Mark Griffin (23 page)

Even for those only casually acquainted with the world of musical comedy, the name Cole Porter was synonymous with unmatched lyrics, sparkling wit, and the best double entrendres in the business. Coming off the failure of his Broadway musical
Around the World in Eighty Days
, Porter was also eager to take on
The Pirate
. The composer admired Garland and marveled at what he described as her “prodigal voice.” However, Porter seemed to start off on the wrong foot when the first few songs he submitted were deemed unsuitable by Freed, who sent the composer back to his piano. “Cole wasn’t happy with his contributions,” Minnelli remembered.
⁴
Though the score would eventually include such lyrical acrobatics as rhyming “schizophrenia” and “neurasthenia” (in Kelly’s “Nina”) and the raucous show-business anthem “Be a Clown,” Porter prophesized correctly that the score would not yield a single commercial hit.

The long, strange, and at times torturous production of
The Pirate
began in February 1947. What originally seemed like a Freed Unit dream project soon morphed into the kind of nightmare that only legitimately talented people can create. On a good day, Garland would arrive promptly at 11:45—for an 8:00 call. On other days, she wouldn’t show up at all. For those who had worked with Judy through the years, this was almost expected. They knew that when she did appear, she would be letter perfect and have everyone breaking up between takes. But during the making of
The Pirate
, a number of unresolved conflicts and psychological torments began to overwhelm the fragile star.

Garland had recently renewed her contract with MGM and she was already having second thoughts. The idea of being locked into another five years of back-to-back film projects, seemingly unrelenting demands, and studio politics dampened her usually exuberant spirits. With her uncanny
theatrical instincts, Garland may have been the first to realize that
The Pirate
, for all its stylishness and sophistication, would probably not appeal to the average moviegoer—the kind that had been thoroughly enchanted by her simple, unaffected Esther Smith in turn of the century
St. Louis
.

According to Minnelli, it was while shooting
The Pirate
that Garland “began to feel that she wasn’t functioning and turned again to the pills that had sustained her during past crises.”
⁵
Almost before she realized it had happened, Judy was once again caught up in the self-destructive pattern she had valiantly tried to break free from. Now she was back on the treadmill, which meant day after day of having to be that girl up on the screen that everybody loved. There was the constant pressure of having to please studio chiefs, stockholders, producers, costars, cameramen, choreographers, and, most importantly, her fiercely devoted legions of fans. Through it all, America’s sweetheart was permanently switched to one setting: on. Nobody ever had as much riding on stardom as Garland did. As a toddler, it had been ingrained in Baby Gumm that her net worth was calculated by how well she had put over a number, how completely she had pleased her audiences—how much love she had managed to summon up for an hour or two.

At times, just the thought of getting out of bed (after yet another angstridden, sleepless night) and starting the whole process over again was debilitating. She couldn’t even face the day. “For Judy, her talent was like breathing, and I think that was also part of her great insecurity,” says Garland historian John Fricke. “She’d wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh, God . . . I’ve got to do it again. I don’t know how I’m doing this. How can I do it?’ She would psych herself into sheer terror about not being able to be Judy Garland.”
⁶

Although the presence of the studio’s most valuable asset was essential—if not downright crucial—to the success of a production as star-driven as
The Pirate
, Vincente did his best to film around (and around) his immobilized wife. “It was as if she could sense the exact number of days that the studio could shoot around her,” Minnelli observed. But this time Judy miscalculated. All totaled, she would miss ninety-nine days of work on
The Pirate
, a picture that required her to be front and center in virtually every frame. “Now, for the first time, she had failed her substitute fathers, the men at the studio,” Vincente recalled. “The shooting schedule had to be extended. . . . She had been to psychiatrists in the past. It was again suggested that she turn to them for help.”
⁷

With Judy appearing more frequently on her analyst’s couch than before the cameras, Minnelli turned to Garland’s robust costar for both personal
and professional support. Remembering Judy’s generosity and kindness to him when he made his first film (
For Me and My Gal
) with her, Gene Kelly was willing to do anything to help. He even played sick for a week to give Garland additional time to pull herself together.

The intimate collaboration between Kelly and Minnelli may have been so creatively harmonious because it was a meeting of polar opposites: the effete, mild-mannered director teamed with an athletic, hyper-masculine daredevil. Oftentimes their creative thinking went in completely different directions, and yet a combination of their ideas could produce stunning results. During Garland’s extended absence, Kelly’s role in the film may have been beefed up so that the company would have something to shoot. When Judy did return, she thought she noticed some significant changes. Didn’t it seem like Minnelli’s camera set-ups favored her costar? What’s more, Gene’s lighting was better, his costumes were sexier, and his close-ups far outnumbered her own. It wasn’t long before Judy accused Vincente of having an affair with Gene.

“Judy, in her paranoia, became jealous of the time Gene and I were spending together,” Minnelli would politely put it years later. As Garland biographer Christopher Finch noted, “Some hint of Judy’s mental state at the time can be found in the fact that she became irrationally jealous . . . going so far as to interrupt one work session with a violent scene, accusing [Minnelli and Kelly] of using the picture to advance themselves at her expense.”
⁸

In his autobiography, Minnelli cautiously recounts this whole episode, only obliquely referring to Judy’s “damning accusation.” Nearly thirty years after the fact, Vincente diplomatically defended his relationship with Kelly by explaining that it was all strictly business: “We’d been so concerned with getting the choreography right, that we excluded [Garland] from our discussions. I felt it wasn’t necessary for Judy to have to deal with such problems, but she felt neglected.”
⁹
Although Minnelli is careful to never name the specific accusation that his wife leveled at him, one didn’t have to be Hedda or Louella to guess that in Judy’s eyes, Vincente had been doing entirely too much
choreographing
.

In the midst of all this behind-the-scenes intrigue, Minnelli received word that his father had died in Florida at the age of eighty-four. Vincente arranged a brief leave and attended the funeral in St. Petersburg alone. Upon his return to MGM, production of
The Pirate
(already countless days over schedule) resumed with the mounting of the most elaborate sequences in the picture.

Cole Porter had written a cryptic yet haunting dirge entitled “Voodoo” that included nonsensical lyrics such as
“Voodoo, whisper low from above
. . .
Voodoo, what’s this mystery called love?”
Although one of the weakest links in a score that was hardly Porter’s best work to begin with, “Voodoo” was called into service as the film’s musical centerpiece, forming the basis for the inevitable Minnelli excursion into the surreal. After being hypnotized by Kelly, Garland’s demure Manuela sheds her inhibitions and suddenly reveals all of the repressed longings and erotic passions buried in the depths of her subconscious. Or, as John Fricke puts it: “Kelly sees Judy not only lasciviously but as if he were Sid Luft in training. You know, with a kind of hungry look that says ‘
This is somebody who can make me a lot of money
.’”
¹⁰

There was no end of problems with “Voodoo.” To begin with, Kay Thompson’s eerie, atonal arrangement of the song was genuinely unnerving. And the choreography by Gene Kelly and Robert Alton really pushed the envelope for an MGM musical. “We were doing a little bit of over-groping,” Gene Kelly remembered. “It was a sensual and sensuous sequence—both words are applicable.”
¹¹
The number was so hot, in fact, that only a god-fearing, flag-waving, mother-loving studio mogul could put out the fire. As John Fricke notes:

When it came time to shoot the sanitized version of “Voodoo,” Vincente encountered another problem. Garland appeared on the set overmedicated, wild-eyed, and extremely agitated. After getting a look at a small fire that was being prepared for the number, Judy screamed, “Somebody help me! They’re going to burn me to death!” Approaching the assembled extras, she began asking each one, “Do you have some Benzedrine?” Dissolving into hysterical sobs, Garland was carried off the set as the cast and crew looked on in stunned disbelief. When the number was reattempted several days later, Judy was once again in full command.
¹³

After
The Pirate
was previewed in October and November 1947, Minnelli bowed to studio pressure to shorten the film to MGM’s preferred running time of one hour and forty-two minutes. There was also a concerted effort to recut the picture with an eye toward making it more palatable to mainstream audiences. During this editorial overhaul, “Voodoo” was deleted, as
was a portion of Kelly’s stirring “Pirate Ballet.” Retakes were ordered, and these were completed in November and December. Garland’s “Mack the Black” was restaged and presented in a more up-tempo rendition. The number became one of the most scintillating moments in the finished film.

Judy, Gene Kelly, and Minnelli during the tumultuous production of
The Pirate
, 1947. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

With all that occurred on Vincente’s watch during the tortured production of
The Pirate
, it’s a wonder that the film that emerged is as consistently watchable as it is. “One of the most delightful musicals to hit the screen in a month of Sundays,”
Newsweek
decreed. Considering everything that happened during the epic shoot, it’s not surprising that
The Pirate
is both boldly brilliant and wildly uneven: Minnelli’s musical seems to be in the throes of an identity crisis as it unreels.

“You can’t get around how problematic
The Pirate
is,” says film scholar Richard Barrios:

Minnelli was characteristically diplomatic when reflecting on the film for
Cahiers du Cinéma
: “I was very pleased with the way the film turned out. Judy gave one of her best performances and the Cole Porter songs were excellent. Unfortunately, the merchandising on the film was bad and it failed to go over when it was released.”
¹⁵
Gene Kelly was far more candid:

It’s a tribute both to Minnelli’s dedication and to Garland’s showmanship that her performance bears little evidence of her tormented condition throughout the making of the film. Occasionally, a tense, edgy Judy seeps through Manuela’s wide-eyed innocence, but this is offset by Garland’s flawless comedic timing in other scenes, which revealed that she was a gifted comedienne capable of handling the most urbane material. Teamed with Kelly for the spirited “Be a Clown” finale, Judy is joyously carefree on screen. The final images of her in
The Pirate
could make anyone forget that this was a woman with very real problems.