Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (4 page)

Portrait of Gwen Verdon in the stage show
Alive and Kicking
(1950). Photograph by Talbot.

By the end of 1948 Cole’s contract at Columbia Pictures had expired. He announced that his next Broadway show would be the revue
Alive and Kicking
which he would choreograph and dance in as well. He did not start on it till 1949 in New York. It was to be a Ziegfeld Follies–style show in which Verdon as Cole’s assistant would also make her Broadway debut as a dancer. (Bob Fosse with his then dance partner Mary-Ann Niles had unsuccessfully auditioned for the show.) Directed by Robert H. Gordon, it was described as a musical “dedicated to youth, laughter, melody, color, and motion.” It featured comic sketches involving the way a newspaper is run, military higher-ups, psychiatrists, and the popularity of the Edith Piaf style of singing. There were also songs written by Hal Borne and Irma Jurist and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster and Ray Golden. Cole’s dances were his trademark smorgasbord of ethnic styles. It had tryouts at the Shubert Theatre in Boston (beginning on December 8, 1949) for two and a half weeks, and in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in January 1950. The show then moved to Broadway but only enjoyed a brief run at the Winter Garden Theatre (January 17 to February 25, 1950).

Credited in the cast as Abou’s wife in the Hindu-influenced number “Abou Ben Adhem,” Gwen played opposite Cole who was Abou Ben Adhem. She danced with him in the number, as well as in “I Didn’t Want Him,” “Love It Hurts So Good,” “Propinquity” and “Cole Scuttle Blues.” Verdon also danced in “One Two Three,” which featured her and Marie Groscup as kids, dressed up in mother’s old clothes, who fought and made fun of the young lovers who sang the song. Cole had the women upstage the singers by walking on a fence, since he hated the song and felt he needed to provide something to take the curse off it. The idea of kids dressed up in adult clothes would be reworked for the number “I Feel Like Dancing” in the film
Meet Me After the Show
(1951), in which Verdon would also appear.

In the
New York Times
, Brooks Atkinson described the show as mediocre but praised Cole’s work without mentioning Verdon. She felt that she had been critically ignored when Atkinson commented that the easiest way to remain invisible was to dance with Cole on the same stage. Later writing on dance in the Broadway musical season for the
New York Times
, John Martin did mention her, saying that a good word should be said for the stunning Verdon. She said that she thought Jack Gilford was extraordinary in a sketch about trying to quit smoking and that the show would have run longer than forty-six performances if Ed Sullivan’s show wasn’t so popular on television. This is because Verdon felt that people could see the same type of thing at home.

She continued to study Oriental and Eastern dance with Le Meri while she worked with Cole. Verdon also began teaching with Cole when he gave lessons at Eugene Loring’s American School of Dance in Hollywood, taking beginners to prepare them to dance for him. He would soon quit the classes because he felt the students were lazy and solely interested in the jobs he could get them in film. She stayed, taking over the classes. Cole’s concern became a non-issue because nobody expected to get a job from her. One night a week Verdon also taught non-paying students who couldn’t afford the school’s courses. In order to know the source of movement and its emotional impact, she studied anatomy and got a skeleton to find out just what movement the body was capable of. Verdon found out how far the hip socket could turn and where it couldn’t go. She also discovered how much she could demand of a student: to find the limit and then stretch for that.

In 1950 Verdon was part of Cole’s troupe performing “Harlequin’s Odyssey” at Caro’s. In the act Cole played an anguished Harlequin who was the clown as symbol of all people leading a wonderful and brave existence. Verdon was the “Golden Woman” garbed in lengths of cheesecloth who represented Fate. The act included a whorehouse ballet which reportedly got them thrown out of the nightclub, though Cole doubted that the patrons were the ones who were offended because they didn’t know what it was. Cole and Verdon were photographed in costume for
Parade
and
Dance
Magazine
, surrounded by a religious holy image called a Santo and giant tarot cards.

Gwen Verdon’s film career resumed when she became Jack Cole’s dance assistant on film. From September 18 to December 1950 Cole and Verdon were in Paris for the musical sequences on the musical comedy
On the Riviera
(1951), which marked a new association he had with 20th Century-Fox. The film was a remake of their musical comedies
Folies Bergere de Paris
(1935) and
That Night in Rio
(1941). They were adaptations of the German play, “The Red Cat” by Rudolph Lothar and Hans Adler, which had been produced on Broadway in 1934. The film was directed by Walter Lang and the new songs were by Sylvia Fine, wife of its star, Danny Kaye. The screenplay by Valentine Davies and Phoebe and Henry Ephron involved New York impressionist Jack Martin, who is working at the Cote d’Azur nightclub on the French Riviera. Jack is the spitting image of French aviator Henri Duval and impersonates him.

Verdon’s duties included teaching Kaye’s co-star Corinne Calvet how to walk up stairs. She had supposedly never even walked to music, let alone danced, so Verdon taught her with the help of a piano player. The teacher also appeared in three of the musical numbers in the film. Verdon is the lead showgirl in a chorus for the “Rhythm of a New Romance” number. In it she wears a cancan black dress with blue feathers, feathered headdress, and black gloves as opposed to the other chorus girls who wear Moulin Rouge blue dresses with black feathers. Verdon leads the girls doing the cancan, speaks in French and says “Gesundheit” in response to Kaye’s “sarcophagus” lyric, and rubs noses with him. Speaking to Mike Douglas on his TV show on January 19, 1969, Verdon said that it wasn’t her voice used for the lines—she mouthed the words for someone else to say. She said the moment was rehearsed with Kaye and Verdon but then two six-foot-two showgirls were brought in for the filming. Kaye asked why he couldn’t do it with Verdon and was told that dancers can’t talk. Kaye refused to do the scene with the showgirls, only with Verdon. She got the job but she lip-synched.

For the number, she resisted doing the cancan because she told Cole that she thought it vulgar. To persuade her to do it, he told her to think of the dance as that of a female athlete. The number features a set with one of Cole’s favored staircases and the international locations include India and Spain with a geographical outline of the country labelled on a back curtain. For India, Verdon dances barefoot and is dressed in blonde wig with green headpiece, orange pants and a sheer outfit to suggest torso nudity with gold bangles around her breasts, arms and feet. She was also one of the chorus clowns in the
commedia dell’arte
“Popo the Puppet” number, suspended by blue ribbon strings, dancing and singing. Verdon wears a blue wig and gloves, red hat and slippers, and a red, white and blue dress. Her third appearance in the film is as one of the back-up dancers in the “Happy Ending” finale, wearing a black bejewelled cap with a green feather, and a dress with green and black horizontal stripes. Verdon has a moment where she dances alone, then is joined by George Martin who wears a black suit and green shirt. At one point her underwear is seen because of her movement in the knee-length dress that is split on the sides to her thighs.

Verdon (right) with an unidentified dancer and Danny Kaye in the “Popo the Puppet” number in
 
On the Riviera
 
(1951).

The film was released in New York on May 23, 1951, and Los Angeles on May 25, 1951, with the taglines “You Never Saw So Much Before! It’s Oomph-la-la when you go gay the Riviera way, with song and dance and gals-galore!,” “The Whole World of Entertainment Is Yours in the Most Kaye-Lossal Musical of the Year!” and “The World’s Most Exciting Entertainer in the Year’s Most Wonderful Musical Show.” It was praised by
Variety
but received a mixed review from Bosley Crowther in the
New York Times
. A box office hit, it received Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration, and Best Music Score.

In his biography
The Lives of Danny Kaye: Nobody’s Fool
, Martin Gottfried revealed that Verdon and Kaye had an off-stage liaison. The writer claims that the sexual magnetism between the two is apparent in the “Rhythm of a New Romance” number and their almost-kiss. The relationship reportedly lasted until Kaye’s next film, the family musical
Hans Christian Andersen
(1952), which was in production from January 21 to May 26, 1952. The intimate friendship between Verdon and Kaye is said to have come about because of his supposed marital crisis of the time with wife Sylvia Fine. Verdon would say that she loved the way Kaye always dismissed the talk by saying that he had a very good head on Fine’s shoulders.

In Paris, Verdon studied mime with Jean-Louis Barrault; acting without words but with body movement. Verdon was also part of the floor show at the Lido. Donn Arden and Ronn Fletcher, whom she had met while working with Cole, did a steady stint in Paris every year. Fletcher was invited to do choreography for the Copacabana in Florida, and asked Verdon if she wanted to play his part in Paris. She agreed but was concerned because she couldn’t speak French. Fletcher told her that to teach French girls, all you had to do was play charades. Verdon went to Paris with Arden, who took care of costuming and parading the women. She worked at dance ideas and found it a perfect laboratory because Paris was without the American prudery over nudity. Verdon first experimented with the mambo, which she introduced to France. However she found that the French were not as liberated as she had hoped. They would allow her to have naked girls but they had to stand still and the dancers had to wear clothes. They also demanded that the dancers had to have white skin, since it was claimed that Parisians were less interested in Indians. Verdon compromised but she wasn’t happy about it. The dancers, whom she had wanted to be nude, were in conservative costumes that could have been worn at a ball at Buckingham Palace. They tripped over the naked showgirls who stood stolidly in the way. Verdon summed up the experience with the quip that it was an easy job: When in doubt, just bring on the nudes.

She and Cole were back in Hollywood for their next assignment for 20th Century-Fox, the Biblical romantic drama
David and Bathsheba
(1951). It was filmed on location in Nogales, Arizona, and at the Fox studios from November 24, 1950, to January 1951. Verdon was an uncredited specialty dancer and only appears in one scene: She performs a number of Near Eastern parentage with sinuous, erotic overtones at a banquet for King David of Israel (Gregory Peck). Director Henry King cuts away twice from Verdon’s dance to David, who sits with his military leader Uriah (Kieron Moore). The cutaways are presumably done as a narrative choice, since the focus of the performance is not the dancer as much as David’s preoccupation with Uriah.

Verdon begins on a staircase and runs down to the floor level accompanied by the music of an unseen orchestra. She is dressed similarly to the way she was in the Indian sequence of the “Rhythm of a New Romance” number in
On the Riviera
. She is barefoot and has a bare midriff with gold fringed pants, and has gold bracelets around her arms. Here she also wears a black headdress and a bra that shows cleavage. Verdon holds what look like two tennis racquets and wears a black and red cape that she discards, and red veils that she uses in the dance. She also writhes on a red carpet.

The film was released on August 10, 1951, with the taglines “Mighty as Goliath! Fiery as their Love!” and “For this woman … he broke God’s own commandment!” It was praised by
Variety
, the
New York Times
, and Tony Thomas and Aubrey Solomon in
The Films of 20th Century Fox
. A box office hit, it was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Set Decoration, Best Costume Design and Best Music. Verdon reported that in some cities her dance sequence was cut; it was only allowed in the larger cities “where there was progressive education.” She said that it was cut particularly in the South because she was an Egyptian Negress dancing for a white man. “It was the Bible, what could I do?” She is quoted as saying the following about the film. “David wanted to go to war but he was supposed to go home to Bathsheba, and my dance was supposed to put him in the mood to go home to her. Well, I guess it was too much, because everybody who saw it got the same idea.”