Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (12 page)

Verdon doesn’t make an appearance until halfway into the film. Lola is first seen objectified by her stockinged legs in a negligee with her head under a sheet in a pink bed, when Mr. Applegate (Ray Walston) telephones her to come to Washington. For her first number, “A Little Brains, a Little Talent” she wears a white suit with blue and white striped blouse, and also uses a handkerchief. Her movement is limited to walking around the room, lying on a bed and leaning against a wall as she sings, although she gestures with her arms. For her “Whatever Lola Wants” number, Verdon enters using a Spanish accent as Senorita Lolita Hernando. She is dressed like a vamp, in black flamenco skirt with black gloves, and a black ribbon fascinator and big red flower in her hair. Verdon’s act as Lolita is funny because we are aware of the pretense, and also since she is both overt and coy. She drops her act momentarily when she says “home” in her normal voice, but goes into overdrive when she sings the song. She removes her gloves, skirt, throws away her fascinator, and removes her lace capris to reveal a black lace-trimmed body suit. In the number Lola dances around Joe (Tab Hunter) and also touches him repeatedly, ending with her lying across his waist. Verdon provides a subtle silent reaction to Applegate’s insulting her for her failure to ensnare Joe, and this is despite her not being given a closeup. It is said that the choreography for both “A Little Brains, a Little Talent” and “Whatever Lola Wants” was toned down from their stage versions to appease film censors. In particular the former number’s bumps that were cut are said to explain why Verdon is seen to stand so much in the scene.

For “Who’s Got the Pain” Verdon and Fosse are dressed in black pants with yellow shirts and white hats. Unlike the shirt of Fosse, which has black horizontal stripes, her shirt has black and red cherry-shaped baubles and a black fringe, is low-cut and exposes her midriff. The number is filmed mostly in one long shot, and since both dancers are so good, one’s eye alternates between them so a second viewing is required to focus on their individual performance. Verdon said that it was very difficult to keep up with Fosse because he was a terrific jumper. He could fly but she couldn’t. They would be right in the middle of a take and he’d yell at her to jump. Despite that, she felt it was wonderful. Verdon described the experience as like a jetstream where you just coasted and didn’t feel the energy. She said that she didn’t even know that she was tired until she stopped.

In “Two Lost Souls” the initial conceit is used for Joe to stop Lola from dancing because he says he can’t dance. However it is he who dances before her, and although he will occasionally join her, he mostly leaves her alone to dance. The crowd in the club that surrounds the couple adds to the notion of preventing her from dancing, so that she has to move away in her first attempt with another man who is deliberately bad. As the number progresses it allows Verdon to release her energy and show her dancing ability. When the music changes tempo, she joins other women in a line to dance. Verdon is distinguished from them by her wearing the black dress to their colored ones, and she also has different moves. Joe returns with a chair that she sits on and he slides across the floor with her on it. After the other dancers attach themselves to her, then detach themselves, Verdon dances solo. Then she joins the others in a group dance where they clap and jump and kick and touch the floor and reach for the sky, in a frenzy matched by the music. The number concludes with Verdon standing on Joe’s chair and then joining him to sing the end of the song.

Verdon’s acting performance is less theatrical than that of Ray Walston and the others; she doesn’t yell and tempers her volume for the screen. Lola is vulnerable and touching when she speaks to Joe in her normal voice before the benefit performance. Our fear that it is her new tactic to trick him is allayed by her sincerity. Her later reluctance to help Applegate any further is confirmed when she admits that she loves Joe. Verdon looks beautiful wearing a pink sleeveless sheath with matching pink and blue sparkly wrap in Applegate’s apartment, and a black full-skirted dress for “Two Lost Souls” which enhances her dancing. She also wears a striking dark pink dress and coat at the climactic game.

The character of Lola is positioned in the narrative in contrast to the other women, who are mostly middle-aged and plain. The most extreme comparison can be made with Sister Miller (Jean Stapleton) who is loud and gauche and wears an unflattering hairstyle. It’s telling that the only young women of any note shown in the film are fan club members at the Joe Hardy benefit and they look more like schoolgirls than women. There are young women shown as chorus girls at the benefit and female patrons and dancers at the club for the “Two Lost Souls” number, but they get inconsequential screen time. This is presumably done so as not to counter Lola’s appeal, but also perhaps because a lot of the ballplayers look more middle-aged than young like Joe. The plot point that Joe is in love with his wife is given a spin in light of his having been transformed into a younger man, who is never tempted by the younger Lola. He kisses her but it is not presented as an act of desire. Lola being a former ugly woman also has a disturbing subtext, since it could be used to judge her present more supposedly beautiful self as less so. When Applegate turns her back into a crone with long gray hair, gray eyebrows, a hooked nose, warts and a hunched back, it is hard to recognize this as also Verdon. Finally, there is something sad about Lola’s fate. Although we see that Applegate has turned her back into the beauty Lola, it seems that she will always be in danger of being turned back into a crone and always at his mercy. She sold her soul for beauty and the cost was disempowerment.

Still of Verdon in the 1958 film version of her stage hit
Damn Yankees.
Photograph by Bert Six.

The film premiered in Denver (the location of the Yankees fan club) on September 19, 1958; released in Los Angeles on September 24, and in New York on September 26. The tagline was “It’s a picture in a million! Starring that girl in a million, the red-headed darling of the Broadway show, Gwen Verdon!” The original theatrical trailer carried the name of the movie as
Whatever Lola Wants
although the actual name was added parenthetically in smaller letters at the bottom of the screen.

It was praised by
Variety
, Bosley Crowther in the
New York Times
, Clive Hirshhorn in
The Warner Bros. Story
, and Gordon Gow in
Hollywood in the Fifties
. Crowther wrote that Verdon’s performance was “one of the hottest and heartiest we’ve seen in a musical movie in years” and that she “has the sort of fine, fresh talent that the screen badly needs these days.” He commented that while she lacks the movie star beauty of Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor, she “manufactures her own strong brand of sex” and, while brilliant as a dancer, “her exceptional achievements in this picture are as a comedienne.” Crowther wrote further about the film and Verdon in a
Times
article on October 5, 1958. He said that her appearance in the film was the major screen event of the year and that she was an absolute natural for films. Crowther noted that Verdon “may not be too good-looking, by the measuring tape of Hollywood” but that she had a wondrously witty style of acting and was as saucy and fresh as a summer breeze. He also commented that if somebody didn’t sign her quickly for another film, then all producers are mad.

The film was nominated for the Best Music Score Academy Award, which is ironic given that a film musicians’ union strike had prevented pre-recording an orchestra musical soundtrack score for the rehearsal and filming of the production numbers. The original show recordings were employed for rehearsing and filming and afterwards the vocal tracks were recorded a cappella, without a studio union orchestra on a Warner Sound Department stage. They were then sent to Italy where a symphony orchestra recorded secondary underscore tracks. The film’s soundtrack recording was released by RCA Victor in 1958.

It was reported in the
New York Times
on April 14, 1959, that the film was not a box office success. An effort to make it more profitable for its European release was made by changing the title to
What Lola Wants
but it was still unsuccessful. It was known that movies about baseball generally only had appeal in the United States and in Japan, so the European market was relied upon to pick up half of the film’s gross. There was future hope that areas in the Caribbean and South America might be more successful, given their becoming increasingly conscious of the sport, but one movie executive said that the hope was “as bright as a spitball in a smog.” This lack of confidence was shown by the fact that at the time there were no baseball-themed movies slated for production. A Warner Bros representative said that the film had failed in the United States despite receiving critical raves. The reason given was that it was thought that people who like baseball like to root for or against a team, and this was something that they couldn’t do in the movie. Another reason was that baseball was more expensive to film than other sports since you needed two teams and needed to shoot outdoors. Other movie executives had other suggested reasons. One was that women didn’t respond because they wanted a great personal story with family appeal. Two successful movies that had baseball themes had such stories,
The Pride of the Yankees
(1942) and
The Babe Ruth Story
(1948), although producer Sam Goldywn felt that the former’s casting of Gary Cooper also helped.

A
Damn Yankees
remake was made for television and broadcast in April 8, 1967, by NBC. Directed by Kirk Browning, it starred Phil Silvers as Applegate, Lee Remick as Lola, Jerry Lanning (who would later become Verdon’s real-life partner) as Joe, and Jim Backus as Van Buren. In 2009 the film was going to be remade with Jim Carrey as the Devil and Jake Gyllenhaal as Joe Hardy, but production never got underway.

In his autobiography
Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star
, Hunter says that he had heard that Verdon was considered too old and not pretty enough to play Lola and that she was going to be replaced by Marilyn Monroe or Mitzi Gaynor. Richard Adler said that, according to the Hollywood tradition of that era, Verdon’s face was not pretty enough to make her a film star, like Tab Hunter who was almost perfect looking. Hollywood had a narrow definition of pretty, but it was her figure rather than her face that people were attracted to. Hunter’s sympathy for her became tempered by an item he had seen in Walter Winchell’s column that said that she was disappointed that Hunter had been cast in the film. Hunter also writes that Verdon called him “Tabunter” in a thick New York accent and the rest of the cast followed.

In the summer of 1958, Verdon took her first vacation in ten years. With Jimmy she went to Long Island and spent time cooking and lying on the beach. Of the former, she said that she liked spaghetti with clam sauce. Of the latter, she said that she freckled until they all ran together to form a tan. She also began working privately on her next Broadway role which was not to start rehearsals until November.

In the meantime Verdon did more television. On September 21, 1958, she made the first of three appearances on NBC-TV’s music variety series
The Dinah Shore Chevy Show
. It was filmed live in New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre with special hosts Janet Blair and John Raitt.

On September 24, 1958, the
New York Times
reported that
Redhead
was slated to open at the 46th Street Theatre on February 5, 1959. This was to be Verdon’s next Broadway show, which would play in Washington for a fortnight beginning on December 29 and then have an additional three weeks at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia. In the meantime Verdon returned to the
Dinah Shore
show on October 5. The
New York Times’
John P. Shanley described Verdon in it as a one-woman forest fire whose dancing was, as usual, inspired. On October 8, the
Times
reported that
Redhead
was being eyed by NBC who were considering putting up $150,000 for the show. This was half the capital required by producers Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr.
Times
reporter Sam Zolotow had also added David Shaw to the names of the show’s creators, along with Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon, and Albert Hague.

Redhead
was a musical murder mystery set in turn-of-the-century London against a background of music halls and wax museums. The starring role was the Cockney Essie Whimple, a woman who created wax figures for a museum operated by her two aunts and who learned the identity of Jack the Ripper. It had been written for Bea Lillie; sources say that Lillie had to decline because she was unavailable. Other stars had been approached in the hope that they would either finance it themselves or take it to a producer. Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Celeste Holm and Gisele MacKenzie had all passed on it. At one point Irving Berlin was commissioned to write the score, but then he changed his mind and backed out.

Verdon was invited by the producers to hear the songs and Fosse went with her. If she liked what she heard, getting financing for the show would be easy. It is said that Verdon, aware of her new power, agreed to do it on one condition: that Fosse direct. Other sources say that the idea of his directing came from the producers, as an alternative to his suggestion that he play a small part. Verdon would later say that a demand that Fosse should direct was not made by her because she was not big enough to do so. However she felt that she couldn’t afford
not
to have him as the director. Fosse was approved to direct, with another provision being that Verdon would perform at the backers auditions.