Mark Griffin (47 page)

Metro’s front office believed that the superlative cast that was assembled might distract the eagle-eyed censors from the plot’s tawdrier elements. In addition to Kirk Douglas,
Two Weeks
would feature Edward G. Robinson, Oscar-winner Claire Trevor, Cyd Charisse, and the eternally poised George Hamilton, who immediately felt ill at ease as the picture’s resident bad ass, Davie Drew.

“The character I was playing was a real bad boy—a cross between James Dean and maybe Warren Beatty,” says Hamilton:

Back projection aside, Minnelli’s biggest challenge on
Two Weeks
appears to have been competing with himself. For the specter of
The Bad and the Beautiful
hovers over the picture. At one point, Minnelli goes full tilt self-reflexive: Kirk Douglas’s Jack Andrus screens clips of Kirk Douglas in
The Bad and the Beautiful
. Later, in a dramatically charged sequence, Jack’s reckless driving—with a hysterical Carlotta along for the ride—seems intent on recapturing the effect of Lana Turner’s automotive meltdown. And even composer David Raksin can’t refrain from appropriating portions of his haunting
Bad and the Beautiful
score for
Two Weeks
.

“They were doing this sort of, kind of like a sequel to
The Bad and the Beautiful
. Could they do it twice? That was sort of the idea,” remembers actress Peggy Moffit:

Whatever sparks may have existed in Minnelli’s original cut of
Two Weeks in Another Town
were snuffed out by Joseph Vogel after he screened the film and ordered a drastic re-edit. Considerable cuts were made without consulting either Houseman or Minnelli. After Houseman fired off an angry letter to MGM’s legal department, the producer was allowed to reshape the film—but he was only allowed to use Vogel-approved footage. Understandably, Minnelli was outraged that
Two Weeks
had been wrested away from him. In its final form, the story was missing so much meat that the result is not so much a complete movie but 107 minutes of rushes.

“The picture should have been better than it was,” Cyd Charisse reflected years later. “When I finally saw it, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the story—it was so disconnected—and I’d been in it.”
⁴
The reckless, pre-release editing pared away not only wholesale chunks of the narrative but revealing bits of character. In the studio-sanctioned version, Charisse’s Carlotta comes off as a soulless, self-absorbed virago. In Minnelli’s version, the character had more shading. “Last time I counted, I had over a thousand dresses,” Carlotta admits in a deleted sequence. “More than four hundred suits. Including the first suit I ever owned—a hound’s tooth gabardine I bought in Macy’s basement for nineteen ninety-five. It’s a trait of mine. I can’t stand to give up anything I’ve ever owned.” With the back story removed, Carlotta’s clinging to her ex-husband seems inexplicable and odd—like so much of the film in its truncated form.

“
Two Weeks in Another Town
was a disappointment,” Kirk Douglas admitted forty-five years after he made a valiant attempt to rescue the film from the butcher’s block:

Any positive assessments of the film tended to be drowned out by the vocal majority: “The whole thing is a lot of glib trade patter, ridiculous and unconvincing romantic snarls and a weird professional clash between actor and director that is like something out of a Hollywood cartoon,” Bosley Crowther wrote in the
New York Times
.
⁶

Two Weeks in Another Town
did find some important champions, including twenty-three-year-old future director Peter Bogdanovich, who reviewed it for
Film Culture
and saluted it as

DENISE WAS IN. After only a few years of marriage to Minnelli, she was already being hailed as “Hollywood’s Josephine”—as in the guilelessly charming French empress. The comparison suited Beverly Hills’ busiest hostess just fine. “My favorite historical personage is Josephine,” Denise told
Los Angeles Times
reporter John Hallowell. “She was an elegant swinger, darling. Napoleon, he was ze general; Josephine was the
influence
. And she was not stuffy.”
¹
Neither was Denise, who could certainly swing with the best of them. She dished with Truman Capote, dined with Vanessa Redgrave, and got the guest room ready for the president’s daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson. Denise rubbed elbows with everyone—from Hollywood royalty, such as Jennifer Jones Selznick, to real royalty, such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The parties she threw were legendary, and the self-described “international nomad” proved to be as adept at assembling an all-star cast as her husband. “I am basically a frustrated David Merrick,” Denise admitted. “I don’t invite people. I
cast
people for my parties—the players, supporting players, chorus girls and boys, interesting character actors. Every party is like opening night.” And there was no mistaking who the headliner was. As columnist Joyce Haber once noted, the supersonic jet-setter was a walking cinematic event, who was “personally dressed by Donald Brooks and Jimmy Galanos, bejeweled by David Webb, arranged by Valerian Rybar, profiled by Rex Reed, photographed by Cecil Beaton and carefully bedecked by everyone who is anyone.”
²

On the arm of an Oscar-winning husband, Denise was A-list all the way. And thanks to his wife, Minnelli was back on the map socially. All of the
balls, black-tie events, and blowouts at the Bistro that he attended landed Vincente’s name—or at least “The Minnellis,” in the columns on an almost daily basis.

“That marriage was very important for both of them because it established her social position in Los Angeles and New York and the rest of the world, which is what she always wanted, and also, she had such an aggressive and powerful personality that she was able to really revive Vincente’s career,” says one who witnessed Denise’s meteoric ascent.
³

It was Denise who was the driving force behind Venice Productions, the independent production company that she and Vincente founded in 1962 (“Venice” was an amalgam of their names). Three Minnelli movies would be produced under the Venice banner (
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
,
Goodbye, Charlie
, and
The Sandpiper
). Although husband and wife were supposed to be equal partners in the venture, it soon became apparent that one of the participants seemed to have the upper hand where financial matters were concerned—and it was not the director of
Meet Me in St. Louis
.

“Denise demanded things from the studios and she pushed and pushed beyond anything that you can imagine,” says designer Luis Estevez. “Although they had a great house right on Sunset Boulevard, Denise knew from the beginning that Vincente was never going to make enough money for her.”
⁴
Even those in Denise’s inner circle would blame her for the fact that Minnelli was passed over when Warner Brothers went shopping for a director for their film version of
My Fair Lady
. As the story goes, Denise pressured Vincente to ask for too much money and he ended up outpricing himself. Warners snapped up George Cukor for $300,000, and Minnelli lost his chance to direct what could have been one of the most important films of his career.

But the “hostess par none” wasn’t about to miss any opportunities. In the ’60s, Denise’s socializing hit a peak. As one of her former intimates recalls: