The loudest, toughest, biggest star on Broadway.

ETHEL MERMAN

A Life

By Brian Kellow

Viking. 326 pp. $25.95

BRASS DIVA

The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman

By Caryl Flinn

Univ. of California. 542 pp. $34.95

Ethel Merman -- the undisputed queen of the Broadway musical from 1930, when she opened in "Girl Crazy," until 1970, when she closed in "Hello, Dolly!" -- was a force of nature, one whom people either adored or hated. Her singing voice was often compared to, or dismissed as, a calliope; Brian Kellow, who has written the better of these two new biographies, calls it "big, stentorian" and "brassy," and as an authority on opera (he is features editor of Opera News), he makes an apt comparison: "Her naturally forward placement, strong resonators, superb command of breath support, and solid physique helped her to sing like an operatic tenor: the sound moved up through her chest and resonated in her head, with true tenorlike ping on the high notes."

Those are the words of a fan, and sentiments with which I heartily agree; I'm a fan, too. But those who didn't like her, didn't like her a lot. "Many in the West, the Midwest, and the South -- people who had never experienced her live, thanks to her dislike of touring -- regarded her from her records and TV appearances as crass, vulgar, and loud -- the vocal equivalent of a rusty saw," Kellow writes. Merman herself knew that she was fully capable of raising the rafters. In 1970, when she was about to succeed Phyllis Diller in the title role of "Hello, Dolly!" she was asked by Diller "if she was going to wear a chest mike -- now a fixture on Broadway." Merman replied, "No, we just want to keep it in the theater."

People who are unfamiliar with pre-1970 Broadway probably know little if anything about Merman, and the loss is theirs. She was the star of five of the biggest musicals in history: "Girl Crazy," "Anything Goes," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Call Me Madam" and "Gypsy." The list of songs that were hers and hers alone is almost endless, so only a few hits must suffice: "I Got Rhythm," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Anything Goes," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Naturally," "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)," "You're Just in Love," "Some People," "You'll Never Get Away from Me" and -- tada! -- "Everything's Coming Up Roses."

She was best at comedy. From the beginning "she had crack comic timing, and . . . she instinctively knew the most important rule of comedy: when you try to make it funny, you usually fall flat; just play it straight, and if the scene is any good at all, it wi ll be funny." She had no formal training in acting -- or singing, either. Indeed, the only training she had was as a stenographer, and she was crack at that, too. She grew up in Astoria on Long Island, the only child of Edward and Agnes Zimmermann, discovered fairly early that she had a natural talent for singing, and worked in various nightclubs until George Gershwin discovered her and put her in "Girl Crazy." Though they never worked together again, he remained her ardent supporter until his sudden, shocking death in 1937, and to the end of her life she spoke worshipfully about him.