by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life;Films of Vincente Minnelli
Having established himself as one of the most visually inventive talents on Broadway, Minnelli was made a set designer by his bosses at Paramount. Not long after the promotion, Paramount shifted its stage-show operations to Astoria, Long Island, where the East Coast division of Paramount Pictures was headquartered. No sooner had Minnelli been promoted than Paramount decided to drop its costly stage shows in favor of big band appearances.
The career-driven workhorse was suddenly out of a job. Though, as it turned out, not for very long. After spending only a couple of months among the ranks of the unemployed, Vincente received a call from the newly opened Radio City Music Hall. Was he interested in a position as the Music Hall’s chief costume designer? The offer couldn’t have come at a better time for Minnelli. And without question, “The Showplace of the Nation” needed all the help it could get.
On December 27, 1932, when Radio City had opened its doors, the response from the press and public alike had been positively underwhelming. Rather than presenting a bold, modern attraction to complement the Music Hall’s gleaming art deco design, the inaugural production staged by Robert Edmond Jones proved to be a fustily old-fashioned affair—a virtual funeral rite for vaudeville, complete with Fraulein Vera Schwarz and the Flying Wallendas. A catastrophe in nineteen acts, the entire performance had been conceived and supervised by Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, Radio City’s director general. The day after the disastrous opening, Brooks Atkinson took Rothafel to task in the New York Times: “The truth seems to be that maestro Roxy, the celebrated entrepreneur of Radio City, has opened his caravansary with an entertainment, which on the whole, does not provoke much enthusiasm.”8
It was resoundingly clear to the management that something drastic had to be done before Radio City went under quicker than the Lusitania. While the Music Hall’s theaters were temporarily closed, no end of changes took place. Robert Edmond Jones resigned, as did costume designer James Reynolds. Emergency meetings were called. Roxy and company would need to chart an entirely new course.
A mix of movies and live stage spectacles had proven to be a winning combination for Minnelli’s former employer, Balaban and Katz. Other theater chains had found success with this varied approach as well. So it came as no surprise when Radio City announced that it was adopting the stage and screen format. When it reopened on January 11, 1933, Radio City’s revamped program included a feature film (Frank Capra’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen) and a considerably shortened stage show. This would prove to be a winning formula. “From January 1933 until it closed as a movie house, Radio City Music Hall invariably, inflexibly, and with no exception, always changed its show on Thursday,” says historian Miles Krueger. “Every single week there were new sets, new costumes, new ballets, new choral numbers. They had a men’s chorus and visiting comedians and acrobats and God knows what. Everything for about 35 cents. That’s how they could fill 7,000 seats.”9
While the Music Hall’s format was being overhauled, Radio City’s management decided that an entirely new production staff was needed to breathe some life into what was supposed to be the “live” portion of the bill. Someone remembered Minnelli’s striking contributions to the Earl Carroll extravaganzas, and by February 1933 Vincente was in place as Radio City’s chief costume designer.
Minnelli would be working closely with Roxy Rothafel, a former marine drill sergeant. As Vincente would soon discover, dealing with Roxy was a major occupational hazard. Like virtually everyone under Rothafel’s command, Minnelli found the irascible impresario “obstreperous and fault-finding.”10 This was certainly the case with art director Clark Robinson, who threw in the towel after yet another heated exchange with the impossible-to-please Rothafel. In terms of finding an immediate replacement for Robinson, Roxy didn’t have to look too far.
Although he was still as wet as the Music Hall’s walls, Minnelli was now Radio City’s new art director—this in addition to his already overwhelming costuming duties. It was a head-swelling double dose of responsibility—though almost immediately, Vincente would find himself cut down to size. Roxy, an equal opportunity put-down artist, would make the mild-mannered, soft-spoken Minnelli his whipping boy of choice. As Vincente recalled, “Instead of doing the job of three men, I would now be doing the job of six … and getting a proportionally larger share of Roxy’s sarcasms.”11
In July 1933, Minnelli was handed his first assignment as art director, and it would call upon every ounce of his artistic ingenuity to fill the role. Vincente’s training under Balaban and Katz would prove invaluable as he conjured up such sumptuous set pieces as a “Water Lily” ballet, a Cuban-themed sketch (complete with a pair of mammoth fighting cocks), and a Parisian dress boutique in which the shapely “Roxyettes” would strut their stuff—all of it crammed into fifty minutes. Within a matter of days, Minnelli would be expected to whip up another batch of equally imaginative settings and a dazzling array of costumes. It was Vincente’s designs for December’s “Scheherzade Suite” (complete with Persian rugs and elephants) that made both the New York Times and Roxy take notice. “You know, I’ve been picking on this fellow,” Rothafel admitted to his beleaguered staff. “All that picking brought fine results… . He’s an artist.”12
No sooner had his commanding officer tossed Minnelli a bit of long-overdue praise than Rothafel was sent packing. The management had more than likely received one too many complaints regarding Roxy’s take-no-prisoners tactics. Although the ulcer-inducing confrontations with Roxy were over, the nonstop work and continual sleep deprivation were still very much a part of Vincente’s exhaustively paced existence. He fought off fatigue with gallons of black coffee. Racing to keep up with the grueling production schedule, the hourly backstage dramas, and the constant demands of everyone around him, Minnelli had precious little time to claim as his own: “I’d stay up all night and light the new show, then we’d start planning the next one at lunch the following day.”13
Vincente and composer E. Y. “Yip” Harburg in the ’30s. Minnelli said of his equally talented friend: “I was drawn to his rare good nature, and he must have seen in me a kid who needed more polish and dash.” PHOTO COURTESY OF LILY MELTZER AND THE HARBURG FOUNDATION
If he had been a self-declared “failure” at nine, Minnelli was single-mindedly determined to make up for his “misspent” youth. Virtually every minute of the day was consumed with getting a new show ready. When he wasn’t placating neurotic stars or fixated on some bit of visual minutia, Minnelli somehow found time to acquire a remarkable collection of friends—a veritable Who’s Who of the entertainment world.
E. Y. Harburg (whom everyone called “Yip”) was outgoing, a deep-dyed socialist and an inveterate ladies’ man. Though he was a dreamer like Vincente, Harburg was in many ways Minnelli’s polar opposite. Despite their distinctly different personalities, Yipper and Vincente became fast friends. In October 1934, when Minnelli was given an opportunity to direct his first show at Radio City, he invited Harburg to contribute an original song, “Jimmy Was a Gent,” to Coast to Coast. Billed as a sophisticated revue in four scenes, the production transported audiences to several exotic locales. It would serve as something of a blueprint for Minnelli’s first Broadway spectacular, At Home Abroad.
It was Harburg who introduced Vincente to two people who would become his closest friends: Ira and Leonore Gershwin. With a gentle, self-effacing demeanor similar to Vincente’s, Ira Gershwin was accustomed to letting others hold court. He never seemed put out by the fact that both professionally and socially, he was overshadowed by his younger brother George. When Minnelli stepped out with the Ira Gershwins, Lee inevitably took charge—which wasn’t too difficult, as both her husband and Vincente were certified introverts. Through the years, Lee would become something of a surrogate mother to Minnelli—fussing over him, introducing him to all the right people, and ribbing him about his confirmed bachelor status.
Vincente found another lifelong friend in the form of eccentric pianist and professional hypochon
driac Oscar Levant (whom Bosley Crowther dubbed “the gifted vulgarian”). Levant was a fixture at Gershwin parties, always at the ready with a blistering wisecrack or a self-deprecating one-liner. Oscar was every bit as rabbity and nervous as Minnelli. But unlike the eternally tight-lipped Vincente, Levant tended to narrate the finer points of his neurosis, constantly complaining about ailments, both imaginary and all too real.
It was at the Gershwin’s apartment on 72nd Street that Vincente would meet and mingle with some of the brightest talents on the New York scene. Minnelli and composer Harold Arlen would reminisce about their days with Earl Carroll. Vincente would bring dramatist Lillian Hellman up to speed on all the latest backstage gossip. The delightfully witty “Prince of Broadway,” Moss Hart would keep Minnelli entertained with some side-splitting theatrical anecdote that would turn up in one form or another in one of the devastating comedies Hart wrote with collaborator George S. Kaufman. As with Minnelli, there had been “a lot of speculation about Hart’s sexuality.”14 And just like Vincente, Hart would end up tying the knot at the age of forty-two. Marriage—even so late in the game—would put an end to all of the whispers.
IN 1932, LESTER GABA packed a clean shirt and his lucky penknife and headed off to New York. Considering everything that Gaba and Minnelli already had in common—Marshall Field, the Chicago Art Institute, Balaban and Katz—was it yet another uncanny coincidence that they both moved to Manhattan around the same time? Or had Minnelli gone on ahead and smoothed the path for his uniquely talented friend? Whatever the case, once they were reunited, Minnelli and Gaba were closer than ever. Or at least as close as two fiercely ambitious, career-driven artistic types could be.
Although Gaba’s career would never ascend to the same heights at Minnelli’s, throughout the latter half of the ’30s, he seemed to be everywhere at once. His clever soap sculptures turned up in ads for Ivory Snow detergent; he staged fashion shows, wrote magazine articles, and designed a successful line of costume jewelry; and his one-of-a-kind Gramercy Park apartment was featured in House Beautiful. The dining room, with its “mad” Venetian mural and “an honest-to-goodness canopy,” looked like a set piece straight out of a Minnelli-designed Music Hall number. If the name of the game was publicity, then Lester Gaba was one skilled competitor. 15
“He preceded Andy Warhol in knowing how to bring attention to himself,” says designer Morton Myles. “Just being a painter or just writing about fashion, he realized would not do it. And so, he had to do all of these unusual things to create attention.”16
Lester Gaba: soap sculptor, mannequin designer, and “the Andy Warhol of his day.” Esquire referred to Gaba as “one of Minnelli’s closest friends.” WESTERN HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA
If Gaba was looking for attention, he found plenty of it, courtesy of one of his most bizarre creations. “The Gaba Girls” were a series of mannequins that were so incredibly lifelike that shoppers who breezed by the fashionable figures in the windows of Best and Company or Saks Fifth Avenue invariably did double takes. The most famous of the Gaba Girls was a tall, statuesque blonde named Cynthia who possessed an “eerie, almost human quality” that was both fascinating and unnerving. 17
Cynthia quickly became a society column staple. Harry Winston loaned her diamonds for an evening out. The press had a field day spotting Cynthia at El Morocco, in the balcony of the Broadhurst, or having her hair done at Saks Fifth Avenue’s Antoine salon. Lester Gaba relished the attention but resented the fact that he was being upstaged by his own creation. When Cynthia fell out of a beauty parlor chair and shattered, Gaba wasn’t exactly prostate with grief. He told a reporter: “Cynthia had become a Frankenstein to me, and I was rather relieved that she decided to—retire.”18 After her untimely “passing,” Cynthia was replaced by a real-life surrogate—Gaba’s own mother. As Morton Myles recalls, “People used to say, ‘He gave up “The Girls” and now he’s got his mother.’ … I remember attending a party when I first moved to Fire Island and when Lester arrived, he was pulling his mother Mamie in the type of little express wagon that we used for hauling groceries on the island. That’s an image you don’t forget. She immediately became the center of interest arriving that way. I remember she once said, ‘I’m really like the Queen of Sheba, I suppose.’”19
The beautiful Marion Herwood Keyes. Minnelli’s devoted secretary was also known as his “unkissed fiancée.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER KEYES (PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN)
Between toting around Cynthia and Mamie, Gaba somehow managed to work in a relationship with Minnelli. If Vincente was knee-deep in preparations for the latest Radio City extravaganza, Gaba would patiently wait for him to finish his backstage duties. In 1934, the two went on a cruise to Bermuda together. When Esquire profiled Minnelli in 1937, Gaba (whom the magazine described as “one of Minnelli’s closest friends”) recalled that everything they did and saw throughout the trip was “so much fodder for Minnelli’s brain, [as he was] constantly attempting to twist everything into an idea for a stage show.”20
Just as Vincente’s relationship with Lester Gaba had everybody guessing, so did his association with a striking, modishly attired young woman named Marion Herwood. As Minnelli recalled, “The work at the Music Hall was getting so involved that it was decided that I should have a secretary. I hired Marion.”21
They were always together, often working late into the evening. Always at her right elbow was Marion’s Titan-sized notebook, in which she jotted down Minnelli’s latest inspirations. But was their relationship all just strictly business? After a Walter Winchell item appeared suggesting that Vincente and Marion were “that way about each other,” Minnelli’s mother phoned from St. Petersburg, Florida (where the Minnelli family had relocated in the late ’30s), and inquired about his intentions. Vincente assured her that he and his dutiful secretary were just good friends—though it seems that even Herwood thought otherwise.
“I’ve come to assume that they practically got married,” says Marion Herwood’s son, Peter Keyes. Each time Minnelli made the move from Broadway to Hollywood (first for a brief stint at Paramount in the late ’30s, then with MGM for keeps), Herwood went with him. It was during Vincente’s second attempt at breaking into the movies that his faithful assistant was dealt a devastating blow. Without explanation, Vincente suddenly shifted his attention from Herwood to MGM’s resident showstopper. “I think [Minnelli] may have broken things off around the time he went after Judy Garland,” says Peter Keyes. “At that point, my mother indicated that she had a nervous breakdown out in California and that one of her brothers was terribly important in supporting her through a very difficult period and helping her out of the depression.”22
Friends of the costume designer Irene, whom Herwood assisted on Minnelli’s 1945 movie The Clock, remembered that Marion considered herself a Minnelli fiancée despite the fact that Vincente’s embraces were at best polite and that he had never so much as kissed his intended. After Herwood recovered from her broken engagement and the breakdown that followed, she would resume her work as a costumer on such MGM classics as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Postman Always Rings Twice. And she would eventually marry an investment banker.m
4
“A New Genius Rises in the Theater”
Oh, what wouldn’t I give for
Someone who’d take my life
And make it seem gay as they say it ought to be,
Why can’t I have love like that brought to me?
My eye is watching the noon crowds,
Searching the promenades, seeking a clue … 1
ALTHOUGH BILLY STRAYHORN had written the lyrics to “Something to Live For” in Pittsburgh in 1939, they may well have applied to Minnelli during his New York years. Vincente had achieved so much professionally by the time he was in his early thirties that, Lester Gaba and Marion Herwood aside, there hadn’t been much time to cultivate significant relationships. For the man who had once said, “Creating magic for my audience is al
l that I live for,” romance was really an afterthought—though for Vincente, “searching the promenades” wasn’t always about looking for love.
“When I was very young and exploring New York City, Minnelli was working at Radio City Music Hall,” recalls designer Jack Hurd, who in later years served as a set decorator on such MGM productions as It’s Always Fair Weather and Butterfield 8:
Next door to Radio City, at Rockefeller Center, there’s a skating rink. That’s what they call a cruising spot for gay pick-ups. Well, he picked me up there one evening and brought me back to his apartment. He showed me models of sets and things, which he had around the apartment. Then he wanted to have sex but I didn’t find him attractive. He had make-up on. He was too feminine. So, I left… . Years later, after the war, I ran into him between the sound stages at MGM, where I was then working on sets. I reminded him of what took place years ago and oh, god, … he went to L. B. Mayer and he wanted to get me fired. He didn’t want me around. And he was still freakish, wearing make-up—lipstick and eye stuff. He was married to Judy Garland by then and everybody would say, “What the hell does she see in him?”2
