In the early '60s, following three decades of creating characters in Broadway musicals, Ethel Merman accepted an engagement at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas that was billed as her world-premiere nightclub appearance, a claim that conveniently forgot her nightclub work in New York in the late '20s and early '30s. But the Merman, now in her early fifties, who came out on-stage at the Flamingo was a different performer from the one who had sung in clubs in her early twenties.