Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (31 page)

The film was broadcast on January 6, 1984. The DVD has the tagline “He’s not stupid. He’s a jerk.” It is said that the movie was designed as a pilot for a TV series that never materialized.

Verdon made a guest appearance on the NBC comedy
Gimme a Break!
in the episode “The Center” (April 19, 1984). The show focused on Nell Harper (Nell Carter), the nanny for the family of the widowed chief of police in Glenlawn, California, Carl Kanisky (Dolph Sweet). The episode was written by Jeff Franklin and directed by John Bowab. In it Grandpa Stanley Kanisky (John Hoyt) visits a senior citizen’s center where the director is Lilly Le Thrill (Verdon). A former stripper, she has a crush on Andy (Ray Walston), a resident of the center. The climax is the annual spring fling ballroom dance which the kids also attend and play their own music. Lily and Andy are handcuffed together and locked in a closet to work out their situation.

Lily being the center’s director and not a resident spares her the narrative jokes about age that are incorporated with the invasion of some youth center kids. However points are scored off her for being a four-time widow, and with Lily’s over-eagerness when she pulls down Andy’s jacket and tells him, “I want to cook you dinner!” He is said to be wary of her because he still misses his deceased wife, rather than not finding Lily desirable, and the conclusion provides a tentative resolution in the way they hug but don’t kiss. The episode also creates an expectation that Lily will have a romance with Grandpa, which is not met.

Verdon appears in three scenes and her wardrobe is uncharacteristically drab in color. She sports a gray suit with an olive green jacket, and at the dance wears a tan blouse with black long split-skirt. Lily adds some embellishment to the drabness by having a purple waist scarf under the suit jacket, and a choker and sparkly belt to her dance outfit. Lily’s split dress also allows us to see Verdon’s legs when she is carried into the closet. We also briefly see Verdon dancing a slow dance with Grandpa, and comically dancing in reaction to the bad dancing of youth center kid and dance partner Russell (actor unidentified). Her performance ranges from broadly comic with the overuse of hand gestures, to slyly comic as when she bumps when recalling her act as a stripper, and poignant stillness when talking to Andy in the closet. It’s nice to see Verdon reunited with Walston. She gets some funny lines and situations. When she talks of being a stripper, she says that she wore a map of America and as she danced she’d toss out the states, and Lily is funny when she objects to Andy’s cancelling the dinner with “I’m already defrosting.” He rejects her by saying that there’s lots of fish in the sea, and Lily responds with, “You couldn’t catch a fish at Marineland.” When she dances with Russell, she comments, “You’re very brave to do this in public.”

The star was a performer and presenter at the 1984 Tony Awards held on June 3, 1984, at the Gershwin Theatre and broadcast on CBS. The cast was announced in a series of Al Hirschfeld caricatures on a backdrop curtain, with Verdon’s being of her in
Sweet Charity
that was seen in the
New York Times
of January 23, 1966. She first appears to sing “Nowadays” from
Chicago
with Chita Rivera in a medley of songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Both ladies wear black top hat and tails, with a white flower in the jacket, body suits and a neck choker, and carried canes to do the number. The hats are sparkly and the chokers are bejewelled. The number is covered by alternating long and medium shots, and the latter suggests that perhaps the white jacket flowers could be bejewelled broaches. (The
Times
’ John J. O’Connor described the Rivera-Verdon number as delightful.) She was back in a black sequined jagged gown with splits and black choker to present the Best Choreographer award to Danny Daniels for
The Tap Dance Kid
.

On July 2, 1984, Verdon served as one of the emcees at the first New York International Ballet Competition at City Center. She also joined arms with the other masters, Tony Randall and Kitty Carlisle Hart, and they careered exuberantly off the stage together at the evening’s end.

From August to December 1984 Verdon filmed the supporting role of Bess McCarthy in the science fiction comic-drama
Cocoon
(1985) on location in Florida and the Bahamas. She had been cast after the first choice of director Ron Howard, Joan Bennett, turned down the role. Verdon would also receive screen credit as “special music and dance coordinator” for the film. In his DVD audio commentary Howard says that this job involved Verdon choreographing Bess’ dance number “That’s What We Call Dancing.” Bess is the dance instructor at the Sunny Shores St. Petersburg Retirement Community in Tampa, Florida. Verdon is heard singing “That’s What We Call Dancing” before she is first seen, and her role presents her as one of the more active of the women who populate the home. The screenplay by Tom Benedek, based on a story by David Saperstein, centers on three “geezers” who discover that the swimming pool in the neighboring house has been appropriated by aliens. The Antareans, led by Walter (Brian Dennehy), energize the pool to provide a lifeforce for the alien clamshell-like cocoons that house his ground crew and that have been moved to the pool from their resting place at sea in the sunken city of Atlantis. The geezers find that the pool water has rejuvenating qualities. Bess marries Art Selwyn (Don Ameche) before joining the rest of the geezers and their friends as they accompany the aliens to a spaceship for a new life.

Bess, like the wives of Joe and Ben, are reactive characters. The difference with Bess is that she is a single woman who is romantically pursued by Art. Verdon’s best moment is Bess’ smile of post-coital happiness after the men have found that the pool has restored their virility and the three have made love to their respective partners. Holding a hand-fan, Bess says, “I feel so nice today I can’t tell you.” Ron Howard teases us with the suggestion that we will see Verdon dance in a ballroom sequence but then he quickly cuts away from her dancing with Ameche to “Dancing in the Dark” when the couple is enveloped by the crowd. The screenplay provides an exchange of double entrendre at the ballroom when Bess tells Art that everything is happening so fast, and he asks, “Are you talking about last night?” One scene where Bess watches Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance “The Continental” in
The Gay Divorcee
(1934) on television is also notable for a color picture on the wall of her house of Verdon in a 1956
Esquire
magazine pin-up. We also see Verdon in a long shot in a bathing suit, when Bess uses the pool.

The film was released on June 21, 1985, with the taglines “It is everything you’ve dreamed of. It is nothing you expect” and “Beyond the innocence of youth, and the wisdom of age, lies the wonder of …
Cocoon
.” It was a box office hit and received praise from
Variety,
Janet Maslin in the
New York Times,
and John Stanley in his book
Creature Features
. Pauline Kael in
The New Yorker
called Verdon one of the actresses who “bring the film the bearing of major performers.” The film earned Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Supporting Actor for Don Ameche.

In October 1984 Glenn Loney’s book
Unsung Genius. The Passion of Dancer-Choreographer Jack Cole
was released by Franklin Watts publishers. It featured photographs of Verdon in rehearsals with Cole for
Alive and Kicking
, and in performance. The rehearsal photograph displays the respective roles the couple played in their relationship, with Cole sitting in a chair and she sitting on the floor beside him.

In the winter of 1984 Verdon was invited to a party held by Fosse at his Quogue home, and she met his new girlfriend Phoebe Ungerer. As she had accepted Ann Reinking, Verdon also seemed to accept this new girl in order to stay friendly with her husband. She even took her by the arm and introduced her to guests as if it was her home and not Fosse’s. This relationship would change after Fosse died.

On February 17, 1985, Verdon appeared on ABC-TV’s
Night of 100 Stars II
at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Aired on March 10, 1985, it was a celebrity benefit for the Actors Fund of America, featuring music, songs, dances and comedy. The show was to raise money designated as a building fund for an extended-care facility to be built adjacent to the Actor’s Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey. The number of stars varies according to sources: some say it was 308, others 288. However many, they participated in a seven-hour marathon that was edited to three hours for television. While they worked without pay, the luminaries had perks like complimentary limo service and accomodations at the New York Hilton. Rooms were stocked with Taittinger champagne, Perugina chocolates, Haagen-Dazs cream liqueur, caviar and croissants—gifts from some of the corporate sponsors who had underwritten the production costs. The hotel also provided a staff of trouble-shooters. The company was given a pre-performance party at the Rainbow Room, and “21” was converted into a private canteen. After the taping, the stars were transported back to the Hilton for dinner and danced to Woody Herman’s band. Verdon was part of an eight-and-a-half-minute song and dance act entitled “A New Pair of Shoes” which was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Tap dancers wore white clothes and red shoes, with a set that was an elongated horizontal white stage under a lit metal arch. Verdon appeared in top hat and tail-coat over a white leotard, and had only a few seconds worth of solo dancing.

On February 25, 1985, she attended the New York Telephone’s Gala Music Tribute Dinner and Stage Performances for her and Cy Coleman. It was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to benefit the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. Verdon was photographed wearing a black dress with a rose pattern with lime green waist-sash and lime green hat.

She was sent by Fosse to prepare a revival of
Sweet Charity
for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company’s summer season. He supposedly hadn’t wanted the show to be revived, but then heard that it going to be produced with or without him. Fosse was busy preparing the stage show
Big Deal
which is why he allowed Verdon to fill in for him.
Fame
’s Debbie Allen was cast in the title role. John Boab replaced Fosse as director, and Verdon coached Allen and supervised the show’s choreography. Allen said that Verdon never told her how to play the role of Charity because “she’s too great an artist to do it like that.” The original show’s choreography had not been notated clearly so the dances needed to be reconstructed from memory. There was raw footage taped from a Japanese tour of the show and the film version, but it still was a Herculean endeavor. Fortunately Verdon’s recall of the show and her part were flawless, (Ann Reinking claimed that Verdon had a photographic memory). However, she also contacted every dancer she could who was in the original company to help.

While in Los Angeles, Verdon made a guest appearance on the CBS medical drama
Trapper John, M.D.
“All the King’s Horses…” broadcast on March 31, 1985, focussed on the Korean War
M*A*S*H
unit veteran Trapper John McIntyre (Pernell Roberts), who operated as chief surgeon at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. The episode was written by Gene O’Neill and Noreen Tobin. In it Trapper and his son, Dr. John “J.T.” McIntyre (Timothy Busfield), are on vacation in South Lake Tahoe. J.T. saves five-year-old Megan Hughes (Maia Brewton) from drowning in the frozen lake but her uncle, outspoken TV personality Lawrence Kolleeny (Tony Roberts), is critical of her treatment. Verdon appeared in the secondary plot back in the San Francisco Hospital as Rosemary Taylor, a professional gambler who is wealthy and thrice married; she’s in the hospital for knee surgery after exerting herself doing aerobics. She pretends to have a crush on Dr. George Alonzo “Gonzo” Gates (Gregory Harrison) but actually schemes with him to sting his associate Dr. Justin “Jackpot” Jackson (Brian Mitchell).

The Rosemary plot introduces the idea of a woman 30 years older than a man interested in a May-December romance. Its supposed implausibility is what sets up Jackpot to lose his money since he gambles against her getting Gonzo. Jackpot is also conned into the bet because of Gonzo’s expressed attitude of using Rosemary for her money, and that he could learn to love her. The idea that the setup is a sting is suggested by the fact that most of Rosemary’s scenes take place with Jackpot rather than Gonzo, which makes us question the veracity of her crush. What saves this potentially offensive narrative is the way Verdon as Rosemary is presented, since she is photographed to look very attractive. She wears a series of high-necked colored pajamas and robes, and a white fur piece over a white suit when she is discharged. Verdon gets two notable lines. She tells Jackpot, “[Gonzo is] a big fish but I bet [long pause] I could land him,” and is funny when asking Gonzo, “Would you care to play some strip blackjack? I’m a good loser.” Director Charles Siebert probably used a hand-double for the shot where Rosemary does card tricks for Jackpot to demonstrate her profession.

Portrait of Verdon in the
Trapper John, M.D.,
episode “All the King’s Horses…
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