Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (14 page)

However, the relationship had its problems since Verdon preferred to go home straight after the show, but Fosse stayed out, rehearsing and having drinks with the cast members. He saw other women but tried to be discrete about it out of respect for her. When asked by hairdresser Vidal Sassoon how he kept it from Verdon, Fosse reportedly told him, “Hot showers.” He often did not go home at all, preferring to take a room at the Edison Hotel so that he could move from rehearsal room to bedroom.

Verdon attended the 1958 Tony Awards on April 12, 1959, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. She was presented her Best Actress in a Musical award for
Redhead
by Ingrid Bergman. Verdon was photographed wearing a short black sleeveless dress with fur trim and cape and white gloves. Fosse’s contribution as choreographer and director of the show was also noted in a
New York Times
article by Emily Coleman (April 19, 1959) entitled “The Dance Man Leaps to the Top.” Verdon was quoted as saying that he could give you movement to do to suggest a feeling, since a choreographer is never afraid to move you around in the scene. Coleman said that Fosse credited Verdon for the success of their shows together, saying that when you have someone like her you like to have her show off. He said that people like to see people do things because dancing is in great part sheer exhibitionism. Verdon agreed with this idea, though she felt that sometimes a person could make dance an art form. For her it represented just an abundance of energy. It was about feeling good and getting to play all the games that she never got to play as a kid. Verdon said that to dance in a group was the most exciting thing and she had never had that before.

In May 1959 the
New York Times
reported that Verdon had won a Theatre Award for her performance in
Redhead
by the Newspaper Guild of New York. It was presented to her at the union’s Page One Ball on June 26 at the Astor Hotel. The
New York Times
on August 8 reported that Verdon had extended her contract for the show till June 30, 1960.

New projects were offered to her. There was a proposed film version of
Redhead
, and a plan to take Verdon and Fosse to London for a production of the stage show; he would have played the murderer and Verdon would have made her London debut. But it did not happen. Robert Fryer again tried to get the rights to
Chicago
for her but failed. It was said that there were press reports that he had an option on the material with his partner Lawrence Carr, although this proved not to be true.

Verdon made her third appearance on
Dinah Shore
, broadcast on October 4, 1959. She is first seen warming up in her dressing room, wearing a black leotard and waist-sash. Verdon moves in fast motion as per the opening skit that has Shore moving like this. Shore stands in front of a wall of posters from Verdon’s stage shows (
Can-Can
,
Damn Yankees
,
New Girl in Town
, and
Redhead
) to introduce her doing “Erbie Fitch’s Twitch” from the latter show. (Shore pronounces her name emphasizing the second syllable, as Ver
DON
.) For the number, Verdon is like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, in a suit, bowler hat and moustache and holding a cane in front of a crowd of on-stage observers. At one point it appears that the cane hits an overhead light since a crash is heard. There are frequent cuts from long shots to closer shots, which diminishes the effect of her performance.

She returns later in the show with Dinah and boxer Ingmar Johannson and both women wear ridiculously oversized coats over their dresses. Verdon is funny in the way she flirts with Johannson. She tickles him and bites his leg, leans back against him as he shows her how to shadow box, and leans forward on him. When he comments that it takes a long time to learn how to shadow box, Verdon replies, “I’ve got nothing to do for the next twenty years.” As she leans facing him, she asks, “How do you hold on in the clinches?”

After Johannson exits, Verdon and Shore remove their coats to sing “I Want to Be Happy” together wearing evening gowns that have side-splits. For the number Shore asks that Verdon not dance and just stand and sing, but she finds this impossible to do. At one point, Verdon puts a scarf over Shore’s head and Shore in turn uses it to tie Verdon’s hands to her body. This does not hold Verdon down. Verdon is then joined by chorus boys wearing black suits that dance with her and push Shore out of the way. Shore draws a box on the floor to show the area where the women must stay in order to be in camera range, but Verdon will not be limited to being in the box’s parameter. Then the chorus boys return and crowd into the box and lift Verdon and Shore. The box is then abandoned as Verdon and Shore both do a Latin dance to end the song. Verdon’s rebellious behavior in the number is more playful than vengeful and it appears that some of it is improvised since at times Shore looks genuinely surprised. Clearly the execution of the number had been rehearsed but Shore’s reaction also shows that she is a good sport when it appears that a younger performer is trying to cheekily upstage her.

On October 25, 1959, Verdon was to appear as one of the guests on an NBC one-hour tribute to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. David Susskind was the show’s producer. With Verdon still in
Redhead
, it was reported on January 1, 1960, in the
New York Times
that it would leave Broadway on April 16 for the coast, and that in Los Angeles and San Francisco it would be performed at the Edwin Lester music festivals. On January 26, 1960, it was reported that the show would close in New York on March 19 and open in Chicago on March 23. It would then travel to Los Angeles on April 25 and San Francisco on June 6. It was also reported that Verdon said on January 25, 1960, that after the show had run its course she would take a leave of nine months to continue her studies in dancing, singing and acting. She also said that during that period she would appear on television and also in the film of the show with Richard Kiley. This was expected to be produced by the show’s producers Fryer and Carr and released through United Artists.

On January 29, 1960, Verdon was interviewed by Charles Collingwood on the CBS news documentary television series
Person to Person
. Two days later she was one of a group of stars to join the cast of the Broadway musical
La Plume de Ma Tante
at the Royale Theatre in a special performance given in aid of the survivors of the Frejus Dam disaster in France. The musical had opened on November 11, 1958, and would close on December 17, 1960. On February 9, 1960, the
New York Times
reported that there was to be a two-hour stage show arranged for the benefit of the new Children’s Clinic of the Postgraduate Center for Psychotherapy at the 46th Street Theatre. Verdon was the chairman of the variety show, which was to be followed that evening by the Apres Bal at the Waldorf Astoria.

Around February 1960, Marjorie Beddow is said to have played Lola in
Damn Yankees
in stock after being recommended by Verdon, who coached her to play the part. Verdon travelled with
Redhead
when it went on tour (Beddow became her understudy). The tour allowed Verdon to meet Fosse’s family and also visit with her own. While the company was on the road, the couple decided to have a baby and in Chicago they married. Verdon later said that she felt that she didn’t have to be married to have a child but Fosse thought that they should. On April 2 they took out a license and the next day drove to Oak Park, Illinois. Verdon said that on the way she kept asking Fosse if he was sure about getting married and he kept saying yes. She also remembered that he was very nervous and if he had changed his mind it still would have been okay with her. Verdon found a justice of the peace from the telephone book.

On April 3, 1960, in the living room of Gilbert Volk were the minister’s wife and their nine-year-old son as witnesses. Verdon said that Volk asked Fosse if he wanted music and he agreed. Money was put into a juke box and Mario Lanza started singing “Be My Love” at the top of his lungs. Then Gwyneth Heneghan and Robert Louis Fosse were wed. It was a secret ceremony. Fosse’s family were only a 45- minute drive away in Evanston, but they were not in attendance because they had not been told of the event. Fosse’s divided feelings between Joan McCracken and Verdon supposedly had him ask McCracken the day before if she would consider getting back together with him. Presumably her answer was no. Apparently after he had left her for Verdon, Fosse remained interested in his former wife enough to frequently telephone her and also follow her. But once he married Verdon, the attention to McCracken stopped. The marriage was not made public until October 1960 when Fosse’s mother Sadie was dying (she passed away on December 19, 1960). Verdon had told fellow
Redhead
actor Pat Ferrier backstage about the marriage after it had happened but asked her not to tell anyone else. However it is said that the press got wind of it a few days after the ceremony. Verdon and Fosse were photographed dining in New York’s Harwyn Club and the next day rumors of their wedding were in most of the dailies.

After the end of the Los Angeles run of
Redhead
, Verdon announced her retirement. She thought that by now she was professionally established and the time was right to have another child. Since Verdon was now nearly 36, perhaps she worried that if she continued to dance, she might lessen her chances to conceive. She had decided that she wasn’t going to work again until she had a baby and the baby was to be at least two-and-a-half years old before she’d go back. However, given her continuing appearances on television, specifically where she danced, the retirement is said to have been only from the stage. And again, this would be temporary.

Verdon was still interested in
Chicago
but Fosse was more taken with the idea of musical versions of either one of two foreign films. They were Mario Monicelli’s crime comedy
Big Deal on Madonna Street
(1958) and Federico Fellini’s drama
Nights of Cabiria
(1957), winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. He had seen the latter film in the spring of 1962. Fosse felt that it had the better role for Verdon of the waifish prostitute Cabiria (played by Giulietta Masina) who looks for love but only finds heartbreak. She could be likened to a modern-day Harlequin which was Verdon’s personal archetype. Though a male figure, she would explain that the Harlequin was a well-rounded, sensitive person who is transformed by suffering when his heart is broken and which makes him a man. He has the twirl of blue paper in his eye to represent tears and a flower on his nose as a symbol of unattainable beauty. He hunts for love, not realizing that it is right in front of him. Verdon could relate the Harlequin’s object of desire of Columbine to Fosse. However she hated the film and found it depressing.

Another possibility was suggested by
Redhead
’s producer, Robert Fryer: a musical of Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” which had been made into a romantic comedy film by Blake Edwards and released in 1961. Fosse imagined doing all three properties as a three-act musical or just two of them as a double bill of one-act musicals. Maurine Dallas Watkins was opposed and again refused the rights to
Chicago
. Verdon talked to the playwright who supposedly lived in a Florida nunnery. She felt it was ridiculous to discuss the idea of a musical of her play just after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Watkins was considered eccentric but also wise about a possible nuclear event only ninety miles from where she lived. She also considered that a murderess was hardly the appropriate subject for entertainment, though one might think that she had overcome this idea when she wrote the original play. Verdon suggested that Watkins’ royalties could be paid to the nunnery instead of Watkins, but she still wouldn’t agree. Other sources claim that Watkins lived with her mother in Florida, though still as a recluse. She only let a few close friends know of her whereabouts, and even her agent had to write to her via a post office box in Jacksonville. When Sheldon Abend took over as her new agent, he hired a private detective to find Watkins, particularly since he knew that
Chicago
was a property of potential value. After she was found, telephone calls were made and a date was set for a meeting, and then broken. Watkins would listen with interest and then give the same answer: no.

Verdon felt that Watkins warmed to the idea of giving the rights to her because her take on the material was that it was a huge comment on the press as much as it was about the murder. However the author remained firm. She had turned to religion, and specifically to astrology, to inform her life decisions. This included not allowing any new productions of her work, although Watkins also took into account what she read in
Variety
about the risks and costs of stage productions. The other sources also claim that Verdon’s approach came through writing to her. Watkins had told Verdon that Ann-Margret was also interested in the rights though perhaps this was untrue and just a test. In reply Verdon said that she should go with her if that was the better way to get the property done. This generosity was something Watkins may not have expected of a performer. While she continued to deny Verdon the rights, she still felt that she was the best choice. The writer held onto the play’s rights until her death in 1969.

The focus shifted back to
Nights of Cabiria
. Fosse screened the film for Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr in their office with Verdon in attendance. The producers supposedly loved the movie but Fosse knew it was still a hard sell. It was not a happy romance and it ended on a sad note. Fryer said that he wasn’t sure it was right for a Broadway show and, to Fosse’s surprise, Verdon agreed with him. She found Cabiria to be pathetic, a poor creature who gets pushed aside and knocked down, and is so desperate for love that she picks up a chicken and hugs it. Carr was the only one who agreed with Fosse and encouraged him to stay with it because he liked the story’s big little heart.

The rights were obtained and Fosse flew to Italy to discuss the project with Fellini, who wished him well but expressed no interest in becoming involved with the musical. Setting the show in a dance hall changed the minds of Cryer, Carr and Verdon, since it made the piece more theatrical and blurred the prostitution line. The girls at the Tango were paid to dance. They were hostesses but not hookers, though what they did after they turned in their dance tickets for a commission was up to them. Verdon liked the idea of Cabiria as a hostess because in New York prostitutes were either elegant with posh lives (whom nobody would have any sympathy for) or bums (that nobody would care about). Fosse rationalized the change since he said there was something ugly about a prostitute in America, although it was all right in Italy. He wanted to get to the nearest thing to a prostitute which he thought was a promiscuous girl who sold something for money—a dance, her understanding, conversation, something. Verdon was concerned that playing the role would make people compare her to Masina or be disappointed because of the material’s unhappy ending. She felt that American audiences preferred happy endings where the girl gets the fella and eight kids in Scarsdale, although she knew that not many people ended up that way.