Mark Griffin (51 page)

Vincente seemed to be approaching the material as though it were a Radio City Music Hall revue circa 1934. “Minnelli made it sexless,” writer William Goldman observed. “He had taken a deadly serious anti-war effort and directed it as if it were a Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald movie.”
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When actress Martha Schlamme asked Minnelli about her motivation in a key scene, the director reminded her that it was of the utmost importance that her Galeries Lafayette shopping bag should be displayed in such a way that the label would be clearly visible to the audience.

Although advance publicity had promised that the show’s leading lady would emerge a shining star,
Mata Hari
would prove to be anything but Marisa Mell’s
Funny Girl
. Antony DeVecchi befriended the overwhelmed actress and believes that she, like everyone else, was weighted down by the overproduction:

Before its Broadway opening, which was scheduled for January 13, 1968,
Mata Hari
would be previewed at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., and presented as a benefit for the Women’s National Democratic Club. The audience of VIPs would include Lynda Bird Johnson, the president’s daughter. After observing some of the rehearsals,
Washington Post
drama editor Richard L. Coe was hedging his bets about
Mata Hari
: “It could come out as the latest triumph of the American musical stage and it could resound with a shattering thud.” On November 17, 1967 (a date that will live in theatrical infamy),
Mata Hari
proved to be the thud heard round the world.
Variety
declared the preview (which dragged on past midnight) a “shambles” and noted that “the advance show was a mishap almost too exaggerated to believe. . . . The audience roared with laughter in all the wrong places as far as the script was concerned. The night was so bad, there was no curtain call. . . . The direction by Vincente Minnelli is, at best, confused.” Martin Charnin managed to sit through it: “All I could think of was, ‘How quickly can I get the Amtrak out of Washington? Or was it legitimate to stand up on the stage at the end of the show and say to an aggregate audience, ‘I apologize. This is not at all what we meant.’ . . . It was purely and simply the agony of seeing something that we had created being totally destroyed with no conscious recognition of what was being done.”
¹⁰
As writer Ethan Mordden recalls, “It really was a bad staging of a very good show.”

In his “Window on Washington” column, Bill Henry had a field day surveying the ruins:

According to Antony DeVecchi, by that point Minnelli was long gone. “He never finished that show. He quit. He left it all in the hands of Jack
Cole. . . . Vincente’s hands were tied with the stupidity of what was going on with that show. Jesus, what a nightmare it was.” As Charnin recalls, at one point a desperate Merrick hit upon an idea to rescue the production: “After Washington, Merrick said, ‘I got it! I know how to save it!’ We all leapt to attention and he said, ‘We’ll do it as a spoof with Bert Lahr and Nancy Walker.’”
¹²
Ultimately, wiser heads prevailed. Taking a loss of approximately $700,000, Merrick canceled
Mata Hari
’s Philadelphia engagement and Broadway opening.

In 1968, the Theatre de Lys presented a pared-down version of the musical entitled
Ballad of a Firing Squad
, which Charnin directed himself. Despite encouraging reviews, the production closed after a discouraging seven performances. Although the musical’s original creators made a valiant attempt to show audiences what they had intended, it seemed that nothing could obliterate the outrageous spectacle that had come before.

As set designer Jo Mielziner memorably said,
Mata Hari
was “one third Minnelli, one third Mielziner, and one third shit.”

IF VINCENTE’S RETURN TO THE STAGE had been noteworthy for all the wrong reasons, Hollywood wanted him back—and in a big way. In June 1967, Minnelli signed on the dotted line. He was now under contract to Paramount Pictures to direct a screen version of the musical
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
, which had been a modest success on Broadway in 1965. A year and a half would pass before principal photography began in January 1969. By that time, the Hollywood that Vincente had known intimately for three decades was beginning to disintegrate.

Despite the critical acclaim and commercial success greeting such daring, cutting-edge releases as
Bonnie and Clyde
,
The Graduate
,
Easy Rider
, and
The Boys in the Band
, the film industry still seemed largely oblivious to the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the Stonewall riots. Instead, Tinseltown was almost single-mindedly obsessed with replicating the unprecedented success of a certain cinematic phenomenon.

The Sound of Music
had ushered in a slew of would-be imitators—overblown, extravagantly budgeted musicals (
Doctor Dolittle
,
Finian’s Rainbow
,
Sweet Charity
,
Star!
) that succeeded only in proving that
The Sound of Music
was, in the lingo of studio accountants, “a nonrecurring exception.” Nevertheless, every producer in town had eyes trained on Broadway’s marquees, searching for the next surefire winner in the blockbuster musical sweepstakes. Originally entitled
I Picked a Daisy
,
On a Clear Day
had plenty to recommend it. Its theatrical pedigree was impressive: book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Burton Lane (who had partnered with Lerner after
Richard Rodgers had left the project in its early stages), and musical numbers staged by future director Herbert Ross.

With plot elements involving reincarnation, ESP, and telekinesis,
On a Clear Day
couldn’t have been more in tune with the psychedelic ’60s. Lerner’s story was both highly original and ahead of its time: While under hypnosis, kooky co-ed Daisy Gamble reveals that she’s lived before—as Melinda Wells, eighteenth-century England’s most delectable coquette. Daisy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Bruckner, falls for her former incarnation—the super-swan Melinda—while ugly duckling Daisy is entranced by the hypnotic charms of her doctor.
^ax

While never as celebrated as the music Lerner and Loewe had created for
My Fair Lady
or
Gigi
, the score for
Clear Day
nevertheless contained some of Lerner and Lane’s finest work, including the self-affirmative title tune and one of the great, underappreciated ballads of all time, “She Wasn’t You” (redressed as “He Isn’t You” for the film).

Barbara Harris had won unanimous praise for her performance in the original Broadway production, though when it came time to cast Minnelli’s movie, producer Howard W. Koch insisted on a major star with plenty of box-office pull. The role of the supernaturally gifted protagonist was offered to Audrey Hepburn, who turned it down, perhaps sensing that
Clear Day
’s doctor-patient relationship was in some ways too reminiscent of the professor-pupil scenario of
My Fair Lady
.

Although it didn’t seem so at the time, Hepburn’s turndown was a blessing in disguise, as the challenging dual role of Daisy/Melinda required a powerhouse musical-comedy star who could pull off playing Brooklyn’s answer to Bridey Murphy in the contemporary scenes and then switch gears to become the elegant landed lady of the regression sequences. On the short list of performers who could handle the leap from Flatbush to Fair Lady and belt out the score besides, there seemed only one worthy contender . . . and her name was Barbra.

As Streisand herself explained, she was perfect casting: “I am a bit coarse, a bit low, a bit vulgar, and a bit ignorant. I am also part princess, sophisticate, elegant and controlled.” Besides, Our Lady of Brooklyn had seen the Broadway production and pronounced it “just heaven”: “The two parts are close to my schizophrenic personality. They appeal to the frightened girl and the strong woman in me.”
¹

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Richard Harris were all considered for the role of Daisy’s singing psychiatrist, but the part was ultimately awarded to Yves Montand, who finally landed in a Minnelli production after being passed over for the Henri Baurel role in
An American in Paris
and wisely rejecting the male lead in the ill-fated
Mata Hari
.

To surround Streisand, Paramount assembled a supporting cast composed of every available male in the Screen Actor’s Guild: Larry Blyden signed on as Daisy’s too tightly wound fiancé Warren Pratt; John Richardson would play Melinda’s weak-willed husband; and for the small role of Daisy’s “exstepbrother,” Minnelli chose a refugee from Roger Corman B-movies, an offbeat newcomer named Jack Nicholson. “I wanted to see what it would be like to be in a big Vincente Minnelli musical,” Nicholson would tell Rex Reed. “It’s a radical departure for me, ’cause he makes a certain
kind
of movie, you know? . . . I think I got it because Minnelli was looking at a film I did called
Psych-Out
for some lighting effects and they saw me in it. . . . Boy, I’d like to make a movie of Vincente Minnelli watching
Psych-Out
, man.”
²

In the transition from stage to screen, countless changes were made. It was Vincente’s idea to shift the regression scenes from the eighteenth century to the more photogenic Regency period. Some songs from the Broadway show, such as “On the S.S.
Bernard Cohn
” (which the critics had singled out for praise), were dropped, and others, such as the exquisite, Streisand-tailored “Love with All the Trimmings,” were added. Melinda Wells morphed into the more exotic Melinda Tentrees, and with France’s Yves Montand on board, the character of Dr. Mark Bruckner was gallicized into Dr. Marc Chabot.

Budgeted at $10 million,
On a Clear Day
would be the most expensive production of Minnelli’s career. After principal photography was completed on the Paramount lot, the sumptuous flashback sequences would be shot on location in England at the jaw-dropping Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

Even before cameras rolled, industry insiders wondered if Vincente, now sixty-six, was up to such a monumental undertaking. And even if he was, would he be any match for the indomitable Streisand, who had reportedly overpowered director William Wyler while shooting
Funny Girl
and clashed with Gene Kelly during the making of
Hello, Dolly!
Imagine the company’s collective surprise when Streisand’s anticipated skirmishes with Minnelli never materialized.

“There was never a crisis that I remember between Barbra and Vince,” says John Poer, who, at age twenty-eight, was hired as the film’s second assistant director. “I was assigned to be almost completely responsible for Barbra Streisand’s maintenance,” Poer notes:

Daisy Gamble was certainly no pushover either. “If I remember correctly, Barbra insisted that her trailer-dressing room be much bigger than Yves Montand’s,” recalls assistant art director Lawrence Paull. Streisand’s meticulously designed dressing room (complete with hand-painted ceilings and an ornate bed with swan-shaped headboards) was the handiwork of legendary production designer John De Cuir. Barbra’s over-the-top trailer was as stunning as the period sets De Cuir created for
Clear Day
. As the ultimate star perk, it left no doubt in anybody’s mind who wielded the most power on the set. As Paull recalled, “She was paranoid because Yves Montand had a reputation of being a real ladies’ man who bedded down a great many of his leading ladies over the years. . . . I think there was a concern there for awhile. She didn’t want to be taken in by his guiles, so to speak. From what I remember, he kept a very, very low profile on the whole film.”
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