Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (35 page)

The film was released on November 23, 1988, with the tagline “This holiday season, journey to the most wonderful place in the universe … home.” It was lambasted by Rita Kempley in the
Washington Post
, Richard Schieb on
Moria: Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Review
, and John Stanley in
Creature Features
. The film was a box office failure.

In 1988 Verdon received an honorary degree from Hamilton College. She made a guest appearance on the NBC comedy
Dear John
in the episode “The Second Time Around” (March 9, 1989), written by Wayne Terwilliger and directed by Art Wolff. The show was filmed in Hollywood and centered on abandoned Manhattan husband John Lacey (Judd Hirsch) who joins the One Two One Club, a support group for divorced and widowed people convened by Louise Mercer (Jane Carr). It was a remake of a British comedy series of the same title. In the episode Verdon plays John’s old flame Yvonne, an older woman who was his first 30 years prior when he was 15. The age disparity between the two is made from her being the grandmother of adult children, although her age is never stated. John’s initial reluctance to return what he assumes is a romantic interest soon gives way to his desire for her. Yvonne at first laughs at John making a pass at her when he gropes a breast. She tells him that she had felt guilty for her past behavior which she saw as her taking advantage of him because she was lonely. However now she loses the guilt because she sees that he has turned out to be a terrific guy. The couple’s kiss on the mouth seems only out of friendliness but then a second kiss suggests that perhaps they will sleep together again. This is another television episode where a mature woman is shown to be a sexual creature and is found to be desirable by a somewhat younger man.

The star appears in two scenes and wears two different outfits. There is a blue jacket with blue patterned scarf, black skirt and black gloves, and then a black wrap over a blue sparkly patterned blouse with black skirt and red scarf. Verdon gives a competent performance although the teleplay provides her with no witty lines or any great emotional scenes to play. However, her appearance does fit the bill for Yvonne’s sustained attractiveness, without an obvious display of sexuality.

Verdon was credited as production consultant when
Damn Yankees
opened at the Darien Dinner Theatre on April 16, 1989. She reportedly supervised the dance numbers that featured Lola (played by Gwen Arment). The show was directed and choreographed by Bick Goss and ran for three months. On April 18 Verdon attended the First Annual Broadway Musical Hall of Fame Induction Cocktail Party at Letizia Restaurant in New York City. She wore a dark green jacket and skirt with black outline, a black waist-bow, and black-green-and red–patterned blouse with matching necktie. On April 23 she was one of the 30 female inductees to the Player’s Club at its 100th anniversary benefit at the Shubert Theatre. She was photographed at the cocktail party at Sardi’s Restaurant before the event, wearing a black gown with horizontal stripes, green scarf, and choker. This was the same gown Verdon wore on September 9 at the Center Theatre Group and the Ahmanson Theatre Evening Tribute to Neil Simon and Bobby Fryer at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

She was one of the contest judges at the Love Ball, a celebrity fund-raiser sponsored by the Design Industry Foundation for AIDS in Manhattan on May 12, 1989. Footage of Verdon being interviewed at the event appears in a documentary by Jennie Livingstone entitled
Paris Is Burning
(1990). She speaks about the black male gay performers who do the vogue dance that had originated in 1987 in the ball circuit and hit the mainstream after Madonna had a hit song about it in 1990. Verdon found the vogue performances exciting because they were so “theatrical.” She presented a $50,000 check to the House of Sweet Charity, a trio of Harlem apartments that was to become home for homeless voguers with AIDS. On May 13 Verdon attended the Friars Club Roast of Alan King at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. She wore a black gown with netting overlay and sleeves and a large necklace. The star was a presenter at the 1989 Tony Awards, held on June 4, 1989, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre and broadcast live on CBS. She wore a brown, pink and white blouse with ruffled neck which was tied to the waist of a brown skirt. Verdon first curtsies to the company of
Jerome Robbins’ Broadway
who had just performed. Then she announces the nominees for Best Direction of a Musical, racing through the names (and stating that she is nervous) before declaring the winner to be Jerome Robbins. On June 8 Verdon was presented with the New York State’s Governor’s Art Award at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The event was filmed, produced and directed by Patrick Connelly for the New York Network.

Verdon played the small supporting role of Alice’s mother in writer-director Woody Allen’s comedy
Alice
(1990). The film was shot (starting on November 6, 1989) at the Kaufman Astoria Studios and on location in New York. Verdon said that, like other actors who appeared in the films of Woody Allen, she only received the pages for her character rather than the complete script; she didn’t know if the film was to be a comedy or not. The unnamed character is spoken of before we see her. The ex-boyfriend of Alice (Mia Farrow), Eddie (Alec Baldwin) describes her as a “third-rate actress” with “infantile ideas on politics.” Dorothy (Blythe Danner), Alice’s sister, comments that Alice is just like their mother as a kept woman and she calls the mother a drunk. In an imagined conversation with her, Alice says that her mother drank herself to death with margaritas after her husband died, and the mother comments, “You know I could never resist the taste of salt around the rim of a glass.” Alice tells the Muse (Bernadette Peters) that her mother was a movie actress who made two or three films and then was persuaded to retire by her husband. However her mother corrects her when she says that she married her husband after the studio had stopped offering her work. She calls herself “no more than a pretty face” who was lucky that her husband came along to look after her. Alice will tell her mother that she found her charming but misguided, and her mother says that Alice had “stars in her eyes” when it came to how she viewed her parents.

The star appears in two scenes, wearing the same outfit, a beige dress with jacket. In the first, she is silent as Alice and Dorothy observe her open a window and then watch her husband cut a birthday cake with a sword. In the second she speaks and makes the character vulnerable, the quaver in her voice hitting the emphasis on “killed” for the line “I would have
killed
myself.” Allen uses the conceit of movie lights on Alice’s mother in the scene, and he has her speak the “salt” line off-camera with the camera on Farrow’s reaction.

The film was premiered on December 12, 1990, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, in New York City. Verdon wore a long black coat, black leather gloves, a purple boa with necktie, and a bejewelled necklace. It was released on December 25, 1990, with the tagline “A younger man and a bolder woman.” It was praised by Vincent Canby in the
New York Times
and received mixed reviews from Peter Travers in
Rolling Stone
and Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun-Times
. It was a box office failure but Allen received a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

Verdon was credited as dance consultant for a revival production of Paddy Chayefsky’s play
The 10th Man
which was set in an Orthodox Synagogue in Mineola, Long Island, in 1959. The production opened on Broadway on December 10, 1989, after 35 previews from November 10. It was directed by Ulu Grosbard and only ran until January 14, 1990, after being panned by Frank Rich in the
New York Times
. Rich made no mention of the choreography in the show.

Portrait of Verdon in
Alice
(1990).

In November 1989 Kevin Boyd Grubb’s book
Razzle Dazzle: The Life and Work of Bob Fosse
was published by St. Martin’s Press. It featured photographs of Verdon on stage in
Can-Can
,
New Girl in Town, Redhead
,
Sweet Charity
and
Chicago
; rehearsing
New Girl in Town
with Fosse; in the film version of
Damn Yankees;
and with Fosse on the 1960 television salute to the American Musical Theatre. There were also candid photographs with Fosse and Ray Walston holding their respective Tony Awards for
Damn Yankees
, with Fosse at New York’s Harwyn Club in 1960, with the creative staff (including Fosse and Debbie Allen) of the
Sweet Charity
revival, and with Fosse and Nicole at the
Dancin’
Tavern on the Green party. The book was the first Fosse biography released; Verdon described it as “cut-and-paste.” Grubb notes in his foreword that Verdon had declined to participate in the writing of his book, although he said he had interviewed her twice previously for unrelated projects. In his final chapter, Grubb reports that Verdon was now a licensed theatrical electrician who remodelled old barns and stables. He also wrote that Central Park West apartment was devoid of anything about her career.

In the summer of 1990 Verdon visited Russia, to accept an award for Fosse’s films, and the White House, where she was one of the former acting students who honored Sanford Meisner. She also co-starred with Patrick O’Neal in a production of
Love Letters
which ran at Beverly Hills’ Canon Theatre from June 26 to July 1. Verdon was interviewed by Michael Buckley at her home in the Hamptons for an article that appeared in the August 6, 1990,
TheatreWeek
. Also present were a cat and Nicole’s weimaraner which was named Flash (Bob Fosse’s nickname). Verdon ended the interview by saying that her future would involve more movies and TV. Going back on the stage, and trying to do eight shows a week for a two-year run, was now beyond her. After more than 60 years on the stage, she didn’t really care if she ever went back on it again. Accompanying the article were photographs of Verdon in the film of
Damn Yankees
and as a chorus girl in
The Merry Widow
.

She appeared in the Nick Doob–directed documentary
Sanford Meisner: The American Theatre’s Best Kept Secret
, seen on PBS’s
American Masters
on August 27, 1990. In her interview, conducted by Stephen Harvey, Verdon said that she didn’t really like being in front of an audience, so to know her world—what she was and who she was—was a cocoon and her protection and Meisner supplied that. Later she commented that she liked being on stage with the characters in a show. But as far as performing for an audience, and her loving them and them loving her and all that stuff, she didn’t go for that. On September 17, 1990, Verdon attended the UJA–Federation of New York event honoring Cy Coleman at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. She wore a black dress with a frill-necked bodice and dark green necklace.

Martin Gottfried’s book
All His Jazz. The Life and Death of Bob Fosse
was published by Bantam Books on November 1, 1990. It featured photographs of Verdon doing “Who’s Got the Pain” with Fosse in the film of
Damn Yankees
and with him in rehearsal for
New Girl in Town
, the famous photograph of her seated and looking unhappy as George Abbott rehearses Thelma Ritter in the same show, in
Redhead
, and a 1980 Eva Goldstein photograph with Fosse in East Hampton where she is looking at the camera and he is not. Gottfried admonishes Verdon for having continued as Fosse’s first lady while he lived apart but undivorced from her, and for acting like a presidential widow after his death. However he acknowledges that she perhaps understood Fosse better as a dancer who could no longer dance and as the portrait he presented of himself in
All That Jazz
. Verdon would say that she hated the book because she thought that the author was so inaccurate.

In 1990 she appeared in the PBS documentary for
Great Performances: Dance in America
entitled “Bob Fosse: Steam Heat,” directed by Judy Kinberg. The special had her sitting by a pool talking about Fosse, wearing a blue and white vertical-striped blouse. Verdon talks about her life and separation from Fosse. The special also included “Who’s Got the Pain” from the film of
Damn Yankees
, her with Fosse at the 1978 Tony Awards, singing and dancing to “I Wanna Be a Dancin’ Man” with Fosse on a 1962
Garry Moore Show
, and footage from her 1966
Ed Sullivan Show
appearance doing “I’m a Brass Band” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now.” Verdon is heard singing “Merely Marvelous” from
Redhead
. That same year she was also interviewed by Ed Wilson for his CUNY-TV show
Spotlight on….

On June 8, 1991, Verdon hosted the New York City debut of Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Company at Carnegie Hall. This was part of the New York International Festival of the Arts which ran from June 8 to 23 and featured more than 60 performing acts from 23 countries in 28 sites. Lou Conte, the artistic director of the company, said that Verdon had approached him about getting Nicole an audition. She later would sit on the advisory board, and had told him that her daughter wanted to be a ballet dancer but didn’t have the ability. However Verdon still wanted Nicole to audition since she believed that she did have the ability to be a dancer in a non-classical mode. Conte arranged the audition but nothing came of it. He said that he thought it was all Verdon’s idea that her daughter audition, and doubted that Nicole herself was even interested. Although Nicole would dance in other venues, she would go on to pursue a degree in interior design and study architecture.