Mark Griffin
Page 14
At one point, the script indicated that during the Sunny sequence, Judy was to hurl herself onto the back of a prancing show pony. Obviously, the services of a stunt double would be required, not only because of the risky acrobatic maneuvers involved but also because several months earlier, Judy had discovered that she was pregnant. At age forty-two, Vincente was about to become a father. There was no time to celebrate, as the pressure was on to speed through Garland’s numbers (in a mere two weeks) before the star became too visibly expectant to photograph.
Originally, the Sunny episode was to have included Judy’s rendition of Kern’s winsome “D’Ya Love Me?” Despite Garland’s heartfelt delivery, the number was deleted from the release print of Clouds—and it’s a good thing. The surviving footage reveals an oddly uninspired and barely choreographed number. Flanked by a pair of listless clowns, Garland looks uncharacteristically ill at ease. Her comedic grimace when the playback concludes speaks volumes.
In sharp contrast, the mounting of the buoyant “Who?” was a cinematic bull’s eye. Minnelli encircles Garland, who is gowned in vibrant canary yellow, with a bevy of top-hatted chorus boys in tails. As the star twirls and taps her way through the number, Vincente’s camera keeps pace—an active and fully engaged participant in the proceedings.
Bob Claunch, one of the pompadoured dancers appearing alongside Garland, recalled that working with the frequently tardy star was always worth the wait. “Naturally, I had heard things about her,” Claunch says:
The dancers would talk about their associations with her because they had worked on other films of hers. They knew that she was sick a lot but at that time, nobody really knew what was going on with her. There was a lot of waiting around. I thought to myself at one point, “Where the hell is Judy Garland? She’s supposed to be the star of this… .” Finally, Garland came in. And just from seeing [dance instructor] Jeanette Bates do the routine one time, that’s all Judy needed. She did the dance without a rehearsal or anything. We did a master shot. And she left. It was remarkable. I still can’t believe it.9
As expectant parents, both Minnelli and Garland were endlessly amused by the spectacle of a visibly pregnant Judy rushing up to one dashing chorus boy after another and confronting each one with the leading question, “Who?” As Judy and Vincente prepared for the birth of their child, the father-to-be surely experienced a great complexity of emotions. Only a few years earlier, gossipers on the lot had whispered that Minnelli was “not marrying material,” let alone cut out for fatherhood. In fact, around the studio Judy’s pregnancy had been dubbed “The Immaculate Conception.” Still others in Minnelli’s circle—even those who “knew the score”—believed that Vincente’s quiet demeanor, gentle personality, and fondness for fantasy would make him an excellent father.
Till the Clouds Roll By opened in December 1946. The musical would garner much praise for the latest Minnelli-Garland collaboration. Judy’s sequences in the film are imbued with such vitality and presented with such panache that Minnelli’s portion effectively upstages the rest of the movie. In later years, he would helm sequences for other director’s movies (The Bribe, The Seventh Sin, All the Fine Young Cannibals) and usually do so without credit. Nevertheless, a Minnelli moment, whether anonymous or not, had a way of standing out, not only in terms of artful composition but also in the way a scene “felt.”
Till the Clouds Roll By would clean up at the box office as almost every MGM musical did in the 1940s. For millions of Americans, going to the movies was a must. The dazzling images of luxurious glamour and double-feature doses of fantasy provided “those wonderful people out there in the dark” with a kind of vital emotional sustenance. You may be broke, knocked up, or limp wristed, but there is always hope for you at the movies. Panty hose may be rationed, but just look at Lucille Bremer decked out in a stunning Sharaff ball gown. At home, the roof is leaking, the rent is late, and nobody understands you. But who cares? Fred Astaire is dancing on the ceiling and Gene Kelly is singing in the rain. An MGM musical was better than a sermon on Sunday for those true believers seeking salvation.
For Vincente Minnelli, the creation of this kind of rarefied fantasy fulfilled the same psychological and emotional need. While real life had provided the suffocation of a small town, a developmentally disabled brother, and not nearly enough color, the movies—even for the man directing them—possessed the power to transport.
12
Undercurrent
“I’M SURE WE’LL GET ALONG,” Katharine Hepburn announced to Minnelli prior to the start of shooting on Undercurrent. According to Vincente, “It sounded like an order and a threat. Never had I met anyone with such self-assurance. She made me nervous. And here was I, theoretically the captain of the ship, being made to tiptoe through my assignment.”1
The assignment was an unusual one for Minnelli—one of those noirish women’s pictures like Mildred Pierce, Nora Prentiss, or The Two Mrs. Carrolls that were in vogue both during and just after the war. Broadway’s Edward Chodorov based his screenplay on a three-part Woman’s Home Companion serial by Thelma Strabel entitled You Were There. In some ways, both Strabel’s story and Chodorov’s adaptation seemed to be emulating Alfred Hitchcock’s similarly themed but infinitely more satisfying Suspicion, in which a terrified Joan Fontaine suspects that suave husband Cary Grant is a murderer.
The soft-spoken Fontaine was one thing, but would audiences believe the fiercely independent Hepburn as a damsel in distress? Producer Pandro S. Berman thought so. While at RKO, Berman had shepherded some of Hepburn’s more memorable vehicles (Sylvia Scarlet, Stage Door) into production. By the 1940s, both the well-respected producer and his star of choice were in residence at MGM. Berman was convinced that the offbeat combination of Hepburn, Minnelli, and a glossy thriller based on Strabel’s novelette would result in a box-office knockout. With Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum mixed into the batter as Hepburn’s hunky costars, how could Under current miss?
Minnelli Goes Noir: Robert Taylor and Katharine Hepburn in the 1946 melodrama Undercurrent. The film features a trio of stars cast against type, some brilliantly moody photography by Karl Freund, and plenty of subtext. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
With all of the principals in place, Hepburn stepped into character as Ann Hamilton, a spunky, self-reliant New Englander. Although Ann is a whiz assisting her scientist father (Edmund Gwenn) in his laboratory, she becomes a floundering fish out of water once she marries affluent industrialist Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor). As Ann soon discovers, her volatile husband is harboring some dark secrets about his half brother, Michael (Robert Mitchum), who has mysteriously disappeared.
While Robert Taylor is effective in a refreshing change-of-pace role as the “smooth as patent leather” husband with sinister shadings, both Hepburn and Mitchum are miscast. As Minnelli recalled, “[Mitchum] was never comfortable in the role of the sensitive Michael.”2 Which is hardly surprising given that the character—a pipe-smoking devotee of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry and Johannes Brahms’s Third Symphony—seems more appropriate casting for Clifton Webb than the tough-talking, reefer-toting Mitchum.
Adding to Mitchum’s discomfort was the fact that Hepburn, who wielded contractual approval of her costars, seems to have only begrudgingly accepted him, though, decades later, the heavy-lidded actor contradicted the oft-repeated stories that Hepburn was openly hostile toward him. “Mr. Mitchum, don’t let them muck you about like that,” Hepburn told her costar when she noticed that the lighting for their final scene favored her but left him in the dark. Hepburn ordered the crew to rearrange the lighting so that Mitchum would be photographed to best advantage.
If Mitchum benefited from the formidable Hepburn’s take-charge approach, Undercurrent’s director was not so fortunate. “I thought she was very mean to Vincente,” recalls Jayne Meadows Allen, cast in the supporting role of Sylvia Lea Burton, a glamorous socialite:
I remember that right after we finished some scene that she didn’t like, she said someth
ing about how terrible The Clock was. She said to him, “My advice to you, my dear, is that if you do another movie like that, you’ll be on the train back to New York so fast… . And I don’t mean the Super Chief. I mean you will be run out of town.” I didn’t know what she was talking about because I had never seen The Clock, but I knew Judy [Garland] was the star of that picture and Judy could never do anything bad. Judy was a better actress than Katharine Hepburn could ever hope to be. I was shocked. I mean, attacking a director in front of everybody while we were shooting a scene! And to do this to Vincente, who never said a mean thing to anybody. He was the sweetest, kindest, dearest man and a wonderful director.3
If Hepburn was an imposing, commanding presence on the set, her take-no-prisoners personality also seeped through to her performance. As a result, one never quite believes Hepburn during her character’s supposedly vulnerable moments. There’s also a jarring disconnect between the supremely confident Ann Hamilton glimpsed in the film’s opening moments and the hopelessly inept newlywed who emerges just a few scenes later. After witnessing Ann dominating her father’s household and trading zingers with a handsome suitor, one can only wonder … Would a woman this self-assured be cowed by anyone, let alone a group of cocktail-party dowagers? It’s to Hepburn’s credit that in several key scenes, she manages to be moving in a part that doesn’t really suit her.
With two leads thrust into awkward roles and a director thoroughly intimidated by his leading lady, Undercurrent is off kilter from its first frame. If Minnelli’s first dramatic picture, The Clock, had played to his strengths, his second nonmusical feature exposed some of his weaknesses as a director: Varied decor and costume changes are substituted for authentic character development, and at times the melodrama veers toward over-the-top histrionics. On the surface, Undercurrent seems the least likely of Minnelli’s movies to provide any kind of self-referential insight. And yet, here is Hepburn as an uncomfortable outcast, unhappily married to a socially acceptable spouse while her subconscious craves a more suitable soul mate—one who will understand her completely and embrace the same romantic ideals that she does.
Ann is “haunted” by her husband’s brother, who for most of the movie exists only as a disembodied kindred spirit—someone she has practically willed into being. “I think he’s my obsession,” Ann admits. “Wherever I go, there he is. I want to forget him. I want to drive him away … I must.” But Ann is compelled to locate the mysterious Michael Garroway, as tracking him down also means finding the deepest, most authentic part of herself.
Katharine Hepburn, Minnelli, and Robert Taylor break for cake while shooting Undercurrent in February 1946. A month later, Vincente would celebrate the birth of his first child. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
“I know it was a studio assignment at the beginning of his career but it seems to me, there’s a lot of real Vincente Minnelli meaning in that film,” notes film scholar Jeanine Basinger:
He had a feeling and an affinity for it. It’s about the choice between two men. It’s also about the choice of the woman who doesn’t fit. She’s a plain woman, unprepared for the glamorous world she’s thrust into. Like so many of his films, it’s about trying to be who you really are. If someone knew who you really were, would they still appreciate you? It’s also about repressing natural instincts and it’s about undercurrents and that’s what his whole life really was… . Sometimes in the films that get dismissed, that’s where you can find the most truth, oddly enough.4
Or, as Mitchum reminds Hepburn in one of the film’s best scenes, “You can’t always see that undercurrent, but it’s there.”
Most critics would take Minnelli to task for serving up what they regarded as a stylish but hollow suspense yarn. As Time noted, “The indigestible plot, full of false leads and unkept promises, is like a woman’s magazine serial consumed at one gulp.”5 Despite mixed reviews, the picture was a certified hit when it was released in November 1946. Undercurrent would also prove to be the first of a half dozen highly profitable collaborations for Vincente and producer Pandro Berman.
Though his latest picture had moviegoers lining up at the ticket window, Minnelli was much prouder of another production—one that had debuted months earlier on March 12, 1946. “I remember one day when we were shooting, a secretary came out from Vincente’s office to say, ‘Mr. Minnelli, we’ve just had a phone call from the hospital. You have a baby daughter,’” recalls Jayne Meadows Allen.6 The baby would be named Liza after the Gershwin song.
Decades after they worked on Undercurrent, Allen reminded Katharine Hepburn of this momentous occasion while both were backstage during “The Night of a 100 Stars” gala. “We were talking about the day Liza Minnelli was born,” Allen remembers:
I said, “I shall never forget you, Miss Hepburn—your emotion… . You were practically in tears and you said, ‘Oh, Vincente, how beautiful that must be. Having a child must be the greatest joy in the world… .’ And I never forgot it after all these years.” Well, Kate denied everything. She said, “I have no recollection of that. I don’t feel that way at all. I don’t believe I ever said that… .” I mean, Katharine Hepburn was the most eccentric woman that was ever a star, in my opinion.7
13
Voodoo
AS MR. AND MRS. VINCENTE MINNELLI made the rounds of cocktail parties and dinner parties and post-premiere parties (parties were a large part of the job in Hollywood), Judy was inevitably asked to sing. In fact, a social occasion couldn’t truly be considered a success until MGM’s resident belter took her place at the piano. Judy also ranked high on every hostess’s invitation list for another reason: She was, without question, one of the wittiest women in Hollywood. In sharp contrast to the conversationally challenged Minnelli, Garland was an extraordinary raconteur who could captivate a roomful of seasoned veterans with her outlandish anecdotes or a devastating Marlene Dietrich imitation. According to Minnelli, it was Judy’s affinity for the absurd that first triggered the idea for a film version of The Pirate.
S. N. Behrman’s comedy had opened on Broadway in 1942 starring the great theatrical couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The plot had been lifted from the German play Der Seerauber and concerned a rakish actor masquerading as a notorious seafarer as he attempts to win the heart of the mayor’s wife. “There was nothing subtle about it,” Hilary Knight recalled of the Lunts’ version of The Pirate. “It looked like a musical, although it wasn’t one… . It was all decor and style and no more successful than the movie was.”1
Scenic designer Lemuel Ayres, who had worked on the theatrical version of The Pirate, suggested to Arthur Freed that Behrman’s play might make for a blockbuster screen musical. Freed, Minnelli, and Garland were all excited by the idea—Judy, especially, as the material would allow her to display her largely untapped talent for sophisticated comedy.
A musical set in the picturesque West Indies would inspire Minnelli to conjure up the kind of lush tropical paradise that he had fantasized about as a boy back in Delaware. He would go to incredible lengths to make certain that MGM’s versions of exotic nineteenth-century Calvados and neighboring Port Sebastian were painstakingly thorough in terms of period authenticity. At the same time, this would be the kind of highly stylized Freed Unit utopia where pirates in snug buccaneer briefs, crucifix-sporting señoritas, and African American circus tumblers would all blissfully coexist.
With Garland in the lead, the obvious question became … Who would play the hammy actor passing himself off as the dashing pirate? “I never thought of anyone but Gene Kelly for the part of Serafin,” said Minnelli, believing that Kelly’s knock ’em dead charisma and athleticism were a perfect match for the part. Like Judy, Gene was enthusiastic about the project as it would let him display another facet of his remarkable talents: “I wanted the opportunity to do a different kind of dancing, a popular style with a lot of classic form, acrobatics and athletics.”2 Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Kelly would also pay tribute to the screen’s legendary swashbucklers, such as the d
ashing Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in what would prove to be one of his best roles.
With two of Metro’s brightest stars in place, Minnelli turned his attention to the script. Although the basic framework of the Lunt-Fontanne version was retained, much of the stage material would require revamping. On Broadway, Fontanne’s Manuela was married to the oafish mayor Don Pedro Vargas while carrying on with Serafin. That scenario could never be sanctioned by either the Breen Office or Louis B. Mayer. For MGM’s adaptation, Garland’s Manuela Alva would be engaged to the mayor, and she would be less worldly and Catholicized. However, the character would retain her wide-eyed romanticism and penchant for embarking on “mental excursions,” a facet of the story that immediately appealed to Vincente. When Manuela finally abandons her repressive surroundings to join Serafin’s theatrical troupe, this seemed to refer back to Minnelli’s own story: I was saved from Delaware, Ohio, by the bright lights of show business.
One writer after another (including Judy’s former flame Joseph L. Mankiewicz) would take a crack at the screenplay, but none of these scripts were judged correct. Freed then turned to Anita Loos and Joseph Than, but their version of The Pirate would prove to be the most unacceptable by far. In the Loos-Than treatment, the original premise was turned upside down, with the Kelly character becoming a singing-dancing pirate pretending to be an entertainer. This would never do. It was husband-and-wife writing team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich who came to the rescue. Within two months, they had cranked out a zesty, witty screenplay that achieved the right balance between sophisticated farce and whimsical fantasy.