Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (18 page)

The director found he had to differentiate between the show’s needs and his star-wife’s. He had to recognize whether she was incapable of performing the number convincingly or just afraid to try. Fosse decided that the song was to stay and in reaction, Verdon made herself unavailable for some performances. Another approach she had was to skip the song altogether; the
New York Times
(April 17, 1966) reported that she had done this at matinees. It said she also dropped the opening number, “You Should See Yourself,” although both songs were said to be restored for the evening performances. Robert Fryer would explain that Verdon did so out of illness. When he was asked why audiences were not warned of the planned omissions, he replied that it was something that he would talk to his star about. When one audience member wrote to her complaining, Verdon supposedly divided the ticket cost by the length of the show and sent him a refund for the amount of minutes he missed. If it is true that she was bothered by the Streisand comparison over “Where Am I Going,” she was presumably less concerned over the fact that Peggy Lee had performed “Big Spender” before the show opened. This was done by Lee in her act in New York’s Copacabana nightclub and perhaps less of a concern since Verdon did not sing the song.

The Fosses were joined by Nicole, her nanny, and Paddy Chayefsky for the tryouts. The show was considered a hit. The director was particularly pleased with a bit of vaudeville business he had added in the scene where Charity hides in the closet, which always got a laugh. He had her light a cigarette and blow the smoke into a clear plastic garment bag and zip it shut, fearing discovery. However something else happened in the same scene that was not as funny: Also in the closet with Verdon was a feather boa and she inhaled one of its feathers. Afterwards she complained of respiratory trouble and in a few days she was wheezing. Still Verdon made every performance and continued to coach the dancers for hours after each show. Then she found it difficult to breathe and said that she could feel something in her throat. Apparently the duck feather from the boa had wrapped around her vocal chords. Verdon kept playing in the show until her voice grew so raspy and her discomfort so intense that it was decided to take her to a hospital. The next performance was cancelled to allow her understudy, Helen Gallagher, to run through the part. (She had been also cast as Nickie so
her
understudy, Elaine Cancilla, filled in for that part.) Gallagher would play Charity for a week but Verdon came back fully recovered for the Broadway run, and Gallagher and Cancilla assumed their original roles. During the Broadway run, Gallagher would again get the opportunity to play the title role during Verdon’s absences. She would say that when she was initially asked by the producers to play a secondary role in the show and be Verdon’s stand-by, she agreed without qualms. Gallagher claimed she might have had trouble doing so for a star she did not respect but she found Verdon unsurpassed. She said she would wait in the wings and watch her dance and wonder what muscles she was using for a particular move. Verdon moved like spun spit and no effort showed. Gallagher never thought that she ought to be in her place because Verdon belonged there. She also felt proud that she was there to make an actress feel secure when she was needed.

It was reportedly in the tryouts that Simon added the idea of Oscar being a claustrophobe who gets stuck in an elevator with Charity. However some sources claim that it was one of the first ideas that he had suggested to Fosse after reading the draft. Fosse had supposedly had the couple first meet in a group therapy scene which Simon disliked. What gave the writer the new idea was a real-life experience that supposedly occurred one day when he was attempting to leave the Jefferson Hotel to go to the theater with his wife Joan. Their elevator stalled and, Simon being a claustrophobe, he panicked as they waited to be rescued. Joan tried to keep Simon calm by playing trivia games with him but he kept getting more and more agitated. Sweating profusely, he removed his jacket then his tie, fanning himself with his hat. When they were finally rescued and the elevator opened into the hotel’s lobby, the couple disembarked but then he suddenly told Joan that he had to get back in. Simon told her that he needed to go back to their room to write down the scene they had just lived through, which he did.

The tryouts also highlighted what was seen as a weak ending. Fosse had asked Stanley Donen to see the show and this was something he agreed with. Simon had ended with Charity being left at the altar by Oscar and again being pushed into the lake as she had in the play’s beginning. McMartin playing Oscar said that people in the audience, specifically women, already booed at him after the show so he dreaded a proposed
darker
ending. Simon resisted Fosse’s request and kept his ending. Charity emerged from the lake with hope, even after a cheap gag with a good fairy who turns out to be a television advertising shill. Verdon told Margery Beddow she had proposed a different ending. In hers, a hot dog and souvenir vendor appeared next to Charity after she emerged from the lake and he gave her a balloon. She wrote a note and said the words aloud: “Whoever you are and wherever you are, I love you” and then tied the note to the balloon and released it to the sky. However, this ending was never used.

When the show came to New York, Verdon reportedly decorated her Palace Theatre dressing room in shades of Army khaki green. After ten previews from January 18, 1966, it opened on January 29. Accompanying the
New York Times
article on January 23 about the Palace was an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Verdon in the show. The theater renovations included a reduction in the seating capacity, with the second balcony closed. Some say this was Fosse’s idea because he wanted to establish intimacy with the audience and felt that the crows’ nest seats worked against that. Verdon would say that it was her idea since she felt that the sightlines would not give ticket buyers a good view of the performance.

The opening date had been postponed from December 28, 1965, and then from January 25, 1966, because the renovations were taking longer than expected, according to a spokesman for the show. The day before the opening, Fellini gave Verdon a cornetta—a curved horn that was the traditional symbol of good luck. The opening night crowd included Verdon’s father who flew in from California. Also attending was Martin Charnin, Fosse’s abandoned collaborator, who would eventually succeed in a suit against the show’s producers for payment for his contribution. The opening night party was originally planned to be held at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center but changed to the Skylight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Ed Sullivan was one of the attendees which no doubt helped Verdon mend the rift between them.

The show received a mixed review from the
Times
’ Stanley Kauffmann on January 31, 1966
.
He partly blamed Fosse for Verdon’s “playing so unremittingly in the brave-pathetic vein that she frequently repeats effects,” though he acknowledges that she was a first-class performer. On February 25, 1966, in the
Times
was another mixed review by Clive Barnes, though he wrote that Fosse’s choreography for Verdon gave her gamine charm its full chance. The show was a hit and would run till July 15, 1967. The image of Verdon’s black slip and rope-handled bag was also marketed on program souvenir books and shopping bags in Times Square. The show was nominated for nine Tony Awards including Verdon for Best Actress in a Musical but only Fosse won for Best Choreography. Verdon was beaten by Angela Lansbury in
Mame
.

The original Broadway cast recording was made on February 6, 1966, and released the next day. The album featured opening night party interviews including one with Verdon. She said that she wasn’t nervous before the show because she usually got very calm (but she didn’t know if that was good). She said she liked the show and wasn’t tired after it, because she liked Charity since she was so hopeful.

The cast recording was reviewed by John S. Wilson in the
New York Times
. He wrote that Verdon worked wonders with her oddly charming voice, and though the score was not one that added magnificence or soaring lyricism to a song, it was not one that has much to be magnificent or lyrical
about
. Wilson said that Verdon’s primary contributions were touches of color (illuminating what might otherwise be ordinary lines) and perceptive shadings of expression that helped to bring out ideas that the composer and lyricist have not made explicit in their songs. Verdon helped to make a generally adequate score seem better than it was.

Some of the theater’s renovations proved to be problematic during the run. The old dressing rooms had been removed to expand the backstage area and a high-speed elevator rose ten flights above the stage to new ones. Verdon was critical of this alteration since she felt that the basement should have been restored so that players could change there during the show. Air conditioning had not been included in the renovations, and to cope with the record summer heat, a fan blew over a block of ice. Verdon apparently placed a thermometer backstage and when it recorded the temperature as 107 degrees one day the matinee performance was cancelled. She also reported that dancers fainted onstage from the heat. Another unfortunate event occurred when a workman accidently broke into a sewer line which resulted in waste floating all over the basement. The cast complained to Actors Equity and the union suggested the producers buy the performers galoshes. Verdon said that there were rats backstage as big as cats, and roaches that she photographed with a shoe next to them to show their size. Between the heat and the fumes, people began to get sick. The producers did nothing to solve the problem until Verdon got an attorney and sued Equity for non-representation, which finally led to things getting fixed. She told Equity that she would not do the show until the problems were solved and she refused to go on, although her standby did. They then closed down the show the next day and cancelled the next matinee but that night there was air conditioning. It was said only the dancers’ loyalty to Fosse made them stay and endure such unacceptable conditions.

Verdon was off for six shows in the week prior to May 16, 1966, because of a virus ailment. She was replaced by her understudy, Helen Gallagher, although it was reported that the absence of Verdon meant a drop in earnings for the show. Gallagher also filled in when Verdon went on a two-week vacation from July 11 to 25 and then from June 30, 1967, when she left the show after emergency surgery. Gallagher was replaced in her role of Nickie by Charlene Ryan, who stepped out of the chorus. Lee Roy Reams says that he gave his notice on opening night because he had been offered three times the money to work with Juliet Prowse. He reported that on his last night on the show, when his Young Spanish Man was meant to pull Verdon out of the orchestra pit, she refused to give him her hands. Rather she placed her feet in his face, so he had to pull her up by them. Reams interpreted that as a sign that she didn’t want him to leave.

Verdon was interviewed by the
Times
’ Rex Reed in an article entitled “I Never Wanted to Be Special” (February 6, 1966). The interview took place in her Palace dressing room where she sprawled on her chaise lounge. He described his subject as tall, freckled, with big bones and long muscles and a head of hair that looked like a tomato surprise that just exploded. Verdon actually asked Reed not to write about her flame-colored tresses, and she defended wearing a mink coat over her rehearsal pants by saying that she didn’t want to catch cold because she was sick so much of the time. Verdon commented that everybody wanted to know what she had been doing since
Redhead
and she told Reed that it included getting married, some television, taking dance lessons from Cyd Charisse’s sister-in-law and having Nicole. The star said that she also had stomach trouble and two of the top specialists in New York treated her for ulcers and hepatitis when she was actually pregnant. Verdon reported that after sixteen working hours a day, she and Fosse now planned to do nothing for a while except stay home with the baby. To sustain her energy in the show she drank beef bouillon with soda crackers and two tablespoons of cottage cheese for the potassium. Verdon also took a special formula vitamin pill that Cornell University made up for pilots on bombing missions during the war to keep the fat built up on the nerve ends. She felt that she would never make another Hollywood movie because their idea of a movie star is a girl with a big bosom who can do a couple of chorus kicks. Verdon believed that she was not box office so asked rhetorically, who would pay to see her in a movie? Another problem was that she did not think she was sexy and that she only kids sex, like in the Lola number in
Damn Yankees
.

Verdon also talked about what she saw as a character flaw: It took her a long time but once she decided to do something, she tried so hard to make it perfect that she was never satisfied. Verdon doesn’t classify it as ambition, since she also did carpentry and approached it the same way.

She and Fosse were photographed in their New York apartment on March 24, 1966, by Martha Holmes for
Life
magazine. Verdon wore a dark checked dress with light jacket and scarf and sat in a chair smiling up at Fosse, who sat on the chair’s left arm. In an article by Thomas Thompson on
Sweet Charity
that appeared in the March 25, 1966,
Life
, he reported that Verdon was forty-one years old and a grandmother but you would never guess it from the way she “prances with legs, arms and tangerine hair flying.” The article also featured photographs of Verdon in the show, as well a shot of Fosse with her in her dressing room after a matinee performance with her seated wearing a robe. The main photograph for the article is Verdon in Charity’s little black dress and handbag, with her right leg raised and her figure backed by pink lights.

During one
Sweet Charity
matinee, Verdon heard that Fosse had chest pains and she was unable to be with him because she was required to stay for the evening performance. Later Fosse denied having the pains but implied that he faked them to make his wife give an even greater performance that night. However the director became bitter about the show, feeling that Verdon undeservingly got more credit for it than he. Cary Grant saw the show and told Verdon that she was the strangest actor he had ever watched. When she played a happy scene he cried and when she played a sad scene he laughed. This particularly irked Fosse since he had directed Verdon to do this. Perhaps his frustration also came out of how her performing in the show left him alone at night, and his amphetamine use which made it difficult for him to sleep. These things would supposedly lead Fosse to seek the company of other women. Ironically he would never go to see Verdon in her dressing room before or after the show once it had opened, and never took her out afterwards. Others in the
Sweet Charity
cast saw that she appeared lonely, and brief visits to cheer her up extended to hour-long ones where they gossiped and sewed stuffed animals for Nicole. Ruth Buzzi said that she was in there most nights of the week. Care was taken by Verdon’s visitors not to mention her absent husband, a subject the leading lady also never brought up.