Mark Griffin (14 page)

Minnelli sprang into action. Spotting a fruit bowl on the set, he was reminded of a recent
Life
magazine layout. Using these images as his inspiration, he devised a spectacular sequence built around the ballad “Our Love Affair.” Mickey and Judy would assemble an edible orchestra featuring a pear-headed violinist, a tangerine-topped percussionist (playing grapefruit drums), and a passionate, grape-headed conductor à la Leopold Stokowski. “All I did was supply the idea,” Minnelli would later say. “The studio did the rest.”
¹⁹
The critics took notice: “The episode is an outstanding example of imaginative entertainment,”
Variety
raved.

Minnelli’s sequence was memorable, but even more important to the studio, it was economical. “This is the genius who took a bowl of fruit and made
a big production number out of it,” Louis B. Mayer would proudly say whenever introducing Vincente to studio visitors. It was Arthur Freed, however, who orchestrated Minnelli’s most important on-set introduction—to Judy Garland, then eighteen years old and already a Top Ten box-office star. “I was attracted to her open manner, as only a man who has been reserved all his life can be,” Minnelli said.
²⁰

Vincente would work with Garland more closely on her next screen teaming with Rooney,
Babes on Broadway
. In a haunted-theater sequence, Garland and Rooney would pay tribute to “ghosts with greasepaint.” It was Vincente’s idea to have the film’s talented young stars impersonate theatrical luminaries of the past. Mickey would salute Richard Mansfield in his signature role as Cyrano De Bergerac, and Judy would offer an homage to Sarah Bernhardt as Joan of Arc in “L’Aiglon.” In musical moments, Rooney would portray George M. Cohan in
Little Johnnie Jones
; Garland would perform a sprightly “I’ve Got Rings on My Fingers” as Blanche Ring. Minnelli’s impersonation idea was ultimately overruled by director Busby Berkeley, who underestimated his stars. Berkeley insisted that neither juvenile should attempt impersonations. Instead, they should simply play themselves, trying each role on for size. Although Garland and Rooney gamely gave it their all, the compromised approach threw the sequence off kilter. “It wasn’t very successful,” was Minnelli’s assessment of the finished version.
²¹

It was while making uncredited contributions to
Kathleen
, Shirley Temple’s sole effort for MGM, that Vincente reportedly stopped the show with something other than his conceptual ideas for the film’s big production number “Around the Corner.” Several of the contract dancers who worked on the film claimed that Minnelli appeared on the set wearing cosmetics—lipstick, mascara, eye shadow—enough chemical enhancement that Max Factor should have been beaming with pride. As dancer Dorothy Raye recalled, “There was an absolute silence on the set. I mean silence! Nobody had ever appeared looking like that. None of us could think of what to say.”
²²

While the stories about Minnelli’s fondness for make-up would proliferate in the years after his death, Jess Gregg doesn’t buy it: “You hear people today say things about him wearing eye shadow and magenta lipstick and I think that’s a damn lie. Particularly in Hollywood, it would have been fatal. Not only fatal but worse than that—it was unfashionable. Drag was so out then. . . . I think people have made up a story to be shocking and to get people to listen. I really don’t think it’s true.”
²³

Though others insist it is. “He was very effeminate in many ways and he did show up wearing very pale lipstick,” says Judi Blacque, a contract dancer
who appeared in multiple Minnelli productions, including
Meet Me in St. Louis
. “Of course, we never inquired. We just took it for granted. There were so many unusual people in Hollywood that it got so that you didn’t pay attention to those oddities.”
²⁴

While it was satisfying to see even some of his most offbeat ideas reach the screen, Minnelli was accustomed to directing full-scale Broadway productions with major stars. So far, his screen assignments at two studios had consisted of stylish segments inserted into movies directed by others who walked away with all of the credit.

Vincente’s year-long period of exploration and experimentation was coming to a close, and there were important decisions to be made. If he remained at Metro, would Minnelli find himself in the same predicament that Lena Horne was in, allowed to dazzle but only in small doses? What’s more, in New York, Vincente had been the ringleader of The Minnellium, his very own coterie of outrageously talented and erudite friends. In Hollywood, he was very much alone. Still something of a nonentity at the studio, Vincente was not yet being invited to the posh parties hosted by the wives of the studio moguls. And although a few of his New York friends also found themselves in California, they were either fully engaged with projects of their own or busy figuring out how to get back to Broadway.

HOW DID MINNELLI, an artist both unconventional and avante garde (even for Hollywood), ever hope to get anywhere at the most lockstep studio in town? He would adapt. He would dazzle them. It had worked in Chicago. They couldn’t get enough on Broadway. But if his ideas had been too extravagant and offbeat for Paramount, how would they ever find a home at MGM, the studio that touted all-American values in the form of
Boys Town
,
Young Dr. Kildare
, and the Andy Hardy series?

Fortunately for Vincente, he had managed to ingratiate himself with Metro’s top echelon—Arthur Freed, Roger Edens, and even Mayer, who hadn’t forgotten Minnelli’s salvage efforts on
Panama Hattie
or his small but striking contributions to the Mickey-Judy musicals. The fact that Vincente had devised sequences that were inspired yet economical immediately endeared him to the front office. Such a talent could only be viewed as an invaluable asset to the studio, as MGM was preparing a seemingly endless roster of ambitious productions, most of them grand-scale musicals.

Always a Metro specialty, musical films dominated the production schedule, and many were being specifically designed to boost wartime morale, such as the patriotic Judy Garland-Gene Kelly vehicle
For Me and My Gal
, for which Minnelli would conceive some of the vaudeville montages. Other musicals were of an even more escapist nature, and falling into this category was a promising though undeniably risky property: a film version of Vernon Duke and John LaTouche’s all-black musical
Cabin in the Sky
, which had a modestly successful run on Broadway, racking up 156 performances in 1940.
A whimsical morality tale,
Cabin
concerned the forces of heaven and hell vying for the attention of shiftless gambler Little Joe Jackson. On the side of the angels is Little Joe’s devout wife, Petunia, who finds herself in direct competition with the vixenish Georgia Brown, a temptress sent direct from Hotel Hades.

For all his monosyllabic responses, Arthur Freed was a shrewd character who recognized that Vincente was perfectly suited to the story not only because of
Cabin
’s theatrical origins, or the fact that it contained elements of surrealistic fantasy, but because Minnelli, as the perpetual outsider, would readily identify with a cast composed of African Americans. Realizing how blissfully wed Minnelli and the material would be, Freed fought tooth and nail for Vincente to be named
Cabin
’s director. The producer even endured what was later described as a “fur-flying donnybrook” with Metro’s powers that be, all in the name of Minnelli. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last time Freed would have to go to bat on Vincente’s behalf. Though it was decided that Freed’s flamboyant protégé could be entrusted with the job, Minnelli knew that during the next three months the real trial would begin: “I’d have to prove my worth all over again in films.”
¹

The studio wasn’t only taking a chance on a first-time director, for, despite its Broadway pedigree,
Cabin in the Sky
was actually pushing the envelope. Metro executives knew that this type of “experiment” had worked before. King Vidor’s all-black musical
Hallelujah
had performed surprisingly well for the studio back in 1929. And Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Rex Ingram, and Oscar Polk—all set to star in
Cabin
—had previously appeared in the 1936 Warner Brothers fable
The Green Pastures
, which had also featured an exclusively African American cast. Even so, Freed had been forewarned that
Cabin
would do no business south of the Mason-Dixon line, which may account for the fact that the movie was one of the most conservatively budgeted of the producer’s career. The studio shelled out $40,000 to transport
Cabin
to the screen, though executives remained dubious about the film’s prospects, especially with no bankable stars above the title.

True, Ethel Waters brought her Great White Way cachet to the role of the eternally self-sacrificing Petunia Jackson, but prior to
Cabin
her most recent screen appearance had been in
Cairo
, in which she appeared as Jeanette MacDonald’s maid. That particular role had been refused by newcomer Lena Horne, who would land the role of the alluring Georgia Brown—though Horne’s name really didn’t mean anything at the box office either. Dooley Wilson had starred as Little Joe Jackson in the stage version of
Cabin
, and he had recently appeared in the Oscar-winning
Casablanca
, in which he crooned “As Time Goes By” for Humphrey Bogart. While Wilson was red
hot, Freed was determined to secure more of a box-office draw for
Cabin
’s male lead. He decided on the gravelly-voiced Eddie Anderson, well known to radio fans as Jack Benny’s faithful sidekick, “Rochester.” A trio of black icons—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and John W. “Bubbles” Sublett—would appear in supporting roles.

Only weeks after production launched in August 1942, Minnelli discovered that his first full-length feature was already generating considerable controversy. Almena Davis, a reporter for the
Los Angeles Tribune
, visited the set during the shooting of the dance-hall sequence and told her readers:

Despite the dissenting voices—both in the press and at the studio—Minnelli found a source of unwavering support in Lena Horne. “Vincente and Lena were inseparable,” Horne’s daughter, Gail Buckley, recalled. “The coincidence of their simultaneous Hollywood careers strengthened their natural bond of sensitivity. . . . They dined together every night while
Cabin
was in preparation. Lena carried her lonely childhood everywhere and Vincente gave her the kind of brother-sister relationship she needed so badly. She was thrilled with Vincente’s
Cabin
concept. She thought he was a genius.”
²

While it’s been suggested that Vincente and Lena may have been romantically involved, it’s more likely that Horne’s friendship with Minnelli was similar to the kind of closeness she shared with her gay friends: composer Billy Strayhorn and playwright Arthur Laurents. “Vincente Minnelli and I stayed friends,” Horne said of her fellow Manhattan transplant. “He and
I were New Yorkers and we had that kind of empathy to draw upon.”
³
While studio hairdressers—save for the legendary Sydney Guilaroff—refused to touch Horne’s hair and she was hardly welcome in the MGM commissary, Vincente treated Lena as an equal. Minnelli sought his star’s input on developing the
Cabin
screenplay, which differed from Lynn Root’s libretto. He even turned to Horne for assistance in downplaying any elements of the characterizations that might be perceived as racially insensitive.

As Minnelli later observed, “Once we decided to go ahead with the film, we gave no thought to public reaction. We would never knowingly affront blacks . . . or anyone else for that matter.” One larger-than-life force of nature would remain perpetually offended, however. “When we made
Cabin in the Sky
, there was conflict between me and the studio from the beginning,” Ethel Waters admitted. “For one thing, I objected violently to the way religion was being treated in the screenplay.”
⁴
Others felt that Waters wasn’t so much rankled by the script as by how much attention Vincente was lavishing on his third-billed star.

Early on it became more than clear that there was only room for one star in an Ethel Waters production—and her name was not Lena Horne. “Miss Waters considered herself quite rightly, to be an enormous star and [she] regarded Lena as an upstart and her enemy on every front,” Gail Buckley noted.
⁵
If Waters had once enjoyed Vincente’s undivided attention during the staging of
At Home Abroad
, Minnelli now only seemed to have eyes for Horne, and he took great pains to make sure that her striking looks were photographed to best advantage. Needless to say, this did not sit well with Waters, who had convinced herself that Minnelli was developing a star at her expense. “I guess she’s just jealous ’cause she ain’t got what I got,” Lena’s Georgia Brown says of Ethel’s Petunia Jackson, and many close to the production were convinced that the sentiment didn’t only apply to the characters.