Mark Griffin (15 page)

Even musically,
Cabin
’s leading ladies were at odds. Waters had introduced Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather” at the Cotton Club in 1933, though Horne offered the definitive rendition of the song in a 1943 film of the same name and claimed the tune as her own anthem. Waters fumed when she heard Horne croon “Honey in the Honeycomb” in a sassy style that to Ethel’s ears sounded like an imitation of her own distinctive delivery. “All through that picture there was so much snarling and scrapping that I don’t know how in the world
Cabin in the Sky
ever stayed up there,” Waters recalled, conveniently forgetting that she had instigated most of the snarling and scrapping.
⁶

All of the pent-up rage and resentment that had been smoldering within Ethel for years—dating back to her unhappy upbringing in a Chester, Pennsylvania, ghetto—detonated on Minnelli’s set, with a petrified Horne the
object of Ethel’s unrestrained fury. As Gail Buckley described it, “[Waters] flew into a semi-coherent diatribe that began with attacks on Lena and wound up with a vilification of ‘Hollywood Jews.’ You could hear a pin drop. Everyone stood rooted in silence while Ethel’s eruption shook the sound stage. . . . She was still more or less raving when Vincente dismissed the company and suspended shooting for the day.”
⁷

Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, “Bubbles” (John W. Sublett), and Lena Horne in Minnelli’s first full-length feature
Cabin in the Sky
. Waters and Horne were at war on screen and off as Minnelli played referee. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

Despite all the behind-the-scenes bedlam and a mercurial leading lady with a hair-trigger temper, Vincente’s first full-fledged directorial effort bears no evidence of all the discord. What emerges is an enchanting musical fable—a kind of African American answer to
The Wizard of Oz
, complete with recycled tornado footage from that 1939 classic.
^w
The tight budget ($662,141, compared to the over $2 million lavished on
Oz
) resulted in what seemed like cramped quarters in many scenes, but this actually worked in Minnelli’s favor, as a genuine sense of warmth and intimacy was created.

For his first time out, Minnelli hits far more than he misses. Ethel’s poignant performance of “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” begins with Petunia crooning
at the bedside of her wounded husband. Midway through the tune, there is a deft transition to the Jacksons’ backyard, where an exuberant Petunia is at her clothesline, still singing the same tune but presumably weeks later and in the company of an almost fully recovered Little Joe. Miraculously, her prayers have been answered.

Minnelli’s female leads may have clashed bitterly off screen but they are both sublime in the film. Hearing Waters croon the title tune in her trademark raspy delivery, or witnessing her strutting and high-kicking her way through a spirited reprise of “Honey in the Honeycomb,” gives one a pretty good idea of what a showstopper Waters must have been on Broadway. After a saucy bubble-bath number, “Ain’t It the Truth,” was axed, Horne’s performance became a largely nonmusical one, but she makes every appearance count nonetheless. Each time Georgia Brown moseys into a scene, Minnelli indulgently allows Horne a
Modern Screen
“moment” while the camera simply bears witness to her incandescent beauty.

“Vincente Minnelli has done a really inspired job in the direction of the picture, without which it would not be the good entertainment that it is,” enthused the
Hollywood Reporter
. “He handles his characters and story pace with a knowledge of the mannerisms and the superstitions of the Negro, leveling on the important sequences and doing a quick shift with the unimportant bits that were required to hold the story together. It is his first picture effort and the job stands out.” The
New York Times
said
Cabin
was “as sparkling and completely satisfying as the original stage production,” and
Daily Variety
dubbed it “a fantastic piece of American folklore.”
⁸
MGM’s risky venture also paid off at the box office. In its initial release,
Cabin
earned a respectable $1,606,624.

But did Minnelli’s first film, which was written, produced, and directed by white artists, have anything meaningful to say to African American audiences? “The fact that
Cabin in the Sky
is an all-black film, that was made during a period when blacks didn’t have a wide range of representation on screen, makes it incredibly important,” says film scholar Charlene Regester. “Because black audiences were craving these images and you’ve got a ‘Who’s Who in Black Hollywood’ in that film, people flocked to see it, although they were very much aware that some of the representations were stereotypical. . . . I think if black audiences went to see
Cabin in the Sky
—and I’m just speculating on this—they went sort of ambivalently positioned.”
⁹

Eva Anderson, the wife of Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, remembers that years after the film’s release, her children were teased in school because of their father’s participation in the film:

When
Cabin
is screened for contemporary audiences, it is usually accompanied by warnings that the picture is “a product of its time” and that it may reflect some of the racial prejudices that existed when it was produced. Others believe that
Cabin
still offers compelling evidence of how boldly cutting-edge and ahead of the curve Minnelli could be.

“I would say that the film comes directly out of his New York experience where Minnelli developed what I see as his queer aesthetic,” says film scholar David Gerstner:

Vincente didn’t have time to bask in the glow of the warm reviews heaped upon him when
Cabin in the Sky
was released in the spring of 1943. To the ever ambitious Minnelli, being next assigned to salvage efforts on somebody else’s picture had to have been a deflating letdown. Though he was understandably disappointed, Minnelli was also “flattered” that his superiors at Metro turned to him in an attempt to rescue an incurably muddled mess preciously entitled
I Dood It
. Originally intended for Roy Del Ruth, who had cranked out scenarios for Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops,
I Dood It
was concocted as a showcase for two hopelessly mismatched MGM contract players: Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell. Why a brash, raucous comedian
and the screen’s most stylish stepper were considered perfect chemistry has been lost to some best forgotten casting session.

An uninspired Minnelli signed on but, like his colleagues, approached
I Dood It
strictly as a job, painfully aware that any attempts at meaningful artistic expression were futile. Screenwriters Sid Herzog and Fred Saidy were called in to revamp Buster Keaton’s final silent film,
Spite Marriage
(1929). While they may have updated the story of an imbecilic pants presser besotted by the star of a creaky Civil War saga, their
I Dood It
certainly didn’t improve upon the quirky charm of the original.

In the end,
I Dood It
would emerge as a confused mélange of contrived comedy, big band interludes, and cardboard espionage. Primarily a vehicle for Skelton’s overcooked buffoonery, the finished film bears little evidence of Minnelli’s trademark directorial flourishes. For those who had been waiting for the kind of movie in which Eleanor Powell attempts to slip Red Skelton a Mickey Finn but ends up ingesting it herself, the wait was over. Ordinarily, when handed a less-than-inspired property, Vincente could at least be counted on to smarten up the mise-en-scène and distract the viewer with some eye-popping decor, but instead, Skelton and Powell romp through stagnant settings or against backdrops that are either bland or insanely cluttered.

Minnelli is on assured footing with a musical audition sequence, though even that seems suggestive of a hasty assembly. Lena Horne sings a sprawling Kay Thompson arrangement of “Jericho,” and Hazel Scott lets it rip on an instrumental “Takin’ a Chance on Love.” Performing against a spangled diaphanous backdrop, Horne and Scott add a touch of class to the proceedings, but still,
I Dood It
is such a confused hodge-podge that nothing can truly save it.

Adding to the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ambiance, even Minnelli’s French poodle, Baba, is trotted out by Butterfly McQueen at one point.
^x
The presence of Vincente’s canine companion is telling, as
I Dood It
, though profitable, was a real bowser. Still, the critics weren’t unkind.

As the
Hollywood Reporter
noted, “Minnelli’s direction is astonishingly expert when it is considered that he has merely one previous picture to his
credit. Such a wacky affair could have gotten out of hand in many places but never does.”
Time
didn’t mention Minnelli but noted, “Most of Skelton’s comedy is Bob Hope laid on with a ball bat. Red goofed up over a kiss, Red getting off lines like ‘I press men’s pants but this is the slack season,’ appeals chiefly to the primordial. . . . But now and then Skelton’s broad and cheerful silliness comes so thick and fast that the effect is like being held down and tickled.”
¹²

WHILE VINCENTE WAS SHOOTING
I Dood It
and enduring Red Skelton’s pratfalls, a number of MGM’s most capable screenwriters (Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, and William Ludwig among them) had each taken a crack at transforming a wispy, character-driven slice of Americana into a tightly plotted, action-oriented screenplay. Sally Benson’s
The Kensington Stories
, serialized in
The New Yorker
as
5135 Kensington
, recounted a bygone era of Friday night Whist clubs and suitors making their intentions known with ten-pound boxes of Page and Shaw candy.

It was the story of the Smiths, the quintessential American family, living in St. Louis at the turn of the century. Papa is a lawyer. Mama is a dutiful housewife. Their only son, Lon, is preparing to head off to Princeton. Eldest daughter Rose is beginning to receive long-distance telephone calls from Yale boys, while Esther is infatuated with the boy next door. Tootie and Agnes, the two youngest, occupy themselves by burying dolls that have succumbed to at least four fatal diseases.

Two events upset the natural order of things in the Smith household: the arrival of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, and the father’s shocking announcement that, because of a job promotion, the entire family will leave St. Louis and move to New York.

Arthur Freed believed that Benson’s charming stories, though slight and essentially plotless, had the makings of a heartwarming musical that would incorporate popular songs of the period, such as “Skip to My Lou” and the 1904 Sterling and Mills standard, “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” which would
inspire the film’s title. With a musical in mind, Freed naturally hoped that the material could be shaped into a vehicle for his brightest star, Judy Garland.

In adapting the stories and attempting to inject some conventional plotting into Benson’s wistful nostalgia trip, some of the original scenarists went too far. In one misguided treatment, the teenaged Esther Smith is embroiled in a kidnap and blackmail plot more appropriate to
I Wake Up Screaming
than
Meet Me in St. Louis
.

“Freed had a number of screenplays that we were forced to read that were dreadful,” remembered the next writer in line, Irving Brecher. “Not one of them left me with any impression. Those scripts were rejected in toto. We didn’t get anything from them, so we went back to the short stories.”
¹