Mark Griffin

by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life;Films of Vincente Minnelli

  It also didn’t hurt that for Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland would have the privilege of introducing three original songs: “The Boy Next Door,” “The Trolley Song,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”—each one a masterpiece. The trio of songs would advance the plot as effectively as the dialogue or action. “I had read the script and I knew there was a Christmas scene,” recalls composer Hugh Martin, who wrote the songs with partner Ralph Blane. “I was doodling on the piano while Ralph was working on lyrics. I worked on this tune for a couple of days and couldn’t make it go anywhere. It just sort of lay there after the sixteenth bar. About the third day, Ralph said, ‘I know I’m not supposed to be listening, but you were playing a very pretty little madrigal type tune for a couple of days and then I didn’t hear it anymore. It really bothered me because I think you had something good there.’”11

  Something good indeed. Although “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” would become a holiday institution as indispensable as eggnog, the original lyrics posed a problem, as they included such downbeat lines as “Have yourself a merry little Christmas… . It may be your last.” As Martin remembers, Garland liked the song but not the suicidal lyrics: “Judy quite wisely said, ‘If I sing that song to little Margaret O’Brien, the audience will hate me. They’ll think I’m a monster.’ So, they came to me and said, ‘Judy loves the melody and she wants you to write a new lyric, please.’ Being stupid, I said I wouldn’t and I stuck to my guns.” It was the boy next door to the rescue. “Tom Drake came to me and said, ‘You’re being an absolute horse’s ass and I’m not proud of you and if you miss this opportunity to have a great, classic Christmas song, I will never speak to you again.’ And I thought, well, he’s a sensible man and he’s not too dumb and I went home that night and I wrote the lyric that was in the movie.”12

  Margaret O’Brien and Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis. “Vincente Minnelli kept everything quiet and lovely for the actors,” O’Brien says. “He was certainly in charge but in a very charming, gentle, and understanding way.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  Lovingly photographed by George Folsey,z Garland would never look better on film than she did in St. Louis. Apart from a standout vignette in Thousands Cheer, released the year before, St. Louis would be the first feature since The Wizard of Oz that allowed Judy’s legions of followers to view their Metro goddess all aglow in vibrant Technicolor. Despite the fact that Garland had been reluctant to take on another dewy ingenue, there is an appealing freshness and genuine warmth to her Esther Smith. Freed from Andy Hardy, Busby Berkeley, and her outmoded ugly duckling image, a new Judy Garland emerges in Meet Me in St. Louis, and she’s a real beauty.

  Make-up artist Dorothy “Dottie” Ponedel refined Judy’s look for the film, giving her a fuller lower lip and introducing what was to become Garland’s trademark arched eyebrow. More important than any cosmetic enhancements was that Garland also found a close friend and trusted confidante in Ponedel. “It was amazing to watch the two of them together,” Meredith Ponedel says of her Aunt Dottie’s legendary rapport with Judy. “Vincente respected the fact that Judy would respond to Dot when she wouldn’t respond to anybody else.”13 However, midway through production on St. Louis, Garland suddenly became very responsive to Minnelli. And was it possible that Vincente was becoming interested in Judy for reasons that had nothing to do with how she recited her lines? Exactly what was Minnelli seeing as he gazed through his viewfinder at the twenty-one-year-old Garland?

  Just like her director, Judy had been born into show business. Frances Gumm (as Garland was originally named) had been performing since the age of two, appearing with her two sisters in lesser vaudeville houses across the country. Her incomparable voice, sincere delivery, and unique personality had landed her an MGM contract in 1935. Almost from the moment Judy Garland had arrived at MGM, the studio’s star-making magicians had been determined to have her problematic figure match her remarkable voice. Chocolate cake was confiscated, and Benzedrine prescribed. There were the unflattering comparisons to studio sirens Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor. As a young woman, Judy was made to understand that her extraordinary talents would have to be continuously switched on to compensate for a basic unworthiness.

  John Meyer, who befriended Garland in her later years, believes that the vulnerable star had

  a very low self-esteem, which stemmed from her childhood when Louis B. Mayer would call her “the ugly duckling” and “my little hunchback.” They tried to bind her chest so she wouldn’t develop breasts, and they capped her teeth. The message was that there always seemed to be something wrong with her. It’s satirized in A Star Is Born where they put her through that whole studio makeover process that James Mason then reverses. That kind of thing always stuck with her. That was the root of the problem. The substance abuse and the drinking—that was almost superficially on top of the root cause of it all. 14

  Like Garland, Minnelli had been frequently and cruelly reminded of his physical shortcomings. By this time, it had been deeply impressed upon him that the only beauty he would ever be associated with was the kind that he could cinematically manufacture. Metro’s wunderkinds may have been kindred spirits, but they were also different enough to keep things interesting. Garland’s outgoing, gregarious personality stood in sharp contrast to Minnelli’s more reserved, introspective nature.

  As shooting progressed on St. Louis, Minnelli and his leading lady finally seemed to be hitting it off. But exactly what kind of relationship was developing? Vincente gazing adoringly at his star through his viewfinder was one thing—most of the gay members of the Freed Unit were accustomed to worshipping at the temple of Judy Garland—but Minnelli actually romancing Judy was another matter entirely. Didn’t either one of them realize what they were letting themselves in for? Hadn’t Judy heard the rumors about Vincente—hardly the boy next door with an alleged affinity for green eye shadow? And like others at the studio, Minnelli must have heard the whispers about Garland’s pharmaceutical dependency. How was it possible that these two hugely talented misfits could be legitimately attracted to one another?

  “She surely must have known he was gay,” June Lockhart says of MGM’s odd couple, echoing the sentiments of virtually everyone on the lot. “I mean, I heard that when Minnelli first got to MGM, they had to ask him to stop wearing make-up to work everyday.” Some observers believe that Vincente’s “artistic flair” (as Judy termed it) had given everybody the wrong idea. Meredith Ponedel once broached the subject of Minnelli’s sexuality with her Aunt Dottie: “We talked about it once and Dottie said, ‘Nothing doing. He wasn’t gay.’ I mean, big deal, so he was in touch with his feminine side. And thank god, because look what he was able to produce. He was in touch with the feminine part of himself and not afraid to work with it. I mean, he probably had more courage than anybody else there.” Or, as frequent Minnelli collaborator Hank Moonjean puts it: “He was 98 percent woman and 2 percent man. I mean, the way he walked. The way he dressed. The way he smoked. He was just very feminine. But I never saw him make a gay movement or gesture or proposition to anybody. Ever.”15

  Nevertheless, virtually everyone around them, from Roger Edens to the guard at the gate, registered surprise that Minnelli and Garland were now a studio-sanctioned item. But they most certainly were, and they didn’t care if the whole world and Louella Parsons knew it, too. In a town known for its unlikely alliances (Orson Welles and Delores Del Rio) and questionable couplings (Cary Grant and Randolph Scott), Vincente and Judy trumped them all.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, for the people that worked at MGM when I was there, it made no sense for Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli to be together at all,” says Darryl Hickman, who appeared in St. Louis and Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy. “Nobody ever understood it. It didn’t make a lot of sense. I think Judy was a sensitive, lovely person but she was really used and misused by the studio… . The fact that she would reach out to Minnelli or that he would reach out to her was just a weird combina
tion. I think they were probably both in their own way hurting on some level and they reached out to one another. They were some kind of consolation for each other for awhile.”16

  Nineteen years older than Judy, Vincente was another example—though a decidedly more avant-garde one—of the more mature father figure that Garland coveted. First husband David Rose, the professorial, pipe-smoking composer of “Holiday for Strings,” was studious, sexually conservative, and by all accounts obsessed with electric trains. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, whom Judy started seeing before the start of St. Louis, was fiercely intelligent, well read, and equipped with the kind of edgy, vitriolic Addison DeWitt-style humor that Garland found wholly irresistible. In later years, the Harold Arlen song “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” (first heard in Cabin in the Sky) would become a fixture in Garland’s repertoire. Although most fans assumed Judy was singing the poignant tune with her youngest child, Joey Luft, in mind, others close to her believed that she carried a torch for Mankiewicz for the rest of her life.

  But there was something about Vincente’s gentle, soft-spoken manner that she couldn’t resist. And Minnelli seemed to relish the idea of playing Henry Higgins to Judy’s Eliza. Several Metro veterans recall that Garland, tutored between takes in the MGM schoolhouse and a graduate of Hollywood High, seemed eager to intellectually better herself by seeking out older, erudite mentors such as Mankiewicz and Minnelli. These sophisticated men of the world could provide her with a kind of finishing school by association. What’s more, Vincente treated his star with a courteousness she hadn’t been accustomed to.

  “He came in with great respect for Judy,” says Garland historian John Fricke. “As the legend goes, he treated her as ‘Miss Garland’ and not as the thirteen-year-old girl that everybody had seen grow up at MGM… . And I think he saw it to his great advantage to present her as glamorously as possible within the confines of a role.”17

  While St. Louis was still in production, MGM’s formidable senior editor, Margaret Booth, sent Minnelli an interoffice memo that expressed the thoughts of many studio veterans working on the picture: “I haven’t written you for a number of days but the dailies have been wonderful and the photography is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Judy has never been more beautiful or as sweet, to my way of thinking.”18

  As Booth and her assistants ran Minnelli’s footage over and over again, it appeared that the only thing wrong with Meet Me in St. Louis was that it was too much of a good thing. It would have to be cut. Before one of the preview screenings, Arthur Freed announced that Margaret O’Brien’s nightmarish Halloween sequence would have to go. But that scene was the very thing that had attracted Vincente to St. Louis to begin with.

  Irving Brecher recalled,

  The day of the sneak preview, Minnelli came in crying. Actually crying. His eye make-up was running and he said, “The son of a bitch wants to leave out the Halloween sequence for the preview.” I said, “You’ve got to be crazy!” Vincente said, “He thinks it stinks. Please go in and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.” I said, “He doesn’t like me.” Minnelli said, “Please! Go!” I did. I went to Freed’s office. I said, “Arthur, I understand you’re dropping the Halloween stuff from the preview.” He said, “What about it?” I said, “It’s a preview. Why don’t you preview it and see how it goes?” He said, “Mind your own fucking business. I’m the producer, not you. Get the hell out of here.” That night at the preview, the sequence was in the film. He had second thoughts. It was the biggest thing in the picture. He never acknowledged that he was wrong. He was not that kind of man.19

  Tootie’s trick-or-treating tour de force was spared the editor’s shears, but other scenes weren’t so fortunate. The Rodgers and Hammerstein song “Boys and Girls Like You and Me” was excised, as was a lengthy episode in which Garland was seen preparing Mary Astor, in full Gibson girl mode, for a night on the town.

  With these deletions and other peripheral alterations completed, Meet Me in St. Louis was released in December 1944. The picture grossed a whopping $7,566,000, making it MGM’s all-time top moneymaker.

  If Cabin in the Sky had trumpeted the arrival of a major new directorial talent, St. Louis more than made good on that promise. While roundly applauding Garland, O’Brien, and the trio of songs by Martin and Blane, the critics zeroed in on Minnelli’s sumptuous visuals and the evocation of a more carefree era. “Vincente Minnelli has staged the original Sally Benson story craftily, wisely concentrating on the details of the script and the colorful backgrounds,” wrote Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune. Time famously reviewed the picture as “a musical even the deaf can enjoy,” and in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther (borrowing a phrase from the boy next door) dubbed it “a ginger-peachy show.”20

  Esther (Judy Garland) prepares Mrs. Smith (Mary Astor) for a night on the town in a deleted scene from Meet Me in St. Louis. Margaret O’Brien’s unforgettable Halloween sequence nearly suffered the same fate. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  When the Best Picture nominees were announced during the 17th Annual Academy Awards, Meet Me in St. Louis was not among the contenders. In its place was the interminable Wilson and the saccharine victor, Going My Way. Astoundingly, Meet Me in St. Louis, now recognized as a landmark musical, didn’t garner a single Oscar, though it was nominated in four categories. While Otto Preminger’s nod for Laura and Billy Wilder’s nomination for Double Indemnity were worthy Best Director candidates, Henry King’s nomination for Wilson (a pet project of Fox mogul Daryl F. Zanuck) is almost unforgivable, considering that Minnelli was shut out altogether. Musicals—no matter how innovative or inspired—were frothy crowd pleasers and not considered “important” enough to merit Academy recognition beyond the Best Song category. It would take another seven years and eight films before Oscar would wink at Minnelli with an overdue nomination. In the meantime, he could console himself with the rapturous reviews and a phone call from Gene Kelly, who told Vincente and Judy, “Goddamn it, they don’t appreciate what a fine thing it is. They don’t realize all that went into it.”

  But there was no time to remind them. For Minnelli, it was on to the next assignment.

  9

  “A Joy Forever, a Sweet Endeavor …”

  IN APRIL 1938, MGM announced that it had acquired the motion picture, radio, and television rights to the title Ziegfeld Follies. The studio promised that a screen version of the Follies would go into production “shortly.” Five years later, Arthur Freed, Roger Edens, and a small army of assistants were still poring over the mountainous stacks of material that Metro had amassed concerning showman extraordinaire Florenz Ziegfeld, whom MGM producers seemed single-mindedly obsessed with.

  By 1944, virtually every writer, composer, and designer on the lot found themselves contributing to what was regularly being touted in the trades as a “colossal super production.” The Freed Unit’s Follies was so spectacular and sophisticated that it had no use for anything as pedestrian as a conventional plot. Like one of Minnelli’s Shubert revues, the Follies would forego story in favor of high-toned style. Such an opulent extravaganza would also provide irrefutable proof that MGM really did have “more stars than there are in the heavens,” as studio publicists liked to boast.

  As Freed and his minions envisioned it, Ziegfeld Follies would showcase every star in Metro’s lustrous galaxy. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne would be featured in the musical sequences. Fanny Brice, Red Skelton, and Keenan Wynn would handle the comedy sketches. William Powell, who had snagged an Academy Award nomination for MGM’s gargantuan 1936 biopic The Great Ziegfeld, would re-create his role as the flamboyant impresario, only this time he’d do it in luscious Technicolor. Powell’s Ziegfeld would mastermind Metro’s Follies from his heavenly boudoir. “Just because I moved up here, did the Follies have to die, too?” muses a nectar-sipping Ziegfeld as he gazes down upon Culver City.

  Minnelli’s screen credit for MGM’s “super spectacular” Ziegfeld Follies.
Many promising sequences were cut from the film: Fred Astaire’s “If Swing Goes, I Go, Too,” Avon Long serenading Lena Horne with “Liza,” and Fanny Brice whooping it up as the incorrigible Baby Snooks. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  Billed as “the screen’s biggest picture,” Ziegfeld Follies was such a massive undertaking that it proved to be too much for George Sidney, who vacated the director’s chair after helming several sequences.aa By May 1944, Minnelli had officially succeeded Sidney as director, though the movie was so big that directorial chores were ultimately divvied up among Robert Lewis, Lemuel Ayres, Roy Del Ruth, Norman Taurog, and Merril Pye. As a result, there would be a noticeable variance in the quality of the sketches. Some routines dazzled, others fizzled. To Minnelli fell the plum-star turns, including several elaborate production numbers featuring the most graceful star in Metro’s firmament: the inimitable Fred Astaire.

  A pair of Astaire showcases in which the forty-five-year-old hoofer was effectively teamed with twenty-two-year-old Lucille Bremer (fresh from Meet Me in St. Louis) immediately captured Vincente’s imagination. Dipping into his file of illustrated clippings for inspiration, he would lavish these sequences with the same inventiveness and visual ingenuity that had distinguished his work on the Broadway stage.