Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (3 page)

She also made one more film appearance. Some sources claim that she appeared uncredited as a cheerleader in the Republic B musical
Hoosier Holiday
(1943). However the available print does not feature Verdon, and the only cheerleaders on screen are said to be played by Nancy Brinckman and Jane Allen. The film had an original running time of 72 minutes, and since the viewed print is only 63 minutes it is possible that Verdon was edited out.

Verdon
can
be seen as a girl in a nightclub in Columbia’s B musical comedy
Blonde from Brooklyn
(1945). Again uncredited, she only appears in one scene where she has an exchange with the film’s leading man, Robert Stanton. After having planned to meet a jukebox girl at La Cucaracha at quarter to nine, he sees Verdon sitting at alone at the bar. Wearing a mink coat, she is looking for someone. He tells her the time is a quarter to nine, thinking she might be the jukebox girl. In response, Verdon says, “It is? And Jack said he’d be here at eight. Some nerve!” and then she exits. Directed by Del Lord, the film was in production from February 12 to 28, 1945. It was released on June 21 with the taglines “Brooklyn Beauty Turns Southern Cutie!” and “A 20 Whistle Salute!”

One source claims that Verdon auditioned for Jack Cole to play a chorus girl in
Blonde from Brooklyn.
There are chorus girls in the film but they sing, not dance, which puts this claim into question. Another question is whether Cole was in a position to have offered Verdon such a part at the time. Although he is not credited for the film’s musical numbers, Cole had come to Columbia to become the studio’s resident choreographer in February 1944, while the film was in production. Verdon knew Cole since he was an alumnus of the Denishawn school. She is quoted as saying that she had auditioned for Cole when she was seventeen, which would have been in 1942. Verdon admitted that she had lied about her age and when she was found out, she was fired. In the
New York Times
obituary for Cole (February 20, 1974), Anna Kisselgoff wrote that Verdon became Cole’s student in 1944.

Verdon claimed that she worked for Cole on the Columbia musical
Tars and Spars
, which was in production from July 26 to September 17, 1945. She said that she rehearsed one number but when it was discovered that she didn’t belong to the film chorus union she was fired. Verdon claimed that she didn’t remember if the number was shot before she was let go. Sid Caesar, who was in the film, confirms in his book
Caesar’s Hours, My Life in Comedy with Love and Laugher
that Verdon was Cole’s assistant on it. Cole himself is not credited on the film, which was directed by Alfred Green and released on January 10, 1946.

The star said that she was hired by Cole later and spent a brief time as one of his Columbia dance troupe, but this is presumed to have happened in 1947 when she had an assignment to review Cole’s nightclub act at Los Angeles’ Slapsie Maxie’s. Verdon claimed that when she went backstage to see Cole, she told him that she hadn’t danced in three years. Cole apparently advised her to get in condition and to come back to see him. Verdon got in shape, auditioned for him at Columbia, and got the job. She would later say that before she saw the show she had never heard of Cole, which contradicts the story of her auditioning for
Blonde from Brooklyn
and her supposed earlier stint in his Columbia Pictures troupe. She also said that she never wrote a review of the show.

Although Cole’s Columbia contract was supposed to last until 1948, he found that he was no longer being given films at the studio. A major strike had affected production and resulted in cutbacks. Another reason may have been that he was not called upon to work on Rita Hayworth’s films, as he had been in the past. Cole got the contracts for himself and his dancers suspended so that they could work elsewhere, and he reactivated his club act in places like Ciro’s and Slapsie Maxie’s. After seeing his show, Verdon went backstage and again told him that she wanted to join his group. Another source writes about Verdon’s audition, though it is not known whether this refers to her first audition for Cole or one she did for him to return to his group. It is claimed that when Verdon went backstage to see Cole, she wore a dress so tight that she could hardly sit down, which amused the choreographer. At the audition, Cole gave her a few ballet sequences to do, calling them out in an esoteric dialect that the Culver City girl could not understand. She supposedly responded by saying, “If you say it in English, I’ll do it.” Cole translated and she did the dances beautifully, and her assured sensuality supposedly shocked the both of them. She had experience but he thought Verdon had no real training, and this was something that he thought he could give her. He also thought she needed style and she was prepared to do whatever he asked so that she could become one of his nightclub dancers. Verdon could see his strength and vision and intelligence; he was more powerful than any choreographer she had yet met. She also knew that he could wreck her if he wanted to, but she vowed, “I won’t let him beat me.”

Some sources claim that Verdon’s decision to work with Cole led to the end of her marriage: She filed for divorce in June 1947. Others say she met with Cole after she had started divorce proceedings. Verdon had supposedly left Henaghan on New Year’s Eve 1943. Her decision was also made due to his alleged alcoholism, which saw him behave in a violent and domineering fashion. Henaghan claimed that Verdon was happy just to be a housewife, but other sources say that it made her miserable. Being a Cole student both fulfilled her renewed desire to dance and also enabled her to provide financially for her son. She sold everything she owned except for books and records, and was now known as “Gwenneth” Verdon.

In Chicago, Cole had previewed a seven-minute number to the Benny Goodman Big Band recording of the Louis Prima song “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing).” It was originally performed by Cole and three men; some sources claim that he created it for Verdon. If he was going to use a female dancer in the number, it would have been Florence Lessing, his dance partner at the time. The song would later be used in the 1978 Broadway show
Dancin’
which Bob Fosse choreographed and directed. Lessing was replaced by Carol Haney as Cole’s leading dancer, but after more nightclub appearances in Los Angeles and New York, Haney decided to leave the group to become Gene Kelly’s new assistant. For an engagement at the Colonial Inn in Florida, Cole replaced Haney with Verdon. Next came an appearance at Ciro’s in Hollywood where Verdon did a clown number. The applause and the demand for encores made her feel sure of herself for the first time on stage, although she dismissed the role as a paint-and-costume one. She may have been accepted as an artist but she still felt that when people stared at her offstage, it was because she was funny-looking.

It was reported that Cole had to provide Verdon with a chaperone because of her age, although she was twenty-two at the time. Cole apparently insisted that she earn a high school diploma through a correspondence course, since it is assumed that her education had been halted by her work as a professional dancer. Verdon says that when they were in Chicago, Cole would give her classes before the performance and, in the daytime, his friend Jack Gray took her to museums and libraries. The correspondence course had Verdon studying typing and shorthand to be a secretary, an occupation she never needed to pursue. Cole and Gray also had her read all of the Claudine books by Colette, which would later help her with her role in
Can-Can
on stage.

It was Gray who noticed Verdon’s talent for mimicry. She had done imitations of her schoolteachers, other’s people’s parents and other people she met when she was a kid just for the fun of it, and Gray thought that she could use this for musical comedy. Verdon also studied choreography, music, drama, costume design, history, anatomy, physiology, sociology, and poetry. She learned the East Indian dances that Cole specialized in. Ruth St. Denis had incorporated Indian Dance at Denishawn, but Cole did not agree with her idea of what it should be. Verdon said that Denis’ idea of East Indian dance was to go around “goosing angels.” He had studied with La Meri, as Verdon would do, although he superimposed his own variations and deliberate distortions. Cole had also studied with Uday Shankar and read the Bhagavad Gita to understand all the stories and characters, and he made his dancers do the same. His work created a unique Eastern variation on jazz dancing. Verdon described him as a pioneer in incorporating jazz into musical theater.

She also had heard that Cole was admired by the Chicago and New York club gangsters. They thought he was extraordinary and loved his act. They also had an odd fear of him because he was so weird-looking. She was told that they wouldn’t want to meet Cole in a dark alley, but she felt that that the more you knew him, the more beautiful he became. Cole was also known to be a strict disciplinarian and his perfectionist frustrations often resulted in temperament. As his new lead dancer, Verdon is said to have borne the brunt of it, since Cole would act out against her as a lesson to the others. While he is said to have admired Verdon’s “insane drive and Scottish-Irish streak of belligerence,” she reportedly took his abuse without objection. It was only after he had retreated that she would react, once reportedly flinging a chair against the wall of her dressing room in anger. Perhaps Verdon knew better than to fight Cole because she knew her position and also that she was getting an education from a master. Her relationship with him was the first of two times in her life where she served a choreographer, with the second being her later partnership with Bob Fosse. Verdon was presumably happy to serve as the instrument of these two men because she also benefited from the dynamic. They were deemed to be creative geniuses and she was the definitive interpreter of their work. However, the men were different and what Verdon did for each was different too. Legend has it that Verdon became Cole’s associate choreographer. She said that she was a helper and that’s all. She didn’t contribute a thing. He worked out the dances, gave them to her and she just passed them along.

A three-months-plus return engagement at Slapsie Maxie’s saw Cole and Verdon billed with Marie Groscup, Patricia Toun, Carl Ratcliff, and Richard D’Arch. Cole was contracted to choreograph a new musical called
Bonanza Bound!
and he presumably arranged to have her cast with him. They went to New York for rehearsals. Verdon attended the Broadway play
Galileo
which ran at the Maxine Elliott Theatre from December 7 to 14, 1947. She is said to have admired the performance of Joan McCracken in the part of Virginia since she was the first dancer Verdon had seen who had done a play and not danced. McCracken would later be one of the dance partners and wives of Bob Fosse.

Bonanza Bound!
had music by Saul Chaplin and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Directed by Charles Friedman, the show was set during the Alaskan Klondike gold rush of 1898. Cole hoped to include an authentic Eskimo number which the dancers executed naked. Talked out it, he substituted a Totem Pole Dance, exchanging nudity for Freudian phallic symbolism. However the choreographer felt that his rehearsal time was unacceptably limited. He had Verdon and Dick Reed of Ballet Theatre, who knew his Cole technique, but he had to spend time training the others so that they could pick up his cues as he gave them. As a result it is claimed that dances were unfinished. Verdon said that Cole didn’t want dancers doing a ballet; he wanted them to be townspeople who belonged in the place and the time of the musical and who danced. They couldn’t look like ballerinas waiting for their moment to perform. Verdon is said to have played the part of a gypsy, but was refused the job of understudy to the lead Allyn McLerie by the producers.

The show didn’t make it to Broadway, only enjoying a brief season in tryouts in Philadelphia from December 26, 1947, to January 3, 1948. Some sources say the show was on at the Shubert; others at the Forrest Theatre. The show was also recorded on December 28 for a Broadway cast album by RCA Records but the record was never released. Verdon said that the closing notice went up between the acts of the first preview on Christmas Eve, 1947.

In the
On Stage
article on Verdon in the edition of
People Weekly
dated June 23, 1975, author Clarke Taylor claims that she was in the chorus of the MGM musical
Easter Parade
, directed by Charles Walters
.
The film was in production from November 19, 1947, to mid–February, 1948, and shot at the MGM studios and backlot. Verdon is not credited in the film. In John Reid’s book
Memorable Films of the Forties
he lists Verdon as one of the chorus dancers in the number “Stepping Out with My Baby.” She said that you can see her dash by in one number wearing a black wig (all the female dancers in the number have dark hair to match their tropical makeup). It is possible that one girl seen is Verdon, wearing a yellow dress, a green boa and a yellow feather in her hair.

Cole was next engaged to choreograph for director Jules Dassin the musical
Magdalena
, also known as
Magdalena: A Musical Adventure
. It had music by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, book by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan and Homer Curran and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The show was set in Colombia in 1912 and centred on the clash between Roman Catholicism and the native Indian religion among South American emerald miners. Dassin attempted to evoke a sense of period and place by having the actors portraying the Indian principals speak in a strange, unidentifiable accent. The production cost a then unheard of sum for a musical of between $250,000 and $300,000. It was first performed on July 26, 1948, at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. A season from August 16, 1948, at the San Francisco Curran Theatre (San Francisco Light Opera) gained good reviews, with John Hobart in the
San Francisco Chronicle
describing it as an evening of “unrelieved magnificence.” However, when the show moved to the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway, it was lambasted. Brooks Atkinson wrote in the
New York Times
that it was one of the most overpoweringly dull musical dramas of all time and that “watching the slow process of the plot is like being hit over the head with a sledge hammer repeatedly all evening.” Atkinson made no mention of Cole’s dances, and only commented that the production was elaborately old-fashioned and the direction ponderous. However, the show enjoyed a decent run from September 20 to December 4, 1948, no doubt buoyed by articles and photo-essays in
Life
and
Colliers
magazines. Plans for a Broadway cast recording were abandoned because of a musicians’ strike. However, the show was revived in a concert performance on November 24, 1987, at Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center, and this led to a complete cast recording with Evans Haile conducting for the Orchestra New England issued by CBS (Sony) on October 10, 1989. Verdon would say that the dances in the original show were truly extraordinary and described how one had all the men as trees and all the women were birds, which she found fantastic. There was also a very formal Spanish numer with fans, Castilian Spanish, and a “Pianolita” sequence. She claims these numbers influenced
Man of La Mancha
, the Broadway musical for which Cole later staged the dances.