He's got rhythm: Ernie Gilbert, a distributor of classic video gold, branches out into musical comedy.

Ethel Merman and Mary Martin doing a thirteen-minute duet-medley of twenty-nine songs? Sounds fabulous. But to Ernie Gilbert, president of Video Artists International, who brought them to us on DVD this year, getting it out was "a logistical nightmare."

The medley in question is from the famous 1953 Ford Fiftieth Anniversary show, with Martin and Merman perched on stools for their superstar duet. In one particular segment of "I" songs--"I Cried for You," etc.--they often sang only one line of each particular number. Still, says, Gilbert, "You need a license even if the song lasted only four seconds. And because this involves worldwide rights, there were many publishers." "I'll Get By," warbled for only five seconds, had five.

Although VAI specializes in archival classical video, CD and DVD offerings, the company is moving into lighter fare, including a Cole Porter DVD starring Merman, Peter Nero, Gretchen Wyler, Martha Wright and John Raitt (from the Bell Telephone Hour series) and other rare material with those stars. When we spoke, Gilbert was awaiting a call from Raitt and would soon chat again with Larry Hagman and Heller Halliday, Martin's children, about a Peter Pan telecast release.

VAI has exclusive world distribution rights to the 1959-68 Bell shows. "But I never really tackled their Broadway material," says Gilbert, "because I figured it would be more difficult dealing with the high-powered lawyers of pop-oriented people--people who made lots of money, as opposed to many opera singers, who don't." But he got his feet wet with Martin/Merman and a Naughty Marietta with Alfred Drake and Patrice Munsel from TV's Max Liebman Presents.

It took a serious hunt to find the executor of the Merman estate. But Gilbert, onetime director of marketing for RCA and director of artist relations at CBS, delights in the chase. Many artists who knew Gilbert from his past label-lives have asked him to dust off precious personal archives. He got his "basic training" for bagging other rights in an agreement with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "Ken Vickers--his father is Jon Vickers--told me there were rich CBC archives in Montreal and Toronto, including early Vickers work." The energetic Gilbert painstakingly ferreted out permissions from CBC artists (also including Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi and Eileen Farrell) or their estates.

The Detroit native, who immersed himself in opera beginning with a 1958 visit to Chicago, is thrilled to be working with "my heroes," as he calls his classical stars. He can hardly believe that he receives effusive thank-you notes from Joan Sutherland, that Jon Vickers has loaded the dishwasher in Gilbert's home north of Manhattan, that an eighty-seven-year-old Bidu Sayao once did a little samba in his office.