Mark Griffin (29 page)

The need to honor preexisting commitments was the official reason given for shutting down Minnelli’s latest production, though it’s been suggested that Kaye may have felt that his role as the Dauphin (“son of Looy The Sixteen and Marry Antonette”) was simply not substantial enough. According to Kelly, “Danny quit the picture because he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. He saw that the two vagabonds were not as important as Huck and Jim. . . . He was delighted to leave it.”
²⁷

There may have been another reason behind the studio’s decision. Even before Vincente had shot a single frame,
Huckleberry Finn
had already garnered the wrong kind of publicity. As the Associated Press reported, the Independent Progressive Party had loudly protested the inclusion of a blackface sequence in the musical: “Party officials said a blackface dance number with Danny Kaye and Gene Kelly ‘tends to degrade and vilify the role of the American Negro and to portray them in a vicious, stereotyped manner.’”
²⁸

But as Vincente remembered it, the abrupt shutdown had more to do with money: “A provision in the federal tax law then permitted an American to avoid paying taxes if he spent eighteen calendar months working outside the country. . . . Gene would be allowed to take advantage of this provision for his contributions to
An American In Paris
and the up coming
Singin’ In The Rain
.” Whatever the case, not long after
Huckleberry Finn
was scrapped, Kelly set off for England to work on his pet project
Invitation to the Dance
.

After months of preparation,
Huckleberry Finn
was permanently shelved.
^af
Minnelli gamely attempted to rise above the disappointing developments: “These were the breaks of the profession and not worth moping over,” he wrote.
²⁹

ALICE DUER MILLER’S 1933 BESTSELLER
Gowns by Roberta
became Jerome Kern’s Broadway musical triumph
Roberta
, which introduced such evergreens as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Lovely to Look At,” and “Yesterdays.” In 1935, RKO filmed
Roberta
with an all-star cast. The exuberant Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance sequences upstaged the flimsy plot, which concerned
Randolph Scott as an all-American halfback turned couturier romancing Irene Dunne.

In November 1948, the
Los Angeles Times
published an item trumpeting MGM’s plans to remake
Roberta
featuring four of its top stars: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Betty Garrett. Nothing ever came of it. Then, in 1950, producer Jack Cummings announced that he would produce his own version of
Roberta
. Retitled
Lovely to Look At
, the now familiar story was redressed in more contemporary couture and billed as “MGM’s Technicolor Spectacle.” This refurbished
Roberta
would feature a stellar array of Metro contract players: Kathryn Grayson (“thrills you with her golden voice!”), Howard Keel (“his romantic singing!”), Ann Miller (“gorgeous stepper!”), and the studio’s answer to Fred and Ginger—Marge and Gower Champion. If all that weren’t enough
, Lovely to Look At
also marked the film debut of Miss Hungary of 1936, the irrepressible Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Despite the fact that he was best known for gritty action flicks like
Little Caesar
and
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
, Mervyn LeRoy was asked to oversee this tune-filled remake. Although LeRoy was the credited producer on
The Wizard of Oz
and would go on to helm a splashy, widescreen adaptation of
Gypsy
in 1961, lavish musicals weren’t really the director’s bag.

Early into production, it was decided that although LeRoy would direct the majority of the picture, he would relinquish the directorial reins in at least two instances. Fred Astaire’s choreographer of choice, Hermes Pan, would direct the Champions as they swirled amid a starry, ethereal backdrop to the tune of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” For the climactic fashion-show finale, it was abundantly clear that the services of a director more intimately familiar with organdy were required. Enter Vincente Minnelli. “He came on because Mervyn LeRoy said, ‘I know how to direct Edward G. Robinson but I don’t know how to direct a fashion show,’” recalled Marge Champion. “He turned it right over to Vince Minnelli and to the brilliant Tony Duquette.”
³⁰

With
Huckleberry Finn
stalled and
The Band Wagon
still a year away, it seemed the perfect time to take on a project that was not epically scaled or too demanding. “I was between pictures and it sounded like a nothing assignment,” Minnelli would later remark. In tapping Vincente for his runway expertise, LeRoy very shrewdly downplayed the amount of work involved: “It’s just a little show. Shouldn’t take you longer than three days.”
³¹

Minnelli, of course, was constitutionally incapable of doing anything halfway. LeRoy’s “three days” ballooned into three weeks. What had been a pleasant though pale musical for its first eighty-five minutes suddenly metamorphosed into something quite spectacular in its final fifteen minutes. In
terms of pictorial composition, the transition from LeRoy’s bland settings to Minnelli’s ravishing set pieces is almost jarring.

“You have to cast directors almost the same way that you cast actors,” Champion says. “Mervyn was an absolute darling but I remember when he was shooting a scene, his only direction to us was, ‘Let’s have a lovely scene.’ Well, we were all very happy to have a lovely scene but [MGM’s resident dramatics instructor] Lillian Sidney had coached us in that same scene for weeks before we did it. . . . With the fashion show, we really needed something more.”
³²

Adrian, the celebrated costumer of everything from Garbo’s
Camille
to the winged monkeys’ stylish bell-boy attire in
The Wizard of Oz
, was pressed back into service after a decade-long absence from MGM. The bill for the forty-two costumes that Mr. Janet Gaynor designed for
Lovely to Look At
was a then impressive $100,000. The expense paid off handsomely. The fashion show is so sumptuously styled that the sequence could be an overdressed outtake from
Ziegfeld Follies
. The eye isn’t dazzled so much by the fashions themselves as by the way every extravagant ensemble is showcased. With Duquette’s harlequins and living chandeliers standing guard, each of the costumes, models, and performers is allowed to have a runway “moment.” Almost everyone emerges from a dramatically lit “tunnel of louvers,” a technique Vincente had employed to great effect on stage in
At Home Abroad
.

“The fashion show did credit to the picture,” Minnelli would modestly observe.
³³
In fact, it was singled out by most of the critics as the most noteworthy aspect of an otherwise uninspired movie.

“THERE WAS A THING HE DID that drove some people crazy,” remembers Farley Granger, who starred in Minnelli’s portion of the glossy, three-part episodic drama
The Story of Three Loves
:

Vincente’s sequence was entitled “Mademoiselle,” a mini-fantasy in which a preadolescent Ricky Nelson, tired of being tutored by French governess
Leslie Caron, enlists the aid of a benevolent witch to turn him into an adult. As a result of that special brand of wizardry that only Hollywood could conjure, Ricky Nelson isn’t only transformed into a grown man but an eye-filling Adonis in the form of Farley Granger.

The assignment seemed made to order for Minnelli. And the director was genuinely inspired by the presence of theatrical grand dame Ethel Barrymore on the set. Playing the pivotal though relatively minor role of the sorceress Mrs. Pennicott, Barrymore nevertheless prepared for the part as though she were reprising her celebrated turn in
The Lady of the Camellias
. Vincente was awed and treated Barrymore like some dowager empress.

However, Minnelli wasn’t nearly as formal with actor John Angelo, who played a bellhop in scenes that were ultimately deleted from the “Mademoiselle” sequence. “He pinched me,” Angelo says of his director’s quite literal “hands-on” approach. “We were both Italian and he thought he was in Rome, I guess. . . . He cruised a lot of people, now whether they went with him or not, I don’t know. I wasn’t interested really. People said he was gay and yet he married four times. He kept his gayness in the shadows, I think. But he was always very nice to me. I never said ‘Yes’ to him . . . but I did get pinched.”
³⁵

Minnelli’s segment of
The Story of Three Loves
was originally envisioned as the centerpiece of the film. All of that changed, however, in the cutting room. “Much to Vincente’s dismay and mine, [“Mademoiselle”] was cut mercilessly by Gottfried Reinhardt, who produced the film and directed the other two segments,” says Farley Granger. “We were very disappointed.”
³⁶

What remained of the sequence was charming, but slight—Minnelli in miniature, as it were. Compared with other 1953 releases, such as
From Here to Eternity
or
Pickup on South Street
,
The Story of Three Loves
seems to have been produced on some very fey planet. As a result, the public stayed away, and the MGM ledgers showed a loss of $1 million.

The critics weren’t exactly swept away either. One reviewer wrote:

“CERTAINLY THE MOST UNEXPECTED and hottest teaming of 1952 (so far) will be Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas pitching woo in
Tribute to a Bad Man
at MGM,” wrote Louella Parsons in her syndicated column of January 28, 1952. The droning gossip columnist wasn’t the only one salivating over the project. As producer John Houseman noted, there was a “heady atmosphere of success that surrounded us from the first day of shooting; it also related to the amusement we all derived from so much ‘inside’ material—full of private and not so private jokes and references.”
¹

The juicy insider references originated with a short story by George Bradshaw entitled “Memorial to a Bad Man” that appeared in the February 1951 issue of the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. Bradshaw’s ruthless protagonist, Gil McBride, is a dead ringer for irascible theater impresario Jed Harris, of whom it was said: “If Jed thought his mother was wrong for a part, and her life depended on it, he would still fire her.” Bradshaw’s description of his antihero—“He was admired, worshiped, adored—any superlative you can think of for his abilities in the theater, but for himself he was hated”—was worthy of both fictional counterpart and real-life prototype.

While Bradshaw’s
Rashomon
-style story and characters were certainly compelling, by the early ’50s there had been many memorable movies concerned with backstage intrigue, including Gregory La Cava’s
Stage Door
, George Cukor’s
A Double Life
, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s recently released
All About Eve
.