Mark Griffin (45 page)

The picture would be Holliday’s last. In 1965, the actress died of cancer at the age of forty-four.
Bells Are Ringing
would not only stand as a testament to Holliday’s inimitable talents but was also the Freed Unit’s last hurrah—at least musically speaking.

For Minnelli, it was on to the next project, and as always, there was already one waiting for him: an epic remake of Rudolph Valentino’s silent classic
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
—though once on board, Minnelli, like Ella Peterson, probably wanted nothing more than to hightail it back to the Bonjour Tristesse Brasierre Company.

IT WAS WHILE VACATIONING in Rome that Vincente met an unstoppable force of nature who would become his third wife: Denise Giganti. Or as some of her detractors referred to her: “Denise, Inc.” She wasn’t a superstar like Judy, or a knockout like Georgette. Nevertheless, incredible things seemed to happen whenever Denise was around. Or maybe she just grabbed life by the scruff of the neck and made things happen. After all, she had never been shy about going after whatever she wanted, despite the fact that she told Minnelli’s old friend Eleanor Lambert: “I don’t want a lot of things. Just good and right for me.”
¹
Even so, Denise seemed to be in perpetual pursuit of
something
. And she was so thoroughly charming—what with that adorable stutter, super-chic sense of style, and trademark braided hair—that one tended not to notice whenever she pounced.

Long before she met Minnelli and took Hollywood by storm, Denise’s story seemed ready-made for the movies. It had everything.
An exotic location:
Namely, Belgrade, Serbia, where, somewhere in the vicinity of 1931, Denise—or Danica Radosavljevic, as she was then named—was born.
An unconventional upbringing:
Daughter of a military officer loyal to the monarchy, “Dusica” (as Denise was nicknamed) was raised largely by her grandparents. As Denise would remember it, her own mother had been judged “inappropriate” as her primary caretaker.
Secrets revealed:
During the upheaval of World War II, Denise’s grandfather disclosed to her alone the location of the family’s hidden stash of gold, which she duly noted.
The daring escape:
After the war, as Tito’s Communists solidified their control, Denise fled her
homeland by sailing off in a tiny rowboat. Miraculously, she was spotted by a British minesweeper and pulled to safety. The captain of the ship “took a shine to her,” and instead of hauling Denise back to Serbia, he deposited her in a refugee camp in Bari, Italy.
Dangerous liaisons:
While working as a model in Rome, Denise caught the eye of Giuseppe Giganti, a considerably older though extraordinarily wealthy Italian mogul (rumored to have had some shady connections), and they were married. Although Denise would later refer to Giganti as her “first husband,” it appears that she had been married at least once—possibly twice—before meeting him.
^at
The moment of truth:
In 1958, Denise walked out on her marriage, but by all accounts, she emerged with mucho lira and a world-class collection of jewels that made the House of Harry Winston look seriously underdressed.

It was quite a saga—more than enough melodrama for three Joan Crawford pictures. In fact, many felt that Vincente should have scrapped plans for his next epic,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
, and instead turned his cameras on
The Denise Giganti Story
. Now
that
movie would have sold tickets, and everybody would still be talking about it. According to Denise, people couldn’t stop talking about her—even if they had only seen her from across the room at a Dior showing or at a Vivien Westwood retrospective: “Over 90 percent of the people who write or talk about me have never met me,” she once observed.
²

Even Hollywood insiders who had met her (and who were all too familiar with larger-than-life personalities) were genuinely intrigued. “Denise would be a fantastic subject for a novel,” writer-actress Ruth Gordon told the
Los Angeles Times
in 1967. “She’s fiction, right out of Somserset Maugham or Michael Arlen. And I’m sure if she were
written
, she would turn into a real person. Only then could you find out who she
really
is.”
³

As it turned out, Ruth Gordon was right. Denise
was
a fantastic subject for a novel. In Joyce Haber’s blistering 1976 bestseller
The Users
(best described as the literary love-child of Rona Barrett and Harold Robbins), the character of “Elena Brent” was reportedly inspired by The Third Mrs. Minnelli.

In Haber’s racy roman à clef, the enterprising Elena becomes a Beverly Hills super-hostess after scraping, scheming, and sleeping her way to the top. Her stunning ascent begins when she flees dreary East Berlin after bedding down with a border guard (“She spent half an hour of her last evening in East Berlin in the shack with Helmut, while his friends guarded their privacy.”) So, did Denise see any parallels between herself and Haber’s scrappy heroine? Not a chance. “You can believe if I had to escape by going to bed with some
body, it would be a commander,” Denise announced.
⁴
Still, there seemed to be some striking similarities between the Serbian powerhouse and Haber’s wily Elena, who realizes “that sex was something she could use if she had to, without feeling that she had betrayed herself, and that it didn’t require love.”

By the time Denise divorced Giuseppe Giganti and made her way to America, she had acquired plenty of life experience and some choice baubles, but she was still sorely lacking in the social-standing department. “Denise was a nobody,” says designer Luis Estevez. “She arrived from nowhere and with a very sketchy past.”
⁵
But all of that would change. As friends and foes alike would learn, one must never underestimate The Power of Denise. It wasn’t long before she had charmed her way into a glittering circle composed of Hollywood’s super-elite.

As Luis Estevez recalls, “[Producer] Sam Spiegel and his wife Betty had befriended Denise and introduced her to very sweet, adorable, talented, wonderful Vincente Minnelli . . . who was gay.” Denise seemed willing to overlook that particular detail. During production on Vincente’s next film,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
, the couple’s relationship blossomed. As Minnelli recalled, “It was very easy for me to begin having serious thoughts about her, and I hope she felt the same.”
⁶

IT HAD CATAPULTED Rudolph Valentino to superstardom in 1921. Could a modernized version of
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
do for some swarthy unknown in the ’60s what it had done for Rudy in the Roaring ’20s? In an attempt to emulate the megahit that was Metro’s 1959 remake of
Ben-Hur
(which had also been a silent smash in 1925), MGM was digging deep into the vaults and dusting off any properties—no matter how antiquated—that had once turned a tidy profit for the studio. Valentino’s
Four Horsemen
had raked in an estimated $5 million back in the days when Warren G. Harding was still in office. So, even though nobody had asked for it, Metro was going to give a new generation their own
Apocalypse
—only this one, of course, would be bigger and better, in CinemaScope, in Metrocolor, and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Even the World War I setting of Valentino’s version and the original Vicente Blasco Ibáñez novel wasn’t good enough. A movie this super-colossal required no less a global conflict than World War II. Julian Blaustein, who had produced such historical dramas as
Desiree
and
The Wreck of the Mary Deare
, would mount his most ambitious production to date with
Four Horsemen
. Robert Ardrey, who had scripted Minnelli’s
Madame Bovary
, was assigned the daunting task of reworking such musty material and bringing it up to date.

Minnelli immediately voiced concerns about updating the story, though he felt that this was a challenge that could be worked through, especially with The Second Coming of Rudolph Valentino in the lead. But where would MGM’s new matinee idol come from? There seemed to be no worthy contenders among the studio’s dwindling roster of contract players. Well, maybe one. In March 1960, the
New York Times
announced that George Hamilton was the front runner: “Mr. Hamilton, a poised, dark-haired young man who once spent six months studying bullfighting in South America, is serious about his aspirations to become another Valentino.”
⁷
Montgomery Clift was mentioned. Dirk Bogarde was discussed. Horst Buchholtz was a prime candidate. While vacationing in Rome, Minnelli also met with a stunning up and comer named Alain Delon. The former French soldier turned heads wherever he went, oozed sexual charisma, and would soon be coveted by casting couches of every persuasion throughout Hollywood. Minnelli lobbied for this smoldering star of tomorrow, but Metro’s executives were unmoved. Nobody knew (or at that moment cared) who Alain Delon was.

The
Four Horsemen
required a dashing young man to play Argentinean playboy turned Resistance crusader Julio Desnoyers, but MGM needed an established star to carry the picture. What Minnelli ended up with was Glenn Ford. The actor had recently signed a multi-picture deal with the studio, and headlining their newly anointed star in an important period piece seemed the perfect way to trumpet the association. At forty-two, Ford was still photogenic, but he was well beyond his Johnny Farrell peak opposite Rita Hayworth in
Gilda
. Metro may have felt more confident having a bankable star on board, but Ford’s presence seemed to immediately age the project. What’s more, the supporting cast that had been assembled also included more than a touch of distinguished gray. Some twenty years after
Casablanca
, Paul Henreid once again found himself playing a noble Resistance leader and husband to a wife enamored with another man.
Watch on the Rhine
star Paul Lukas and Minnelli favorite Charles Boyer would play the German and French heads of the Desnoyers-von Hartrott family. A nearly unrecognizable Lee J. Cobb in a white wig and heavy make-up portrayed the blustery, larger-than-life patriarch Madariaga.

In the role of Julio’s alluring love interest, Marguerite Laurier, the studio bypassed Hollywood’s reigning leading ladies and instead chose Ingrid Thulin, the luminous star of several Ingmar Bergman features. The Swedish-born star of
Wild Strawberries
may have been a consummate actress, but her name meant next to nothing to the paying customer in Bayonne, New Jersey.

When preproduction began in Paris in August 1960, Vincente’s doubts about the script mushroomed into major concerns. While ensconced in
the George Cinq hotel, he scrutinized the screenplay, becoming ever more convinced that Ardrey’s adaptation lacked passion—romantic, political, or otherwise.

John Gay, one of the most prolific screenwriters in the business, received word that his services were desperately needed. “I was working for MGM. I had just finished reworking
How the West Was Won
, and they said, ‘Go over to Paris. They’re having trouble with this picture,’” Gay recalls:

As Gay slogged through the seemingly endless rewrites, there were “streams of memorandums flowing” between Blaustein, studio chief Sol Siegel, and a determined but continually undermined Minnelli. Every aspect of the production, from the epic to the minute, was hashed over. Film historian George Feltenstein once digested the 6,000 or so pages contained in the studio files on
The Four Horsemen
and discovered that the trouble had started at the top and trickled down: “Sol Siegel, whom Minnelli had the great success with on
Some Came Running
, had transitioned from being an outside producer to head of production. . . . Siegel was really the one who was forcing all of these changes on Minnelli. There are letters from Vincente, in which he is begging and pleading for them not to do this and not to do that. But they wouldn’t listen.”
⁹