years old, not a typical beauty, had limited experience as a cabaret singer and had never appeared on stage as an actress, and had never had a singing lesson in her life.
The curtain went up at the Alvin Theater on this evening in 1930 and the show's debut proceeded without a hitch. The audience was enjoying the clever plot line and had clearly been enchanted by the romantic ballad Embraceable You and other songs. Intermission was just minutes away, following the closing number of the first act of Girl Crazy.
The novice performer launched into the first verse of the song, "Days can be sunny, with never a sigh ..." She galloped into the chorus, sashayed into the second verse and then something remarkable happened. She belted out the second chorus,
I got rhythm
I got music
I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
She jumped up an octave to high C, voicing the next word in the chorus "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I" and holding the note clear as a bell at full volume for an incredible 16 bars as the orchestra jauntily riffed against the song's melody. The audience went wild, leaping out of their seats for a standing ovation and demanding repeated encores. In her own words,
When I finished that song, a star had been born. Me.
And indeed a star had been born, who would be known for the next four decades as the queen of Broadway musicals: Ethel Merman.
Ethel Agnes Zimmerman was a native New Yorker and her family took advantage of their proximity to Manhattan to enjoy the cabaret and vaudeville shows of the era, introducing young Ethel to the world of show business and song. Although she never studied music or singing, she loved to imitate the performers she had seen and entertained her friends and family.
After high school, Ethel worked as a secretary for several firms while moonlighting in local venues as a torch singer. It was at one of those clubs that she was spotted by a film director for Warner Bros., who signed her to a movie contract. The film never quite developed but Warner paid her anyway, allowing her to quit her day job and focus on her nightclub career.
Vinton Freedley, a top producer on Broadway, was wowed by one of her performances and asked her to audition for Girl Crazy. Legend has it that after he heard her sing, Gershwin told Ethel to never take a singing lesson. Her unique style, with precise enunciation of the lyrics, was too striking to jeopardize by teachers trying to "improve" it.
Ethel's voice was made for the theater. In a time before wireless microphones, a singer needed projection and volume to ensure that he or she would be heard all the way to the back of the balcony, above the sound of the orchestra. Ethel Merman had a stunning force to her voice, able to fill any theater in which she performed. It was such a prominent characteristic linked with her that it became the subject of running gags during her career; she would often joke about mishaps and incidents that occurred just because she opened her mouth and out came an overpowering sound (the second half of the video below has a wonderfully funny routine about that).
She put that voice to good use in hit show after hit show as well as feature films in Hollywood. Her greatest Broadway smashes include Anything Goes, Gypsy and Hello Dolly. Her role in Annie Get Your Gun gave her what would become her signature song, There's No Business Like Show Business. Any Broadway production starring Ethel Merman was guaranteed to be a hit with adoring fans filling the audience night after night.
Hollywood loved Ethel as well, featuring her in eighteen films. Unfortunately, one of her greatest Broadway roles, as Mama Rose in Gypsy, was given to Rosalind Russell in the film version (because Russell and her husband produced the film). Rosalind Russell was an excellent actress but not much of a singer; a professional dubbed the songs in the film, something impossible to imagine had Ethel starred in the movie.
Ethel was a talented actress as well as a terrific singer. One of her most memorable non-musical performances on the silver screen was as Mrs. Marcus, one of the conniving fortune hunters in the wacky 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Ethel's final film appearance was in 1980 in the hit movie Airplane!, portraying herself in a cameo role as a wounded soldier suffering delusions that he is Ethel Merman.
While success on stage and screen filled her professional life, Ethel was not so lucky in her personal life. Her two children both died as young adults, one from a drug overdose and the other in a random homicide. She married and divorced four times, the final marriage (to actor Ernest Borgnine) lasting mere weeks. Known for her ribald sense of humor and saucy mouth, Ethel supposedly said this to her last husband after a day on the set:
Merman: The director said I looked sensational. He said I had the face of a 20-year-old, and the body and legs of a 30-year-old!
Borgnine: Did he say anything about your old c*nt?
Merman: No, he didn't mention you at all.
Although Ethel Merman won only one Tony during her long career (she was also awarded a special Tony for lifetime achievement in 1972), she was nevertheless the first lady of musical theater. It made her famous and she in turn contributed an endless string of smashing successes to Broadway. When Ethel passed away at the age of 76 on February 15, 1984, every theater on Broadway dimmed its lights that night to honor the legendary star. As she had said,
Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to Broadway.
October 15 - For we can fly, up, up and away (1783)
Every schoolchild learns that Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first human beings to fly. Every schoolchild isn't being told the full story.
The Wright brothers were the first people to achieve machine-powered flight, but they were not the first persons to soar up into the atmosphere. One hundred and twenty years before their historic liftoff at Kitty Hawk, a Frenchman on the other side of the ocean became the first human being to defy gravity and ascend into the air.
de Rozier's pioneering ascent
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier was a teacher of physics and chemistry, reflecting his passion for the sciences. Besides teaching, de Rozier was an experimental scientist as well, in particular noted for research into hydrogen.
He was intrigued by the hot air balloon experiments being carried out by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, a pair of brothers already credited with a number of useful inventions. The Montgolfiers staged several demonstrations just outside Paris of increasingly larger hot air balloons, providing more lifting power each time.
Their final unmanned test, on September 19, took place at the royal residence of Versailles before King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Their new balloon carried live cargo: a duck, a rooster and a sheep. The animals were wisely chosen for the purpose: to prove that there was no danger in being aloft. A duck could fly on its own, so it would show that there was nothing dangerous integral to the balloon itself. Roosters are birds but they don't really fly; it would prove that non-flyers of the biological class of Aves (birds) would not be harmed by the ascension. Finally, the sheep was considered the most similar to man of available animals; if the sheep died, no human would dare the perils of flight.
Fortunately, all three of the first aeronauts survived and landed safely back on terra firma. So, the brothers built a new, even bigger balloon: 75 feet in height and 50 feet in diameter. This immense globe would easily have the power to lift a full grown man. That intrepid adventurer would be Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, who had assisted them in previous tests.
Drawing and specs of the balloon
On this day in 1783, de Rozier climbed into the basket and assistants began to play out the tethering rope. He slowly rose to the full length of the rope, about 80 feet in altitude, becoming the first human being to sail up into the wild blue yonder.
About a month later, on November 21, de Rozier again made history. He and fellow aeronaut François Laurent le Vieux d'Arlandes, a marquis, lifted off on an untethered flight, becoming the first humans to engage in free flight. Their 25-minute trip took them up to an altitude of 3,000 feet and crossed a distance of more than five miles before settling back to earth. Benjamin Franklin witnessed the event and noted his awe and admiration in his journal.
But history wasn't finished with Jean-François. After more than a year and a half of flights in these early models of aviation, de Rozier set off with a companion in an attempt to cross the English Channel by balloon in June of 1785. The balloon suddenly deflated at a height of about 1,500 feet and both men plunged to their death, becoming history's first aviation fatalities.
King Louis honored this brave pioneer with a medal struck in his name and a memorial obelisk was erected at the crash site near the coastal town of Wimereux, France.
And that's the news for this week in history. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.