Mark Griffin

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

  “The thing with The Clock was to tell the story of two people who couldn’t be alone,” Minnelli noted. “There was no possibility of privacy for those two people.”7 Despite their developing intimacy, Alice and Joe are never really by themselves—they are constantly distracted by Minnelli’s colorful parade of interlopers: Alice’s hyper-conversational roommate Helen (played by Vincente and Judy’s friend Ruth Brady), an eavesdropper eating pie à la mode, Keenan Wynn’s philosophizing drunk, and a scene-stealing eccentric delectably played by Angela Lansbury’s mother, Moyna MacGill.

  To all involved, it became immediately apparent that although Zinnemann’s grittier authenticity was forfeited, a romantic warmth and charm were regained once Minnelli was in the director’s chair. Though Garland doesn’t sing a note, in Vincente’s hands The Clock plays like a musical with the numbers excised.ac A charming scene in which Joe scrambles after Alice’s 7th Avenue bus almost comes off like a mini-sequel to “The Trolley Song.” And George Bassman’s beautiful underscoring and his use of the haunting British ballad “If I Had You” add another layer of poignancy to this wartime romance.

  It was during the filming of The Clock that Minnelli and Garland’s own love story reignited. As many at the studio shook their heads in disbelief, Judy and Vincente were once again an item, and this time they were more open about their feelings.

  “When I was shooting, she only had eyes for him,” actress Gloria Marlen says of Judy’s obvious affection for her director. “She was constantly following him around and trying to look through the camera to see what he was shooting. They were not married or anything at the time but it was kind of cute, you could see that she had a real crush on him.” Marlen has a memorable bit in the film as a young lady who receives a corsage from a serviceman (“Here’s something to top you off …”). This inspires Joe to buy one for Alice. Of her director, Marlen remembers that “he was very patient but noncommittal. I mean, Vincente never said a word. He was very business-like in his approach. He gave very little direction and he assumed a lot with me because it was only my second film and I didn’t know beans about it… . I never knew if I had done what he wanted or not.”8

  The Clock opened at New York’s Capitol Theatre in May 1945, and the critics devoted as much column space to praising the film’s director as its stars. Time raved: “[Minnelli’s] semi-surrealist juxtapositions, accidental or no, help turn The Clock into a rich image of a great city. His love of mobility, of snooping and sailing and drifting and drooping his camera booms and dollies, makes The Clock, largely boom shot, one of the most satisfactorily flexible movies since Friedrich Murnau’s epoch-making The Last Laugh.”9 And Manny Farber observed: “The Clock is riddled, as few movies are, with carefully, skillfully used intelligence and love for people and for movie making and is made with a more flexible and original use of the medium than any other recent film… . Minnelli’s work in this, and in Meet Me In St. Louis, indicates that he is the most human, skillful director to appear in Hollywood in years.”10

  The constantly interrupted romance on screen in The Clock was mirrored by Vincente and Judy’s own relationship. Life on the lot—especially for two of the studio’s brightest talents—was the ultimate gold-fish-bowl experience. As gossip columnists shared every tender Minnelli-Garland glance with readers around the world, there was no hope for any real privacy. When Judy moved into Vincente’s elegantly appointed house on Evanview Drive in the Hollywood Hills, the couple did everything possible to keep their cohabitation out of the columns. “At that time, there was Louella and Hedda,” Minnelli recalled of the era when all-powerful gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper reigned supreme. “So we had to keep it very quiet. But it leaked out because somebody’s legman lived right across the street.”11 Before long, studio insiders knew that Judy had moved in with Vincente. There were even rumors that the couple intended to marry.

  Minnelli studies the script of Yolanda and the Thief, 1945. PHOTO FROM THE AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  11

  Dada, Dali, and Technicolor

  AS MARRIAGE RUMORS SWIRLED, Minnelli began preparing his next film, Yolanda and the Thief. This would be a lavish musical based on a whimsical fable by Madeline creator Ludwig Bemelmans and Jacques Thery that had appeared in the July 1943 issue of Town and Country. The story concerns a slick swindler who sets his sights on an outlandishly wealthy but spiritually attuned heiress. The con man gets closer to Yolanda’s fortune by posing as her guardian angel. In some ways, the plot resembled Fred Astaire’s “This Heart of Mine” vignette from Ziegfeld Follies, and that sequence may have given Freed the idea to cast Astaire as Yolanda’s suave charlatan, Johnny Riggs. Freed and MGM’s front office were also banking on Yolanda to imitate the success of You Were Never Lovelier, the 1942 Columbia triumph that had paired Astaire with Rita Hayworth and that featured a somewhat similar storyline.

  As with virtually every musical announced by MGM, Judy Garland was at one time slated to play Yolanda Aquaviva, the most beloved resident of the mythical South American country of Patria—“the land of milk and money.” Despite her interest in appearing in Yolanda, Garland would ultimately be assigned to The Harvey Girls, a pet project of her mentor-arranger Roger Edens. In March 1944, the studio next announced that Lucille Ball, fresh from her triumph in Metro’s Best Foot Forward, would play the wide-eyed heiress. Ultimately, the role was given to Freed’s comely protégé, Lucille Bremer. After receiving positive notices as a result of her memorable pairing with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies, Bremer was being groomed for Garland-sized superstardom. For Yolanda and the Thief, Bremer’s name would be billed after Astaire’s but above the title, a signal to audiences that there was a new star in Metro’s firmament.

  Many on the lot were surprised that Bremer rose through the ranks as swiftly as she did. “She came out of nowhere,” says former contract dancer Judi Blacque. “We certainly never thought that she would become a major star. Don’t misunderstand me. She was very nice. Very attractive. And she could dance. But when you look at what was available in Hollywood at that time, it was incredible that she got as far as she did.”1

  After the unqualified success of Meet Me in St. Louis, Freed felt that he could confidently turn to screenwriter Irving Brecher to translate the Thery-Bemelmans prose into a screenplay that retained the original story’s childlike innocence while managing to keep war-weary audiences awake. “The story was nothing,” Brecher admitted decades later. “I didn’t like it. But Freed wanted to make it … and to star Lucille Bremer, who had been in Meet Me in St. Louis, and, if she was not having an affair with Arthur Freed, was at least being coveted by Freed. In any case, I didn’t want to work on Yolanda. Nothing was happening with it, and I didn’t think there was a picture in it that I could do that would be worth anything.”2

  Whereas Brecher’s screenplay for Meet Me in St. Louis had contained universal situations and humor that anyone with a slightly off-center family could relate to, Yolanda occupied more rarefied territory. Minnelli would later boast that Yolanda contained “the first surrealist ballet ever used in pictures.” Bold and Dali-esque in design, Astaire’s “Dream Ballet” was certainly striking, but including a surrealistic ballet in an already fanciful musical was not unlike piling a hot fudge sundae on top of a banana split. Everything in Yolanda’s world—from her baroque bathtub to her singing servants—was the stuff of absurdist, off-the-wall fantasy. As Noel Langley, one of the screenwriters of The Wizard of Oz, once observed: “You cannot put fantastic people in strange places in front of an audience unless they have seen them as human beings first.”3

  There is nothing earthbound about Yolanda, which is both part of its charm and part of its problem. A prime example of Minnelli at his most uninhibited and self-indulgent, the movie showed what could happen when Vincente sacrificed story to style. As would occur later with The Pirate, the stylistic excesses of Yolanda would delight Minnelli fans but confound mainstream audiences expecting a more conventional musical-com
edy outing.

  Bremer, while not untalented, was miscast as the pious, convent-bred Yolanda—though, to be fair, even Judy Garland’s trademark sincerity would have been taxed with lines such as, “I’m not the only one who’s happy tonight… . The man in the moon is smiling.” It also doesn’t help that in the early scenes, Bremer is noticeably older than her convent classmates, who, in their pinafores and picture hats, seem to have emerged directly from the pages of Madeline. Although Yolanda has its fiercely devoted partisans, there was only one sequence in the film that seemed to please everybody—the justly celebrated “Coffee Time.” Freed from their arch dialogue and contrived situations, Astaire and Bremer were finally allowed to do what they did best: dance. During this one number (choreographed by Eugene Loring), Minnelli’s movie suddenly and all too fleetingly sprang to life.

  Taking the plunge: Yolanda Aquaviva (Lucille Bremer) in her luxurious, baroque bathtub in Yolanda and the Thief. Yolanda’s coauthor Ludwig Bemelmans had high hopes for the film’s leading lady. As he told Arthur Freed: “It is so nice and so exciting to sit at the birth of what will be a great star.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  In the end, not even this exhilarating sequence could save Yolanda from its fate. To wartime audiences accustomed to the likes of Four Jills in a Jeep, Yolanda must have seemed as accessible and inviting as a Jackson Pollock canvas. “Yolanda is such an interesting failure because it has got these amazing flights of imagination,” says writer Clive Hirschhorn. “I mean, ‘Coffee Time’ is just wonderful and the color scheme throughout the film is simply breathtaking, but the film as a whole just doesn’t work because it doesn’t really invite you in. It’s almost too experimental. Too clever.”4

  As Astaire recalled, “We all tried hard and thought we had something, but as it turned out, we didn’t. There were some complicated and effective dances which scored, but the whole idea was too much on the fantasy side and it did not do well.”

  Edwin Schallert’s mixed review in the Los Angeles Times seemed to sum up the general consensus: “‘Not for realists’ is a label that may be appropriately affixed to Yolanda and the Thief. It is a question, too, whether this picture has the basic material to satisfy the general audience, although in texture and trimmings it might be termed an event.”

  But, as usual, it was Judy Garland who nailed the entire experience with a devastating one-liner. After a cooly received sneak preview of Yolanda, it became clear that despite Freed’s best efforts, Bremer lacked genuine star appeal and Minnelli’s musical was something of a misfire. As Garland passed a dispirited Arthur Freed, she quipped: “Never mind, Arthur, Pomona isn’t Lucille’s town.”5

  “The picture made money,” Minnelli would assert in his autobiography, but the MGM ledgers told a different story, estimating a net loss of $1,644,000 (in 1945 dollars). Despite the paltry box-office returns and the lukewarm reviews, Yolanda and the Thief, like several of Vincente’s later efforts, retroactively achieved cult status, attracting a devoted following of fans who found the film’s bizarre mélange of Dada, Dali, and Technicolor irresistibly appealing. Among the faithful were MGM arranger Kay Thompson and her Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight, who both embraced the inspired lunacy that is Yolanda.

  “We were always talking about things that we liked or Kay’s experiences at MGM, which were hilarious but usually not very kind to the people involved,” Knight remembers. “We also talked about things that we loved about movies and we both agreed that we loved Yolanda”—and especially Mildred Natwick’s scatterbrained, chihuahua-toting Aunt Amarilla, who spouts the movie’s most delectable lines. At one point, the pixilated Amarilla turns to a devoted servant and imperiously demands, “Do my fingernails immediately … and bring them to my room!”

  In addition to delivering the film’s wittiest zingers, the veteran character actress also had an opportunity to observe Freed and Bremer in close proximity. While the studio rumor mill would inextricably link the producer and his reluctant star, there was at least one colleague who thought otherwise. “Natwick told me that she thought Lucille had never succumbed to Arthur,” Hilary Knight reveals. “Lucille’s mother was always with them, even on the set … always protecting her baby from Arthur.”6

  “ABSORBED … DIRECTOR VINCENTE MINNELLI studies the script of Yolanda and the Thief, oblivious of the cameraman snapping his picture,” read the caption accompanying a publicity photo of Minnelli on the set of his latest production. The rare glimpse of Judy Garland’s husband engrossed in his work was officially approved by Hollywood’s Advertising Advisory Council on June 25, 1945, just ten days after the much-discussed Minnelli-Garland nuptials had taken place at Judy’s mother’s house in Beverly Hills. It was an intimate ceremony with none of the customary Hollywood hoopla that usually attended a celebrity wedding, though MGM was well represented—by Arthur Freed, publicity chief Howard Strickling, and even Louis B. Mayer, who gave the bride away.

  Vincente and Judy’s wedding day, June 15, 1945. Best man Ira Gershwin, Minnelli, Garland, Louis B. Mayer (who gave the bride away), and studio publicist Betty Asher (Judy’s maid of honor) pose for photographers. The ceremony took place at Judy’s mother’s house in Beverly Hills. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  Now that Vincente was married to one of MGM’s most important assets, the studio would carefully scrutinize any images of him that would be seen by the public. If Minnelli was not exactly the kind of strapping All American Boy that Judy’s legions of fans would have envisioned her blissfully wed to, at least the studio could filter out any questionable examples of Vincente’s “artistic flair.” After all, it was one thing for Minnelli to go full tilt flamboyant with a Ziegfeld Follies production number, but altogether another matter for him to appear in public bedecked in a turban as he escorted Judy and their friend Joan Blondell to dinner at Romanoff’s. Vincente and Judy’s friends were happy that the two had formed such a close, supportive bond. And many hoped that mild-mannered Vincente might have a calming influence on his high-spirited wife. But even so, they couldn’t help but wonder … What kind of marriage was it exactly?

  “I admired him before I ever played in one of his pictures,” Garland said of her director-husband. Judy told Hedda Hopper: “He’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever seen. Players like him. They feel he’s giving his best, so that brings out their best, too.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

  The gossip ran the gamut: Garland was attempting to “fix” Minnelli—as in “all he needs is the love of a good woman to make things right.” Or the union was a studio-arranged marriage of convenience that would allow both partners the freedom to pursue extramarital affairs (both heterosexual and homosexual). The more cynically minded observers believed that Minnelli, for all his gentlemanly ways, was a shrewd opportunist hitching his wagon to the studio’s brightest star. But maybe it was the most improbable scenario of all that contained the real truth: Two extravagantly talented, sensitive people turned to one another seeking sanctuary from their intensely pressured lives. What’s more, each could complete the other’s fantasy. “I remember Vincente saying about Judy, ‘She is a great actress and a great star and I will direct her in important parts,’” recalls singer Margaret Whiting, who had befriended Garland years earlier. “I mean, it was obvious that he was interested in her as a director, but I just don’t know what that marriage was all about.”7

  In later years, Vincente would describe his New York honeymoon with Judy as a blissful summer idyll complete with heartwarming episodes that might have been deleted sequences from The Clock. Three months in Manhattan and away from the confines of Culver City seemed to work wonders for Garland as she interacted with adoring fans on the street, organized a search for Minnelli’s “neurotic” poodle, experienced live theater, and attempted a new beginning. “Judy gave me a cherished gift—a silent promise,” Vincente remembered. “We were walking in a park by the river. ‘Hold my hand,’ she said softly. I did. It was then that I noticed a vial of pills in her other hand… . She threw
the pills in the East River. She said she was through with them. But the minute we got back [to Hollywood], anything that would happen at the studio, she would take the pills.”8

  IN THE MID-’40S, largely owing to the success of James Cagney’s spirited portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, all-star musical bio - graphies of America’s top tunesmiths were suddenly hot properties, even if they weren’t entirely factual. Warner Brothers presented Cary Grant as a heterosexual Cole Porter in Night and Day, while Metro countered with Mickey Rooney as a heterosexual Lorenz Hart in Words and Music. When it came time to dramatize the life of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern in Till the Clouds Roll By, screenwriter Guy Bolton knew this posed something of a challenge. A confidant of Kern’s, Bolton stood in awe of his friend’s considerable talents, but he also knew that the songwriter’s private life wasn’t remotely cinematic.

  Though it was true that Kern had cheated death by not sailing on the ill-fated Lusitania (his alarm clock didn’t go off), most of the “biography” in the film was pure hokum—including Kern looking after the self-absorbed daughter of a fictional writing partner. To compensate for the lack of dramatic action, the film would be laced with continual references to the theatrical luminaries of the past—a sort of cinematic name-dropping. MGM’s stable of stars would portray some of these fabled legends of yesteryear.

  The role of Broadway’s Marilyn Miller was reserved for Metro’s even more beloved answer: Judy Garland. While June Allyson, Lena Horne, and Angela Lansbury would have to make do with dance director Robert Alton,ad Garland’s sequences were entrusted to Minnelli, now considered Judy’s own personal auteur. Of course, Vincente was well versed in the legend of Marilyn Miller, and he was eager to re-create some of her best-loved numbers—including “Look for the Silver Lining” and “Who?”—on screen. In 1925, Miller had one of her greatest successes with Sunny, the saga of a circus bareback rider. The stage show was fondly remembered for its splashy, big-top setting. MGM, of course, was expected to outdo the original production, and Minnelli’s Technicolored circus made Barnum and Bailey look positively sedate.