Brian Kellow, author of Ethel Merman: A Life, discusses this recently released Penguin paperback title, answering questions and signing books.

There are singers, and then there is Ethel Merman; there are Broadway stars, and then there is Ethel Merman. No one who ever heard her voice ever forgot it: huge, stentorian, a brassy instrument that was capable of blowing out the back walls of a theater once she really let loose. She reigned on the musical theater stage for four decades, achieving her greatest success near the very end of her career, playing the ultimate stage mother, Rose in Gypsy.