Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (30 page)

In January 1982 she made a guest appearance on the ABC television soap opera
All My Children
playing Judith Kingsley Sawyer, a prim, mean-spirited mother. Verdon was a fill-in for Carol Burnett, whose husband suddenly became ill. When asked why she had recently joined the cast, she replied, “I wasn’t asked before.”

From February 4 to 13, 1982, a new revue was presented as a work in progress at the Hudson Guild that had musical staging by Verdon. “Vamps and Rideouts,” based on the music of Jule Styne, starred the show’s conceiver Phyllis Newman, Pauletta Pearson and George Lee Andrews. The director was James Pentecost and the choreographer was Dennis Dennehy.

Verdon made her only guest appearance in the NBC musical television series
Fame
in the episode “Come One, Come All.” It was broadcast on March 11, 1982, written by Hindi Brooks. The show told the stories of the students and faculty of the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. Verdon’s appearance reunited her with Albert Hague, who was in the regular cast and who had composed the score for her Broadway show
Redhead
. She played Melinda MacNeill, the mother of student Montgomery MacNeill (P.R. Paul); Melinda has been asked to appear as the celebrity guest in the school’s Parent’s Nights event. She is also asked to take over the show as director, when the original director falls ill. Melinda is said to be a movie star who has appeared in the musical comedy
Good News
(1947) dancing “The Varsity Drag,” and Verdon gets to dance in a scene with the school’s dance teacher Lydia (Debbie Allen) when they improvise a dancing number.

The conflict of the narrative occurs when it is believed that Melinda has her own agenda. The school gets upset when she asks that the theme of the night be a 1920s motif and when she asks that agents be invited, presumably to see her and not the students. Lydia reminds her that the night is meant to showcase what the students have learned to do, rather than what Melinda is asking, and that Melinda has chosen the 1920s motif because that is
her
strength. We see Melinda rehearsing the dancers with the “Black Bottom” number and that two students are unable to do a comic burlesque routine she has also suggested. After Melinda withdraws from the night, we see two of the preferred numbers by the students: an unmemorable clown routine by Montgomery and an awfully choreographed dance to “Sing, Sing, Sing.” The teleplay presents Melinda as a phony who walks out on the show when she gets a film offer. She is presented as selfish for not watching Montgomery’s rehearsal performance, and her shame is expressed with the cliché of smearing her makeup mirror to cover her reflection. Melinda also gets points scored off her with Lydia’s imitation of her speaking voice, and when she admits that being at the school has made her realize that she is no longer young. We never get to see the number that Melinda had planned to do in the show, which works against the idea that she was only doing it as self-promotion. We also tend to side with Melinda’s stance on the students in the show. Their attitude of refusing to do what they don’t like seems to mark them as amateurs; professional performers have the discipline to make whatever they have to do work. Melinda’s accusation of amateurism also stings Lydia, who otherwise claims that the students have to “pay” for their desire for fame in sweat.

Verdon has a good dramatic moment when Melinda confronts Bruno (Lee Curreri) and threatens to take him out of the show. She smiles when she sees that Angelo Martelli (Carmine Caridi) recognizes her before he speaks, as if this a moment she has lived before, and she is warm and funny otherwise. Regrettably Verdon outclasses everyone she faces in the show, and this includes Debbie Allen in their dance number. Although we are grateful that Lydia’s “Evolution of the Dance” includes Jack Cole, her “modern” dancing lacks Melinda’s precision and control, something that the fringes on Lydia’s pants help to show. It also doesn’t help that director Robert Scheerer cuts from long to medium shots of the women dancing, as he will also use cutaways in the climactic finale rehearsal. The evolution number also suffers from the contrivance of it being obviously choreographed but presented as supposedly improvised by the two dancers. However, it does let us see Verdon strike some very Fosse-style poses and we are grateful for the chance to watch her dance again, even when her performance is compromised as it is here. Allen reported that when she was trying to explain to Verdon the concept for the dance in the scene, Verdon replied, “Honey, just tell me what you want me to do.”

Verdon assisted on a May 24, 1982, benefit for Ballet Today, Brett Raphael’s new dance company, which included a performance of “The Magic Bird of Fire.” This was a rock-disco reimagining of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite that Fosse choreographed for Nicole. It was held at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology Haft Auditorium. Verdon worked on her daughter’s costume (a feathery unitard) and acted as intermediary between Fosse, Nicole and Raphael. She and Ann Reinking came for the show, but Fosse only attended the dress rehearsal as he needed to leave for Vancouver to work on his new film
Star 80
(1983).

On January 11, 1983, Verdon introduced the alumni guests at the first program of a gala benefit for American Ballet Theatre II at the Joyce Theatre. On March 23, HBO screened a documentary entitled
Strippers
which Verdon narrated. Directed by Robert Deubel, it explored the art of the striptease via the lives of six of the world’s most famous strippers: Lydia Thompson, Josephine Baker, Gypsy Rose Lee, Little Egypt, Carrie Farrell, and Sally Rand. The special incorporated rare film clips, still photographs, and recreations to tell the story of how the striptease began and how it prospered.

Debbie Allen dances with Verdon in the
Fame
episode entitled “Come One, Come All.”

Verdon was mistress of ceremonies at a revue at the Music Hall in Tarrytown for the Theatre League of Westchester for performances from April 21 to 24, 1983. The revue, entitled “The Broadway Songbook” presented memorable moments from the Broadway musical theater in its prime. Verdon also joined in the revue’s finale dancing having been persuaded to participate by the chairman and creative consultant of the Theatre League, Stanley Greene. He said that he simply wrote her a letter about the league’s purpose, to bring Broadway musical entertainment to Westchester County, and it contained the proviso, ‘‘I’m going to pester you until you say ‘Yes!’”

She appeared in support in the ABC made-for-TV movie
Legs
, broadcast May 2, 1983. This story of life backstage with the famous chorus line was the first film to be shot in Radio City Music Hall. The film was written by Jerrold Freedman from a story by Brian Garfield, and directed by Freedman. In it she played the Rockettes’ choreographer Maureen. Verdon has a sizable part, appearing in thirteen scenes. She is repeatedly shown in the rehearsal room, wearing black pants and sweater, sometimes with colored blouses, and can be seen teaching a few simple dance steps.

Times
reviewer John J. O’Connor wrote that she projected her own very special brand of vulnerability. He wrote that Verdon was lovely, no more so than when she suddenly begins gliding gracefully about the floor of the rehearsal stage. Interviewed about the film, she said that the Rockettes were an institution and the current 36 were a different breed of woman. Most women in chorus lines wanted to get out and dreamed of going to modern dance or ballet. For the Rockettes, however, the goal was just being a Rockette, with one dancer in the current line having been there for 26 years. Verdon felt that the group were singularly dedicated and saw their work as more than a dance job. They were not interested in being an individual on the stage; they had made that adjustment.

Also on May 2, 1983, the ABC television special
Parade of Stars
was filmed. It would be broadcast on May 22, 1983. It was produced by Alexander H. Cohen, directed by Clark Jones and performed at New York’s Palace Theatre as a celebration of the stars who had entertained at the legendary theater during vaudeville and after. Verdon is first seen as a silhouette behind a white screen labelled “Sweet Charity.” Rather than burst through it, she moves around it for a dialogue scene with a man playing Vittorio Vidal. Verdon wears a black dress with a sheer blouse that has odd puffy sleeves and catches at the elbows, with a black sparkling bow in her hair. Jones films Verdon in medium shot for the dialogue scene and as she sings the beginning of “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” and alternates between medium and long shots. At one point he has Verdon sitting on set steps but still in a long shot, and stays with long shots for Verdon’s dance with Vittorio’s pop-up hat and cane. The number is abbreviated from the original show but, given Verdon’s absence from the film version, it is still wonderful to see her do the number on a stage. The performance also has added poignancy since, at 58, she is obviously not in the same physical or vocal shape as 23 years prior. However Verdon does not embarrass herself in her attempt. She returns for the end of the show’s “Give My Regards to Broadway” number and takes a bow, and then is seen with the full cast for the finale singing “Playing the Palace” as they walk in a circle. Verdon wears the same outfit she had before, and can be seen doing kicks in time with the music under the closing credits.

Stephen Holden wrote in the
Times
(May 4, 1983) that the show was produced to aid the Actors’ Fund, and the $200,000 that it was expected to raise would go toward the building of a nursing home adjacent to the Actors’ Retirement Residence in Englewood, New Jersey. The
Times
’ John J. O’Connor wrote on May 23 that Verdon’s number was one of the show’s first-rate moments.

She next played a small supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola’s musical crime drama
The Cotton Club
. The film was in production from August 22 to December 1983 with reshoots done up to March 1984. It was shot at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York, with location shooting taking place in Grand Central Station, where Verdon appeared in a scene. The screenplay by Coppola and William Kennedy was based on a story by Kennedy, Coppola and Mario Puzo, which was suggested by James Haskins’ pictorial history of the Cotton Club. Verdon played Tish Dwyer and there is the suggestion that she is a former star who is now a dancing teacher. When she meets Gloria Swanson (Diane Venora) at the Club, Tish reverts the expected when she tells her, “You’re my biggest fan.” Verdon appears in three scenes and is heard in a fourth, although she has little of consequence to do. She is given a close-up for the moment when Tish speaks to the Club’s owner Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins), and in the last scene of the film she briefly dances in long shot, showing a dancing woman at Grand Central Station a better tap dancing move.

The film opened on December 14, 1984, with the taglines “It was the jazz age. It was an era of elegance and violence. The action was gambling. The stakes were life and death,” “Where crime lords rub elbows with the rich and famous!” and “Welcome to the Cotton Club. Where Crime Lords rub elbows with the rich and famous. Where deals are made, lives are traded. And the legends of jazz light up the night.” It was praised by Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun-Times
but lambasted by Richard Corliss in
Time
, Vincent Canby in the
New York Times
, and Pauline Kael in
The New Yorker
. Canby called Verdon one of the supporting actors who is “on and off so fast that their use seems to be profligate.” It was not a box office success though it received Academy Award nominations for Best Editing and Best Art Direction and Set Decoration.

A pre-opening screening for
Star 80
was held on November 9, 1983, and Fosse made it a benefit for one of Verdon’s favorite causes: the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, the oldest low-cost psychiatric clinic in New York. The benefit was to specifically aid a newly opened division devoted to counselling patients in the performing arts. Dr. Harry Sands commented that it was necessary because of the constant rejection that was experienced by those in the profession which could be psychologically devastating. This fact had considerable irony given the subject of the film was actress Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered by her husband Paul Snider. A cocktail party at Le Train Blue in Bloomingdale’s preceded the screening and there was an after-party at Tavern on the Green with dinner and dancing.

Verdon appeared in a small role in the made-for-TV comedy
The Jerk, Too
(1984), a sequel to the film comedy
The Jerk
(1979). The sequel was directed by Michael Schultz with a screenplay by Ziggy Steinberg and Rocco Urbisci and based on characters created by Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb. She appears in only one scene as a bag lady, singing and dancing with protagonist Navin Johnston (Mark Blankfield) to the duet “You’re Just in Love” from the musical
Call Me Madam
. Verdon wears layered clothes including a red-flower purple hat, pink shirt and scarf, brown jacket, purple skirt, pink gloves, and red shoes. The bag lady’s movement is less choreographed than that of the dancers supporting the couple. Her bulky skirt hampers her agility and the scene is badly photographed as a dance performance since the dancer’s legs are often cut off with medium shots. Verdon scores laughs from the beginning of the scene where she provides silent reactions to Navin’s reciting a letter to his mother.