WilliamM

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I wrote essentially the same thing in much less space. "I don't think she had any say in who the lyricist would be" Of course she did. Leland Hayward and David Merrick wanted Merman for "Gypsy." There was no question she would sell tickets. A musical about Gypsy Rose Lee's mom was hardly a guarantee for a financial success.

You must not have seen Nathan Lane in "The Iceman Cometh" at BAM

Ethel Merman and Mary Martin were a generation older than Sondheim, and he did not represent the Broadway they knew. Merman requested that Sondheim only write the lyrics for Gypsy. Years later Sondheim wrote special lyrics for "Send in the Clowns" for the one-night concert on Broadway by Merman and Martin. Ethel and Mary opened the concert by singing "Send in the Clown" backstage and then on stage. The producer of the concert had to find someone in the audience who did a bootleg to fill in words not picked up backstage.