Mark Griffin (11 page)

A ’30s studio portrait of Minnelli by Arthur Ermates. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST (PHOTOGRAPHER: ARTHUR ERMATES)

The Show Is On
opened at the Winter Garden on Christmas Day 1936, and Santa delivered a hit. The production continued Minnelli’s extraordinary winning streak. The misfit from Delaware, Ohio, was now the most sought after talent on Broadway: “It happened to me. I was a winner. The offers started pouring in. The re-creation of the War of the Roses using real roses? In time. A musical version of Medusa, starring Merman and the inmates of the New York Herpetological Gardens? Maybe next year. A Hollywood contract? Come now.”
²²

For some time, the same critics who had been heaping hosannas on Vincente for his work in the theater had wondered how long it would be before Hollywood’s “bogeymen of Technicolor” would scoop Minnelli up and carry him away. Already there had been one close call. Playwright Lillian Hellman was determined to bring her buddy Vincente and movie producer Samuel Goldwyn together. Hellman found that as moguls go, Goldwyn was straightforward and possessed of genuine integrity, and she believed Vincente could be a tremendous asset to the producer. But Minnelli wasn’t as taken with Goldwyn as Hellman was. “I have an offer from Sam Goldwyn, but he doesn’t seem to understand what my work is about,” Minnelli wrote to Yip Harburg
in April 1936. “He seems to want me very much as a designer, and seems shocked and grieved to learn that this is only a part of what I am doing in the theatre and would want to do in pictures. . . . There must be some way for the movies to use my small but exquisite talent without labeling me as a designer or as a director.”
²³

It was clear that if Vincente did surrender to the silver screen, it would have to be on his own terms. And his employer would have to fully understand how truly unique that “small but exquisite” talent of his was. After instructing his agents to look into the offers from various movie studios, the highest bidder turned out to be not Goldwyn or MGM but Paramount Pictures. Terms were met. A contract was signed. Minnelli was going Hollywood at $2,500 a week.

“Just as he was conceded to be the one person who could return the musical stage to the glories of the Ziegfeld reign, Minnelli is snapped up by Paramount,” the
Boston Traveler
’s Helen Eager noted in an article headlined “A New Genius Rises in the Theater.” The newly anointed genius was surprisingly candid about his reasons for heading west: “He told us, quite frankly, that the money offered him by the film company was too attractive to turn down.”
²⁴

Paramount’s publicity machine kicked in before Minnelli had a chance to pack his bags. The October 30, 1936, edition of the
Los Angeles Times
carried a tiny, telegraphic item buried between stories about Binnie Barnes and Gloria Swanson that read, “Importance of musicals in present studio activities is stressed with the signing of Vincente Minnelli by the Paramount organization. This producer and director of footlight attractions will act as general advisor on the melodic features that are made hence forward at the establishment.”

IN JANUARY 1937, Minnelli drove through the Paramount gates for the first time. Never one to start small, he proposed that his first production should be an innovative musical mystery entitled
Times Square
. Minnelli envisioned the film as an all-star extravaganza that would incorporate scenes from actual Broadway shows currently on the boards. In his pitch to studio chief Adolph Zukor, Vincente maintained that the expense of importing Great White Way headliners to Hollywood or dispatching a film crew to New York would be justified as moviegoers would be all too eager to spend their Depression-era dimes to see theatrical luminaries most of them had only heard about. Zukor listened, as did head of production William LeBaron. Still reeling from the losses on
Alice in Wonderland
, the lavishly mounted all-star epic gone wrong, Paramount executives were understandably leery about committing to anything as grandiose as
Times Square
. Nevertheless, Vincente continued to develop the screenplay with Russian writer Leo Birinski, who had scripted the Greta Garbo vehicle
Mata Hari
.

After studio executives expressed their doubts about
Times Square
, Minnelli shelved the project, and despite his great enthusiasm, it remained un-produced. Paramount then asked Vincente to turn his attention to
Artists and Models
, a picture he was assigned to serve in an “advisory capacity.” This breezy musical comedy was being readied for Jack Benny and Ida Lupino. The very definition of madcap, the movie represented a change of pace for irascible, one-eyed director Raoul Walsh, who later excelled at helming such gangster flicks as
The Roaring Twenties
and
White Heat
. “Public Melody
Number One,” a witty spoof of the G-Man genre, would be the sole sequence that Minnelli conceived that would be retained in the final cut of
Artists and Models
.
^r

Collaborating with fellow New York transplant Harold Arlen, Vincente whipped up a frenzied pastiche featuring a characteristically manic Martha Raye and Louis Armstrong. Looked at today, “Public Melody Number One” might be considered a sort of rough sketch for the Jim Henry’s night club sequence in Minnelli’s first feature,
Cabin in the Sky
. But when Minnelli viewed the much-altered version of “Public Melody” that ended up on the screen, he dubbed it “a full scale mess, missing all the nuances we’d supplied.”
¹
Vincente had also prepared an elaborate surrealistic ballet for
Artists and Models
, but it was deemed “too artistic” for a Paramount programmer and dropped.

Understandably, Minnelli was frustrated. After being hailed as Broadway’s new genius, he found that Hollywood was oddly indifferent to him. Imaginative concepts that had been eagerly embraced by Minnelli’s New York colleagues didn’t inspire anywhere near the same enthusiasm in Tinseltown. With his cryptic communication style and sketches for dream ballets tucked under his arm, Minnelli was considered too avant-garde, too cosmopolitan, and, well . . . just
too much
for Hollywood. Busby Berkeley’s kaleidoscopic choreography for
Footlight Parade
was one thing, but a Jack Benny vehicle taking time out for a surrealistic ballet was simply going too far.
It will never go over in Duluth, kid
, one can almost hear the cigarchomping producer say.

When Lee Shubert offered Vincente a return to Broadway in the form of a new musical entitled
Hooray for What!
the unhappy transplant didn’t hesitate. After he wrangled himself out of his lucrative Paramount contract, his eight-month adventure in Hollywood was over. Although he would be missed by a small circle of West Coast intimates, the rest of the industry barely took notice of his departure. Little did they know that he would be back, and next time out, it would be to stay.

With the joyous sound of New York traffic once again ringing in his ears, Minnelli told columnist James Aswell: “I have just returned from Hollywood where all the world’s a succession of stages. After years spent working in the theater on one stage at a time, I found it just a bit terrifying to create a scene that covered almost a quarter of a mile. . . . In my opinion, the screen as a musical comedy medium has not as yet been fully and completely developed.”
Even though he had just skulked away from Hollywood’s sound stages in defeat, Minnelli expressed very definite ideas about how screen musicals could be improved upon. He called for songs that actually advanced the plot and looked forward to “the perfection of color film.”
²

Roy Roberts, Ed Wynn, and Vivian Vance in Minnelli’s
Hooray for What!
Vance replaced future MGM arranger Kay Thompson, who was originally cast as the show’s singing spy. “Kay Thompson was fired from that show,” remembers songwriter Hugh Martin, who was in the chorus. “She was fired not by Vincente but by the stupid Shuberts. Vincente was as horrified as we all were.” PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SHUBERT ARCHIVE

Less than a year after abandoning Broadway to teach Hollywood a thing or two, “the new genius of the theatre” was back with little to show for his trouble. While Minnelli was away, the Great White Way had matured. Star-driven, plotless revues like
The Show Is On
suddenly seemed extravagantly wasteful in F.D.R.’s New Deal America. Even musicals were expected to sober up and have something important to say.

As conceived by Yip Harburg, the antiwar extravaganza
Hooray for What!
would deliver first-rate songs (such as “Down with Love”) as well as political substance. Harburg had channeled his very real revulsion regarding the rise of fascism into a riotous farce. The musical’s plot concerned Chuckles, an amateur inventor who stumbles upon a formula for an all-powerful gas. (“This gas will revive the dead. I’ve got a big offer from the Republican party.”) After making his discovery, Chuckles is suddenly sought after by world leaders, munitions makers, and the glamorous international spy Stephanie Stephanovich. After secret agents get hold of the formula for the gas and sell it, each
of the world’s great dictators all believe that they alone are in possession of the ultimate secret weapon. But one of the spies has scrambled the formula so that what is ultimately unleashed on the world is laughing gas.

Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the talented team that would later give Broadway a record-breaking triumph in the form of
Life with Father
, were brought on board to assist Harburg with his scenario. Harold Arlen would write the music. Vaudeville veteran Ed Wynn was cast as Chuckles. Agnes de Mille would choreograph the show’s “Hero Ballet.” While Howard Lindsay was credited as the show’s book director, the entire production would be staged by Minnelli, who admitted, “I approached my first book show as if it were a revue. . . . The only difference to me was that one set of characters carried through from beginning to end.”
³
Given the content of
Hooray for What!
and its very topical satire, Minnelli would not be able to rely solely on his designs to win the audience over. The scenic effects would be in service to the story this time, not the other way around.

Nevertheless, during the show’s pre-Broadway tryout in October 1937, critics couldn’t help but notice how pretty political satire could be. “An air of luxury predominates, for Vincente Minnelli has outdone himself in providing beautiful costumes and backgrounds,” Elinor Hughes noted in her
Boston Herald
review. Also singled out for praise was “a striking blonde girl with a husky voice and an original style.”
⁴
Her name was Kay Thompson. Although Thompson was clearly a rising star and had walked away with some of the best notices in Boston, it was not long after her out-of-town triumph that she was informed that her services were no longer required.

“Kay Thompson was fired from that show,” says composer Hugh Martin, who was also in the cast. “I was outside her dressing room when it happened and I never heard such sobbing in my life. . . . She was fired not by Vincente but by the stupid Shuberts. Vincente was as horrified as we all were. . . . But Kay lost her job in
Hooray for What!
and it was given to Vivian Vance, who later played ‘Ethel’ in the
I Love Lucy
series.”
⁵
Despite the raves Thompson had received, the Shuberts suddenly decided that their leading lady was too angular and bony. Vivian Vance (Thompson’s understudy) was the kind of voluptuous Joan Blondell type that the Shuberts found sexy. Vance, who idolized Thompson, suddenly found herself in a very awkward position, but at Kay’s urging, she went on.

Along with Thompson, Agnes de Mille was ousted. She was replaced with future MGM choreographer Robert Alton. During its out-of-town overhaul,
Hooray for What!
suddenly became less about Harburg’s antifascist themes and more about Ed Wynn’s off-the-wall buffoonery. There were reports of friction between Wynn and Minnelli. Other roles were recast. But despite
all of the backstage bedlam,
Hooray for What!
was pronounced a hit when it opened on December 1, 1937.