by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life;Films of Vincente Minnelli
Only two months after the movie started shooting, it was previewed at the Picwood Theatre in West Los Angeles. Among the raves, there were some dissenting votes: “Minnelli has lost his touch,” read one comment card. “Acts very similar to the weekly TV show,” griped another. And most pointed of all: “This is a television team primed for a half hour of experienced laughs. Arnaz is not movie material. Lucille Ball is movie material. Let her co-star with someone else. Let Desi lead a band.”
Though many Minnelli disciples tend to write off The Long, Long Trailer as soulless studio fluff and nothing more than an elongated I Love Lucy episode, others believe that it has been dismissed unfairly. “There are these statements that Minnelli is making about consumerism and obsession with surface details,” says film scholar Richard Barrios:
In a way, he’s almost getting back at the people who attack him for just being absorbed with surfaces… . That whole set up when Lucy takes Desi to the auto show and she falls in love with the trailer and then it becomes the third character in the movie is really wild. And Minnelli doesn’t just use the trailer as a prop. In a way, it’s the deus ex machina and it’s the villain and it tries to break up the marriage. Vincente’s absorption with textures and surfaces is so perfect because that’s what this story is all about—it’s really the embodiment of a consumer nightmare… . There’s so much mythology with Lucy and Desi that it’s easy for people to overlook who directed it and how important Minnelli is to the way it works.11
And it certainly worked. In its initial release, the film raked in an estimated $4.5 million and ranked among the top grossing pictures of the year. As Arnaz liked to boast, for years The Long, Long Trailer held the title as the most commercially successful comedy ever released by MGM. The critics were generally agreeable, with Time observing: “Director Vincente Minnelli, as skilled a comedy hand as Hollywood employs, has a way of letting the story babble on absently between solid banks of common sense until the audience is lulled in smiles.”12
19
Almost Like Being in Love
WHEN GEORGETTE MAGNANI was introduced to Vincente Minnelli by composer Vernon Duke, she was in her early twenties, newly arrived from France, and almost always referred to as the “Sister of Miss Universe of 1953,” Christiane Martel. Georgette had come to California to look after her sister, who even at the tender age of seventeen didn’t seem in dire need of an escort. After her beauty-pageant triumph, Christiane was being courted by Universal Pictures. She was engaged to marry Ronnie Marengo, heir to the Marengo department store fortune. Being constantly referred to as an appendage of Miss Universe may have prompted the equally photogenic Georgette to attempt to forge her own identity—one that had nothing to do with her much-discussed sister. Suddenly items about “Christine’s Sis” began appearing in print. Columnists described Georgette as though she were the Second Coming of Sophia Loren: “She’s the same height as Christine [sic]—5 feet, 6 inches. Other statistics: waist 23, bust 35, hips 35.” Va-voom.
Beyond the vital stats, Minnelli maintained that he was attracted by Georgette’s “open manner” (the same quality he said had drawn him to Judy), her “Latin temper,” and her French-Italian ancestry, which (more or less) matched his own. After they began a whirlwind courtship, rumors were circulating that Judy Garland’s ex was preparing to tie the knot again. When queried about his matrimonial intentions, Vincente told columnist Harrison Carroll, “We aren’t definite on our plans… . It’s highly probable. We see a lot of each other and she’s a wonderful girl.”1
All speculation ended on February 16, 1954, when Vincente and Georgette wed in a Riverside ceremony termed a “surprise marriage” by the press. For many in the Hollywood community, the phrasing could be interpreted in more than one way. Cyd Charisse changed out of her Brigadoon costume long enough to be Georgette’s matron of honor while dapper French actor Claude Dauphin served as Vincente’s best man. The couple’s honeymoon was postponed as production resumed on Minnelli’s latest musical extravaganza.
BRIGADOON. THE VERY NAME was meant to conjure up images of rolling hills, sable skies, and, of course, the inescapable heather on the hill. If ever a movie cried out for open air, scenic vistas, and local color, it was Production #1645. Expectations were through the roof for MGM’s widescreen version of the triumphant Broadway musical about a pair of American malcontents who stumble upon a mythical Scottish village that springs to life for a single day every hundred years. When the original stage production opened at “the house of hits”—the Ziegfeld Theatre—in 1947, Brigadoon was showered with rapturous reviews (“All the arts of the theatre have been woven into a singing pattern of enchantment,” said the New York Times2). The musical racked up 581 performances, netted the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and solidified the reputations of musical-comedy’s new dynamic duo, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The talented team was now being touted as the best thing to happen to the American musical since Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.
It seemed a good omen when Lerner was tapped to adapt his own libretto for the screen. And given the fact that the property was a lush musical fantasy, Minnelli seemed a very natural choice as director. After all, Brigadoon’s lovers-in-a-race-against-time scenario was essentially The Clock in kilts. If the saga of MacConnachy Square could succeed within the confines of a New York theater, surely the movies could make a good thing even better by souping it up with what the ads trumpeted as “Breathtaking CinemaScope” and “Gayest Color.” MGM was fully confident that its production of the musical would improve upon the stage show by featuring popular stars whom the paying customer out in Omaha had actually heard of.
In March 1951, it was announced that Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson—the stars of Anchors Aweigh in 1945—would be reunited in Brigadoon. With Kelly in the lead, it became immediately apparent that Lerner and Loewe’s enchanting score (which included “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love”) would take a backseat to the star’s fancy footwork. “It became a dancing show instead of a singing show,” says Lerner’s longtime assistant Stone Widney. Exit Kathryn Grayson. Enter Moira Shearer. The striking, flame-haired ballerina had delivered a star-making performance in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. Whereas Grayson hailed from Winston Salem, North Carolina, Shearer was an authentic Scottish lass. As fate would have it, Shearer’s ballet company was reluctant to release its star for the length of the film’s shooting schedule, however, and Metro finally settled on someone closer to home: contract player and Freed Unit favorite Cyd Charisse.
Vincente married his second wife, Georgette Magnani (“The Sister of Miss Universe”), in 1954. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
“I was excited about being in it, but it started off badly,” Charisse recalled. “That was because Kelly wanted to film it on location, in Scotland, while the studio said no, that was impractical because of the weather there, and insisted it be done in Hollywood. Minnelli preferred shooting inside a soundstage, so tons of earth were moved onto several soundstages and it was all shot inside.”3 The heathered hills of Brigadoon were brought to life with a gargantuan 600-foot-long matte painting that encircled the entire set. The blatantly artificial environs would remain a sticking point with Gene Kelly.
If Minnelli and Kelly couldn’t agree on where the film should be shot, they were also at odds regarding how it should be shot. “Vincente and I were never in synch, I must confess,” Kelly admitted. Minnelli envisioned the movie as “more of an operetta”—the type of “theatrical artifice” that was less like An American in Paris and more like The Pirate. Kelly, however, saw Brigadoon as “a Scottish Western”—Arthur Freed meets John Ford. When the entire production veered more in Minnelli’s direction, the star-choreographer was unhappy, and it showed. Minnelli later said he “had many talks with [Kelly], trying to impress on him the need to show exuberance in the part.”4 But the star remained remote and grim-looking.
Although he had been overruled on location and appr
oach, Kelly would get his way in another matter. “Minnelli was named as the director but Gene seemed to be doing everything,” remembers Michael Maule, a former New York City Ballet dancer who was initially cast as Brigadoon’s bridegroom, Charlie Chisholm Dalrymple. “I must say that I was very suspicious because there was this stand-in for me. A nice-looking young man. Gene would say, ‘Let whatever-his-name-was run through the scene for you. You just take it easy and let him do everything for you.’ And he kept doing this. Never giving me a chance to play a scene myself. I was very suspicious but everybody was so nice.” One day, after a run-through, Maule was abruptly dismissed:
They fired me. Minnelli didn’t say much. It was Gene who said, “I’m sorry. I just didn’t have time to work with you.” I think that what happened was that they had signed me in New York without Gene being told. And he wanted to show them who was boss. I was heartbroken. I must have cried for about half an hour… . Later, I called up Vincente Minnelli’s office and I said, “Could I have an appointment to see you?” And he said, “Yes, certainly.” I went in to see him and put in a complaint about what had happened. I said, “I just want to tell you the way I feel and I think it was a dreadful thing to do.” And Minnelli agreed with me. He was terribly nice and he said, “I’m so sorry but, you know, I’m really powerless to do anything.” I really believe Minnelli had nothing to do with it… . I think Gene was hot for my stand-in.5
Principal photography got underway in December 1953. Adding to the already palpable tension on the set was the fact that once the performers finally managed to produce whatever effect their exacting, nonverbal director was looking for, they were obliged to do it all over again. As beleaguered costar Van Johnson recalled,
They were going from widescreen to CinemaScope, so when we got a take, Vincente would say, “Now we’re going to do one for CinemaScope… .” So I watched him. It took another 45 minutes to put this big camera on and relight and widen the thing. So, finally, I said, “I’m shooting two pictures!” I went to see Dore Schary and I said, “I’m shooting two movies. I should have two salaries …” but Dore said, “Yes, you’re shooting two versions. That’s right. And you’re getting one salary, Van, and be glad that you’re getting it …” and I walked out very meekly. I never did that again.6
Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, and Gene Kelly in Minnelli’s adaptation of Broadway’s Brigadoon. Vincente wanted to shoot it in Scotland but was overruled. Kelly envisioned it as a “Scottish western,” while his director saw it as “more of an operetta.” To top it all off, the musical was shot simultaneously in two versions: widescreen and CinemaScope. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
Minnelli would later praise Lerner’s fantasy as “ingenious” and the score as “melodic and haunting.” However, according to Gene Kelly, Vincente was never in love with Brigadoon, and this seems to be borne out in the claustrophobic, airless feeling that permeates parts of the film. Occasionally, the musical manages to free itself from its soundstage shackles and soars. “The Heather on the Hill” is a glorious sequence, which succeeds because of the gracefulness of Kelly and Charisse and the inspired arrangements of Conrad Salinger.
At first glance, Brigadoon appears to contain all of the makings of a Minnelli classic: It’s a musical in which a restless soul traverses the pathways between an unsatisfying everyday existence and a far more enchanting dream world. Yet, a frustrated Minnelli, a “curiously remote” Kelly, and the drudgery of repeating every shot a second time in the name of CinemaScope added up to a 108-minute disappointment for some observers. “I told him I thought it kind of sucked and particularly a lot of Vincente’s work,” Stone Widney says of a postscreening autopsy he conducted with Alan Jay Lerner. “It had lovely touches in various places but clumsy staging, though Alan didn’t want to hear that and I think he was probably kind of in denial about that. As long as the show gets on and it has big stars and it makes money, I think Alan felt that it was a success.”7
Fifty years after its initial release, Brigadoon is dismissed by some, championed by others. “I think Brigadoon is an underrated film,” says film and dance scholar Beth Genne:
For one thing, I think that they were quite successful in transferring it to film. Some of the compositions are really beautiful, like the opening scene where the village comes back to life… . But I think there’s a prejudice against it because when [the stage show] first appeared, the sophisticated New York critics said—as they did with Oklahoma!—that it was corny. There was also this feeling that Brigadoon was “twee,” which means something that goes beyond cute. Like when you go to “Mrs. So and So’s Kozy Komfort Inn” and she’s got too many ribbons on everything and a few too many scented candles… . After awhile, you just can’t handle it. It’s overdone. I don’t think Brigadoon is overdone but it’s maybe just a little bit twee. But even so, there are some marvelous things in it.8
Despite some of Brigadoon’s redeeming features, most of the critics took aim: “The whimsical dream world it creates holds no compelling attractions,” said Penelope Huston in the London Times. “Hollywood can still put its worst foot forward in the classic manner,” griped Newsweek.
Farley Granger, who had remained friendly with Vincente after The Story of Three Loves, remembered that he and designer Oliver Smith were visiting with Minnelli when the reviews of Brigadoon were phoned in to the film’s mortified director.
I remember that Vincente was on the phone all the time that we were having drinks. Liza, who was a little girl at the time, kept running in and out in these incredible costumes. We could hear the phone conversations coming from the other room… . Brigadoon had opened in New York and it had gotten roasted, and we could hear Vincente saying, “Were they that bad?” and “That bad … really?” Oliver Smith, who had a very funny, dry sense of humor, would raise an eyebrow and giggle, and in would come Liza as Little Bo Peep.9
20
Cobwebs
ALONG WITH Alice in Wonderland and The Catcher in the Rye, W. H. Hudson’s 1904 fantasy Green Mansions was on the short list of great books best left unfilmed. Although it ranked alongside the Bible and the dictionary on the all-time bestseller list, Hudson’s classic was considered “too special” to be adapted for the screen. Set in “the forbidden forests beyond the Amazon,” the novel concerned a disillusioned political refugee who retreats into the jungle, where he encounters Rima, the ethereal Bird Girl who captures his heart. The revolutionary joins Rima on a trek to find the lost civilization of Riolama, but their journey ends in tragedy.
As several frustrated producers would discover, attempting to transfer Green Mansions to the screen was a daunting prospect. Even a semi-faithful adaptation would demand stunning on-location photography, a barrage of special effects, and a leading lady who could be believable speaking “bird” and flitting about in cobweb couture.
In the early ’30s, King Kong director Merian C. Cooper attempted to bring Green Mansions to the screen for RKO (which had acquired the rights to Hudson’s book in 1932). A Technicolor camera crew was dispatched to South America to shoot atmospheric location footage, and costumer Walter Plunkett was commissioned to create a smock of spider webs for exotic beauty Dolores del Rio, who was a shoo-in to play Rima. Everything seemed to have fallen into place when a regime shift at RKO spelled the end of Cooper’s Green Mansions—but that didn’t stop other filmmakers from trying. In 1945, MGM acquired the screen rights to Hudson’s allegory of eternal love. A steady stream of press releases announced everyone from Peruvian folk singer Yma Sumac to the far too earthy Elizabeth Taylor as Rimas-in-waiting, but still Green Mansions defied the cameras.
In October 1953, the Los Angeles Times reported that Metro was taking a “new whack” at the property: “MGM still thinks it can lick the Green Mansions problem—i.e., how to get a movie out of W. H. Hudson’s classic… . Present solution: To turn it over to Alan Lerner, writer; Vincente Minnelli, director; and Arthur Freed, producer—a trio endowed with comparative taste and intelligence—with permission t
o shoot the works.”1
Despite the participation of Minnelli, Lerner, and Freed, none of them had any intention of making Green Mansions: The Musical. It would be a drama, though music would play an important part in the production. In fact, Brazilian composer-orchestrator Heitor Villa-Lobos was engaged to create a “Bird Symphony” for the film. This would be part of what Minnelli hoped would be a “mystical score” based on authentic birdsongs.
In February 1954, Alan Jay Lerner reported that he was “cruising up the Orinoco,” with twenty-five pages of his Green Mansions screenplay completed. “I am resisting desperately the temptation to write ‘charm’ and ‘local color,’” Lerner explained to Arthur Freed. “I feel very keenly that it must never look like a fantasy… . I am also trying to write it economically, not only to preserve the mood and narrative flow, but also so that there will be adequate room for the visual.”2
As usual, the visual was very much on Minnelli’s mind as he flew off to Peru, Panama, British Guiana, and Venezuela to scout locations for Green Mansions that June. Like Lerner, Minnelli realized that the last thing Hudson’s fairy tale needed was a studio-manufactured South America. The more naturalistic the setting, the more believable the story—though once Vincente was en route to the rain forests, he may have wished he was back in Culver City: “I was in this one motor plane with Indians and their babies who vomited in the aisles, goats and hound dogs… . I never thought we’d get there in one piece,” he said of the trip.3 In the jungles of Venezuela, Minnelli and company were hampered by incessant rain, primitive conditions, and oppressive heat. After a week of waiting around for the torrential rains to subside, Minnelli, art director Preston Ames, and a skeleton crew managed to shoot some stunning 16 millimeter images.
