Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (10 page)

It appears that Verdon but not Fosse attended the Tony Awards on April 1, 1956, to accept her Best Actress in a Musical statue. The ceremony, held at the Plaza Hotel in New York, was the first broadcast live on television.

An added benefit for Verdon from doing
Damn Yankees
was that she had fallen in love with Fosse. Their working relationship became entangled with their personal one, since it captured the essentials of their attraction. It reflected their needs and was the physical representation of their characters. One of Fosse’s dancers said that the dancers talked about wanting to watch the couple make love because they were so exciting sexually together, especially when they worked. Their affair reportedly ended Verdon’s relationship with actor Scott Brady, whom she had presumably met on the set of
Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
.

Dancer Svetlana McLee was in the chorus of
Damn Yankees
and had also appeared with Fosse’s wife, Joan McCracken, in the Broadway musical
Me and Juliet
. McLee told McCracken of the affair between Verdon and Fosse that had been obvious in rehearsals. When McCracken learned about it, she supposedly told him, “Sometimes the artificial can be very attractive.” Fosse filed for divorce to be with Verdon, though sources differ as to when. Some say it was in 1956, others ’57.

During her run in
Damn Yankees
Verdon also took dance classes. In July 1956 she acquired a studio several floors above her East Side apartment for her thirteen-year-old son Jimmy, who planned on coming to New York to go to prep school. She also contributed to the reconstruction of the studio, painting, sanding, staining the floors and dividing a room to make a pantry. Verdon rigged a split bamboo blind for the roof of the garden to create a screened-in sleeping area, and replastered a whole wall. This job made her right arm so tired that she had to wear a sling off-stage.

On September 9, 1956, she and the company of
Damn Yankees
gave an Actors Fund performance. Verdon’s mother Gertrude died on October 16, 1956; Gwen was unable to attend her funeral because of her commitment to the show. The
New York Times
on October 22 reported that Verdon was set to leave
Damn Yankees
on December 3 and that she would be replaced by Gretchen Wyler. Then on November 19 it was reported that she would leave on November 24. The
New York Times
also announced that Verdon was set to star with Thelma Ritter in
New Girl in Town
, a new musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play
Anna Christie
by George Abbott and Bob Merrill. The show was to be produced by Fred Brisson, Robert Griffith and Harold Prince, the producers of
Damn Yankees
, with Abbott directing and Bob Fosse as choreographer. It was scheduled to open on Broadway in May at the 46th Street Theatre.

New Girl in Town
had eventuated after the ending of the working relationship between composer Jerry Ross and Richard Adler, when Ross died on November 11, 1955. This meant that a proposed follow-up to
Damn Yankees
could not happen. Doris Day had told George Abbott about songs that Bob Merrill had written for a planned MGM musical remake of
Anna Christie
which was to have starred her and Thelma Ritter. The film was to have been set in the present among the fishing fleets on the Monterey, California, coast. MGM had four screenplays written for it but none of them worked, so the project was shelved. Liking the songs, Abbott bought the rights and planned a new stage show that he would write the book for and direct, changing the title from
Pay the Piper
to
New Girl in Town
.

Merrill’s adaptation had updated the source material but Abbott rejected the idea of modernizing the story. Later Abbott would say that he felt that prostitution was not the problem it had been in earlier times when a girl could be driven into it by economic necessity. Now he thought that a girl could earn a living much more easily. He threw out the eighteen songs Merrill had written and had him substitute nineteen new ones. The original play had been set in 1912 but Abbott changed the year to the turn of the century because he felt that clothes were prettier then. This also allowed the adaptation to exploit the idea of women who were less socially emancipated. The O’Neill source play had run on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre from November 2, 1921, to April 1922. It starred Pauline Lord as Anna and won the playwright the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A silent film version was made by the Thomas H. Ince Company for Associated First National Pictures and released in 1923 with Blanche Sweet playing Anna. The MGM version starred Greta Garbo as Anna in her talkie debut and was released in 1930. The new girl of the title was a Swedish-American former prostitute who had come to Manhattan to start a new life and was reunited with her sea captain father.

The producers were unsure as to whether it was best to get an actress and teach her to sing or to get a singer and teach her to act. As the star of their current hit show, Verdon was considered by the producers as a dancer who had developed her singing and acting talents only in the last few seasons, and she was given the script to consider in September 1956. Fosse wasn’t sure it was the right choice for himself and Verdon. He felt that the show was more a vehicle for singing than dancing, and that the leading role was designed for a singer with a strong Rodgers and Hammerstein voice. But Verdon wanted the part because she thought that it was an extraordinary opportunity to show that musical theater performance was acting and no different from doing the material as a drama.

Other actresses were auditioned including Ida Lupino and Shelley Winters who couldn’t sing well enough, and Marilyn Monroe. She could sing, just not very loud and, since this was before the days of body mikes, the producers decided that she would not be able to be heard in the theater. Abbott also made Verdon audition, an affront to her established stardom. He actually read with her and afterward told her, “Well, that’s in miniature, but that’s right.” For her musical audition, she tried to sing “Good to Be Alive” but she broke in the middle of it. She knew she had given a bad impression but she later said that something about defeat “does something to her” so she asked to audition again in three weeks. Some sources claim that she used the time to take daily singing lessons, while others say that she rehearsed with acting teacher Sanford Meisner, whom Fosse had brought in. Verdon said that she took the singing lessons and only studied with Meisner after she got the part. At her second audition, Harold Prince was sold but Abbott supposedly still had reservations. He wanted a show without dancing and was concerned about casting a non-dancing Verdon. However he agreed to have Verdon play the role, since although his initial choice was not to have a choreographer, she was given dance moments in rehearsal which led to Fosse’s involvement.

Her casting would stop her from making her London theater debut in
Damn Yankees
, but it insured a strong box office pre-sale for the new show after the success of the former. Fosse’s credit was expanded to musical staging as well as choreography so that now he was also responsible for the direction of the show’s songs as well as the dances. He gave a party for the chorus in his one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s West Side. Verdon entertained the crowd with tales about Jack Cole. Once rehearsals began, she worked with Meisner. Fosse brought in Pat Ferrier to help him create the dances, to do what Verdon would have otherwise done for him.

To show her dedication to the show, Verdon dyed her red hair because she thought that Anna should be blonde since O’Neill said she was in his play. Another factor was that, whenever she was in a show, they talked about the “flame-haired green-orbed Gwen Verdon.” She felt that the first thing was always her red hair. When the producer saw the sketches for her costumes, he felt that they were too plain but he was assured by others that Verdon’s red hair would make them stand out. That decided it for her. She thought since everybody was depending on her hair, it would be tragic if they said of her in an O’Neill play “the flame-haired Miss Verdon” and they reviewed it like any other show she had been in. She thought “Never mind the color of my hair” because some day it’ll turn gray and she wanted to be remembered as good, not just flame-haired. This comment is ironic given that Verdon’s hair color later in life was still red, presumably because she did not want to be seen with gray hair.

She decided that she didn’t want to play the part as a deep person. Verdon saw that Anna was tragic and pathetic but she also found her funny-pathetic, like Chaplin. “She’s confused and not very bright, like a hurt animal,” she said. “She tries to be a lady, and it doesn’t quite come off, and it’s funny and sad, a sort of laughing and crying at the same time.” Her studies with Meisner also had Verdon examine her past to relate to the character. Anna had the shame of a former life as a prostitute which she wanted to conceal but feared that something she did would give her away. Verdon had the shame of being a childhood cripple, and always feared that something would stick out or something she did would give her secret away. However after she studied the original O’Neill scenes with Meisner, she was dismayed when they were almost completely cut from the new show. They had been envisaged as dialogue in a spotlight that would lead to a big number. One lost scene that Verdon particularly missed was when Anna tells her father about her former life. As a way to compensate, she transferred the emotions from the cut scenes into the dancing. However, after six months, Verdon found that she hated this way of working, of using her inner resources. She decided to change her approach from working on a character from the inside to working from the outside. To develop the character, Verdon would create a specific walk or a funny little tic or a certain posture. She then added to this with costume and props and found that this affected behavior and the definition of a character.

When Verdon read Laurence Olivier’s 1982 autobiography
Confessions of an Actor
, she saw that he adopted the same approach. She would say that she found that Anna’s first scene, where she comes into the saloon and meets the father she hasn’t seen in years, took more out of her than anything else she had ever done. It left her so exhausted that her back ached. This is because the character was such an emotional mess as well as being physically weak after having been sick and just gotten out a hospital. Trying to show the strain that Anna was under became a terrible strain on any actress playing the role. Verdon demonstrated this with small touches like making her lips tremble when she drank a glass of port.

Fosse developed a whorehouse ballet for the sequence where Anna dreams of her past life. Abbott wasn’t sure about the idea but he decided to see what reaction it received. The number was controversial since it involved Verdon in flesh-colored tights, garter belt and a brief corset. In rehearsals one of her breasts would occasionally pop out when she was being carried up a great staircase to an upstairs bedroom. Another part of the ballet had Anna flirting with a young man (played by Harvey Evans, who was then known as Harry Hohnecker) brought into the whorehouse. Evans first met Verdon when he was fifteen and had waited at the stage door for her after a performance of
Can-Can
. In the number his leg shook and rose like an erection in reaction to Anna’s flirting. Producer Harold Prince found the ballet revolting and described it as “crotch dancing” and a “Vegas, Crazy Horse in Paris number.”

The show had a preview in New Haven on April 8, 1957. Reportedly members of the audience averted their eyes and some even shrieked in horror. The number was deemed too dirty and had to be cut. The police came and padlocked the stage doors and posted a Do Not Enter sign which was discovered by the dancers when they arrived the next day. Sources differ as to how this came about. Some say that the police had acted after having read reviews of the show. One claims that “the police” was actually one crossing guard, summoned by the mother of a teenage girl. Harvey Evans says the producers were responsible for the lockout. He says they went to the city officials, claiming that the ballet material was pornographic, which led to the police action.

When the company moved to Boston in May, the controversy continued. Abbott and Prince wanted the number out but Fosse and Verdon refused. Three arguments were proffered against the dance. Dream ballets in general were overused. It glamorized the bordello by making Anna’s former life as a prostitute appear far more appealing than her present circumstances. And it didn’t belong in the show because Anna was not a dancer. Perhaps the most important and persuasive argument was that audiences hated the ballet. They reportedly felt nervous about how it was done without music except for a drum beat, and they expressed their displeasure by not applauding at the end of the number. Fosse and Verdon considered the ballet high art and said that they didn’t care what the audience thought, citing how an audience had thrown fruit at Stravinsky. Abbott commented that the act of throwing fruit at a project was not proof of its being high art. Ironically the number drew attention away from the fact that the show was otherwise thought to be mediocre with a weak book and undistinguished songs. The show also suffered by comparison with
West Side Story
which had tryouts in February and which would open on Broadway on September 26, 1957. Another factor that provided an imbalance to the show was the casting of Thelma Ritter in the supporting role of Martha. Since her part was a comic one and Verdon’s was more serious, Ritter was getting more attention from the press.

Jack Cole is said to have visited. He had onced warned Verdon against working with Fosse, but now he approved. Fosse’s whorehouse ballet presumably got Cole’s approval because he too liked whorehouse ballets, akin to the “Harlequin Odyssey” he had done with Verdon in 1953. Fosse devised an alternate ballet but Abbott felt it was similar to the original and vetoed it. Some sources claim that the producers went so far as to burn the $40,000 staircase used in the number in the alley behind the theater to prevent the sequence from being restored. Verdon said that she did not know who actually burned the set although she knew it wasn’t the producers, Abbott or Fosse. He would eventually restore the ballet, without the staircase but using a few chairs and an orchestration to replace the drum beat.