Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (11 page)

The opposition to the ballet highlighted an irony that the producers must have been aware of. The best option to save the show was to give Verdon more of what she did best—dancing. However, perhaps perversely, the only time she could attend dance rehearsals was after the show at night, since she was used in the daytime for revisions of her dramatic scenes. Verdon was working until three or four in the morning. Abbott suggested that a waltz number might replace the forbidden whorehouse ballet, but when he appeared at Fosse’s rehearsal, he saw the ballet being worked on. Verdon tried to speak to Abbott but was told by Harold Prince that he was too busy. In response she thought, “Then I’m too busy to go on.”

Verdon reported sick for three days (one source says that she was out for a week). Did she really have the flu or was she faking it as a strategic maneuver? Reportedly her part was so complicated that it had to be split into four different sections and played by four different understudies. One read Anna’s dialogue and sang, and the three others performed the dances. When Verdon returned, Abbott supposedly punished her by refusing to hire a stand-in for her. Fosse finally relented and reworked the ballet but the situation made him vow to never again work with Abbott and Harold Prince. The Boston tryouts also saw Verdon drop out of the last four performances because she reportedly knocked herself out from losing weight. She said that she got worn out because she was required to rehearse new material on her own as well as give performances.

The show was originally set to open on Broadway on May 8, 1957. The preview performance of May 13 was a party benefit for the Children’s Village at Dobbs Ferry. On February 16, the
New York Times
announced that the show would now open on May 9. On March 21, they reported that the May 7 preview was to be a benefit for the Rehearsal Club which aided young women seeking theatrical careers. This benefit was later postponed to June 24. The show finally opened on Broadway on May 14 and it ran till May 24, 1958, at the 46th Street Theatre.

It received a mixed review from Brooks Atkinson in the
New York Times
, who wrote that Verdon played with “great style and insight,” giving a complete characterization that was “sobering and admirable.” He wrote more about the show in May 26
Times
article on George Abbott. Atkinson said that the finest thing about it was Verdon’s reticent, moving performance. “There is nothing hackneyed or superficial about Miss Verdon’s acting. It is an illuminating portrait of a wretched inarticulate creature.” In
The Times
of June 16, John Martin wrote that Verdon is a “marvelous, instinctive dancer, and once she starts, Pauline Lord and Eugene O’Neill, plot and drama, lines and gags, fade into a kind of gray unimportance. This is not just skill, it is magic.”

Fosse got to restore the whorehouse ballet, known as the “Red Light” or “Cathouse” ballet. He prepared for this by rehearsing the dancers and presented the ballet a month after the show opened. The date was June 23, his birthday. This was done without the permission of Abbott or Prince. The songs were also captured in an original cast recording done on May 26, 1957. At the Tony Awards ceremony held on April 13, 1958, at the Waldorf Astoria, there was a tie for Best Actress in a Musical for Verdon and Ritter. It lost for Best Musical, Best Featured Actor for Cameron Prud-homme, and Best Choreography for Fosse.

Verdon would say that she was very disappointed in the show because she thought that they were really going to do O’Neill but it changed so much out of town. She says that in the end it was not one of her favorites but it really did more for her than any of the others. People discovered that Verdon could act and wasn’t just the “last of the red hot mamas.” She only stayed with the show for eleven months, and although this was partly to do with the opportunity to do the film
Damn Yankees
, she said that she was very glad to leave.

In a
New York Times
interview by Lewis Nichols (May 26, 1957), Verdon said she would like to do one more dancing job before she stopped. Verdon said that age does step in and in her case that would be pretty soon, and she didn’t want to do a musical show with a lot of dancing and have people on the way out say “But you should have seen her ten years ago.” She felt that she could get through one more but she didn’t want to grow shaky. Verdon supposed that she could do concerts indefinitely, but not ballet. Dancing required a lot of muscular energy and at some point the legs go. She didn’t think that she’d ever been any good at choreography since she did not think she was at all creative, but sometimes she could do something a little different to the steps than what a choreographer like Fosse proposed. Nichols disagreed with Verdon’s idea that she was not creative or a choreographer, particularly since the
Damn Yankees
program had a note that one dance was a collaboration between her and Fosse.

Nichols also wrote that she had practically no social life. He said Verdon seldom went to parties, and if she was at one, she froze at any suggestion that she dance or sing. Her main vice was reading. “Lately, it’s naturally been O’Neill, but for years I’ve read Odets, Saroyan, Strindberg.” She said she went through periods of reading biographies and historical novels: “I guess you could say that I get literary crushes, but it’s not planned reading.” Nichols commented that he thought her son Jimmy, 14, seemed a sad, woebegone little figure because she said that he had not inherited his mother’s ability to dance. Verdon disagreed, saying that her son was as happy as they come. She added that Jimmy played the saxophone, planned to go to Cornell and then wanted to travel west to be a cattleman. The theater was just not in his bones. That was for others in the family.

During the season, Verdon missed performances. The
New York Times
of May 29, 1957, reported that she was out on May 27 and May 28 for four performances due to a throat ailment. Her stint was divided among Ann Williams, who did the acting, and dancers Claiborne Cary, Pat Ferrier and Marie Kolin. Williams usually played Mrs. Dowling and Ferrier was Moll, and Cary and Kolin were in the dancing chorus. It is not known who filled in for these ladies in their roles for the performances. It was reported in the
Times
that Verdon returned to the show on June 3 after having had an acute sinus condition and bronchitis. However her absences apparently had the producers now seeking an alternate to lessen her arduous task of acting, singing and dancing. The
Times
reported on June 7 that Valerie Bettis had made a bid to act as Verdon’s stand-by. However on June 10 it was advised that Joan Holloway, who had followed Verdon in
Can-Can
, had been appointed as her
New Girl in Town
stand-by. Verdon left the show in March 1958 when she was replaced by Evelyn Ward, who appeared to be new to it.

New Girl in Town
was one of many shows featured in an article in the Theater section of the
Life
Magazine edition of June 24. The article was titled “Big Run for O’Neill Plays. The late dramatist has his busiest season on Broadway and off–even with music.”
New Girl in Town
had joined three O’Neill plays already on the New York stage;
Moon for the Misbegotten
,
The Iceman Cometh
, and
A Touch of the Poet
. The article also featured photographs of Verdon dancing in the whorehouse ballet, and one of her in glad rags arriving at the waterfront bar.

Portrait of Verdon in
New Girl in Town
(1957–1958).

The conflict with Abbott had drawn Verdon and Fosse even closer together. Hal Prince said that they were so in love that it was almost dangerous. She is quoted as saying that she would have set her hair on fire if Fosse had asked her to. However it was wondered whether Fosse’s commitment to Verdon was as strong, since he was known to also have dalliances with the show’s chorus girls. In April 1957, Fosse went to Winston County, Alabama, to get a quickie divorce from McCracken. He and Verdon kept separate residences. He lived on the West Side of midtown and her apartment was on Lexington and 68th. After the show, they and Jimmy would meet to have dinner at Dinty Moore’s where they had their own table. Jimmy said that Fosse never tried to behave like a father towards him or even force a friendship. Fosse was funny and frank but still tentative, and Jimmy felt this distance was because of Fosse’s own demons.

On June 28, 1957, Verdon was interviewed backstage for the WRCA radio show
Monitor
, and selections from
New Girl in Town
were played. On August 2 she was a guest on the WCBS radio show
This Is New York
. On September 2, the
New York Times
reported that Verdon had been signed to recreate her role of Lola in the film of
Damn Yankees
which was to start production (with George Abbott and Stanley Donen co-directing) after the first of the year. When Verdon had no matinee performance of
New Girl in Town
, she went to Philadelphia in September to join Fosse for the tryouts of a new musical,
Copper and Brass
. Devised as a vehicle for comedienne Nancy Walker, the show had had tryouts in New Haven from September 13 to 21, 1957. It moved to Broadway’s Martin Beck Theatre on October 17 and closed on November 16.

On January 7, 1958, it was announced in the
Times
that Verdon would essay the role of Nell Gwynn in a midnight pageant entitled “Imperial Favorites” to be presented at the Imperial Ball of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on January 10. The event was for the benefit of the Hospitalized Veterans Service of the Musicians Emergency Fund. On January 9, the
Times
announced that she was one of the guest on Dinah Shore’s January 19 NBC
Chevy Show
. However Verdon did
not
appear in this particular episode.

On March 11, 1958, the
Times
reported that, although the rumor could not be substantiated, there was talk that Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr had acquired the musical
Redhead
, which was formerly designated as “The Works.” The offering was credited to Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon and Albert Hague and the producers planned to start rehearsals in January. Verdon is said to have expressed interest in portraying the feminine lead, and Fosse was reported to be likely to be the director and choreographer. The
New York Times
on March 21, 1958, said she was to leave
New Girl in Town
on March 22 since she was headed to Hollywood to make
Damn Yankees
. On March 25, the
Times
reported the death of Herbert Fields and said that he just put the finishing touches on the lyrics for
Redhead
which was bound for Broadway in 1959. The show, now set to star Verdon, would take place in London in 1906. On April 7, 1958, it was announced in the
Times
that she had been appointed to the board of directors of the Karen Horney Clinic, which had been open for three years as a low-cost psychoanalytical center for persons of limited income.

In the April 14, 1958, issue of
Life
, Verdon appeared on the cover in white-face as her beloved Harlequin, the broken-hearted 16th century clown
in commedia dell-arte
, photographed by Eliot Elisofon. She was one of eleven actors featured in a photographic essay entitled “Eleven Fine Actors Get Their Dream Roles. Stars Create For
Life
Scenes They Would Like to Do.” Verdon is quoted as saying that when she got a new part she always stopped and asked herself how Harlequin would do it, which had helped her a lot.

It was the film version of
Damn Yankees
that brought Fosse and Verdon back to Hollywood. While there she visited her parents and saw her son, Jimmy. The couple rented a house in Malibu and used a red convertible he had named “Baby.” Being with Jimmy made Verdon want to have another child, though she knew that the time was not yet right.

Co-directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen,
Damn Yankees
was in production in April and May 1958. It was shot on location in Washington, D.C., Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, and at Warner Bros. Donen is said to have wanted Abbott’s input to keep the film consistent with the Broadway production. Warner Bros. were originally interested in casting Cary Grant who wanted to play the part of Applegate, and Cyd Charisse as Lola. It is not known why Grant lost interest; Charisse became unavailable because she was filming the film noir
Party Girl
(1958) at MGM. Two performers were not retained from the Broadway cast. Stephen Douglass was replaced by Tab Hunter as the young Joe, and Eddie Phillips was replaced by Allen Case as Sohovik and by Fosse as the mambo partner for Lola in “Who’s Got the Pain.” Apparently Phillips had asked for $1,000 to do the film and the studio refused. In contrast Fosse’s fee was a hairpiece made by the “Wigmaster to the Stars.” The project meant a lot to Verdon because it was the only time they danced together in a film.

She also wanted Fosse with her because she had a hard time with George Abbott previously. Verdon was nervous about doing the film because of him, even though it was Donen who really directed. She felt that Abbott was against her because he didn’t like her on camera. Fosse would stand by on set and watch to try and protect her. Fellow cast member Shannon Bolin was told by Verdon that Donen refused to shoot her in close-up, and there
are
no close-ups of her in the film. Verdon said that this became an issue during the filming of the first number, “A Little Brains, a Little Talent.” She liked the song and thought that she was very cute and adorable in it. Fosse told Donen that when Verdon got to the point in the number when she talks baby talk, there should be an extreme close-up of her. Donen replied that he couldn’t do it. When Fosse asked if it was because he didn’t think that Verdon was good, Donen said that was not the reason. He said it was because he thought she was so “disagreeable looking.” Verdon claimed that Donen said this in front of her, and this was how she started the movie. Perhaps matters were not helped because Fosse is said to have argued with Abbott and Donen about the way some of the numbers were filmed. An example is how he had wanted “Who’s Got the Pain” in as much blackness as possible and only using a single spotlight to follow the dancers. Donen protested and a compromise was reached.