Mitzi Gaynor

What a little firecracker she was in a handful of musicals in the 1950's.  She would be nearly forgotten perhaps had she not landed the lead in South Pacific in 1958.  When she quit films five years later she said it was because I wasn't very hot, I was just ordinary.  I don't think that was true.  She was an exquisite dancer, a good singer, she handled dramatic scenes well, she was lovely to look at, there was a vibrancy about her that was unmistakable... and yet there was something that didn't tie it all up.  We'll look into that.

Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber (what a Hungarian mouthful that is) was born in 1931 in Chicago to showbiz parents.  Her father was a cellist and her mother was a dancer.  After living in Elgin, Illinois, and Detroit, the family moved to Los Angeles when the youngster was 11.  Two years later she lied about her age so that the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company would hire her.  Due to her mother presumably, dance became her passion but the focus in the beginning was on ballet.

She was a mere 17 when she was signed by 20th Century Fox.  George Jessel, then a producer at the studio, gave her the name of Mitzi Gaynor and thank goodness he did.  She loved the family atmosphere at the studio, loved that she felt protected and cared for.  She was also starstruck and Fox, in my opinion, had some of the best folks to get googly-eyed over.  Betty Grable was Gaynor's favorite.  No real surprise there... they were similar types of performers although Grable's career was the stuff of Hollywood dreams.

Gaynor was surely then beside herself with glee when she was assigned her first role in a Grable film, My Blue Heaven (1950).  It was Grable's third (of four) pairings with singer-dancer Dan Dailey.  They played a song and dance couple who are unable to have a child.  The entire affair concerns their woes with the adoption process.  The film lacked the charm of their prior outings and was only mildly successful.  Gaynor was likely thrown in for her youthful appeal and some say she clearly stole the show.

There was some appeal in Take Good Care of My Little Girl (1951) although the title wasn't part of it.  Fox rounded up Gaynor and other up-and-comers Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, Dale Robertson and Jeffrey Hunter for a story of the rigors of sorority life.  It was routine at best.

Her first of two biographical musicals came with Golden Girl (1951) in which she played Civil War chanteuse Lotta Crabtree.  It was her first starring role.  Her performance, opposite Robertson, was one of her favorites, but again the film did only mediocre business. 

We're Not Married (1952) is one of those anthology comedies where several couples find out they're not legally married because their justice of the peace had an invalid license.  She was paired with buffoonish Eddie Bracken and the whole thing was rather silly.  Bloodhounds of Broadway the same year also went nowhere but she looked good on the arm of Scott Brady.

Her second bio, this time as Canadian vaudevillian performer Eva Tanguay in The I Don't Care Girl (1953) has some glitzy production numbers showcasing Gaynor's fabulous dancing but the film was but another by-the-numbers flick.  The less said about Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953) the better and Three Young Texans (1954) is a so-so western that again paired her with Hunter, which is a good thing.

I think these films, rather than Gaynor herself, is what is not hot and rather ordinary.  To me her talents were obvious but along with rather lackluster projects, there were other forces at work.  For one thing she got a studio contract at a time that they were becoming a thing of the past as were musicals.  She also said that she and studio chief Darryl Zanuck never got to know one another very well.  She was not really his type.  

The best thing she ever did at Fox was There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), which I dearly love, but actually it's no better or worse than most of the musicals from the studio.  It's about a vaudeville family with Ethel Merman and Dailey as the parental units, Gaynor as the daughter and Donald O'Connor and singer Johnnie Ray as the sons.

There are production numbers I just loved.  The ones in which Gaynor appeared were the reprise of When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam, in which she and O'Connor pretend to be their parents, the Lazy number with O'Connor and Marilyn Monroe and the title song performed by the entire cast and scores of others at the finale. 

Fox advised her during the making of the film that it would be ending her contract when her scenes were completed.  She had three years or so to go but they paid her off, said thanks a lot and see you around.  It was an unceremonious dump but she took it in good stride.

She has admitted that she was kind of smart-alecky (not a diva or troublesome) and never particularly learned how to play the Hollywood game.  She never had the drive to fight for parts.   She was frequently, she says, caught acting.  It was never natural to her.  She always promised her parents she would never get a big head and she never did, perhaps to her detriment. 

When she left Fox she married Jack Bean, at the time a talent agent and public relations agent for MCA.  After the marriage, which lasted for 52 years until his death in 2006, Bean became her manager and also became involved in real estate. 

Gaynor was offered a three-picture deal at Paramount and the first one, The Birds and the Bees (1956), is the only one of her films I've never seen.  It starred TV comedian George Gobel.  What was Hollywood thinking?  His movie career and this film, a remake, no less, of the outstanding Barbara Stanwyck-Henry Fonda-starrer, The Lady Eve, sank quicker than the Titanic.

In Anything Goes (1956) two Broadway singing-dancing partners
(O'Connor and Bing Crosby) want to add a female to their act and each, unknown to the other, hires one.  Crosby brings aboard relatively unknown French singer Jeanmaire (one of the problems of the film) while O'Connor hires Gaynor.  It doesn't all quite come together but Gaynor and O'Connor once again dazzle on the dance floor.

She enjoyed a rare dramatic role in The Joker Is Wild (1957) with Frank Sinatra starring as 20's singer Joe E. Lewis who had his vocal chords cut by the mob and then became a comedian with a great affection for the bottle.  Gaynor and her former costar Crain played the love interests.  It was a well-cast film and depressing one. 

I loved Les Girls (1957) and so did Gaynor.  It's not perhaps as well-known as some movie musicals and that's too bad.  It concerns a tell-all book written by one of three female performers and Parisian roommates that leads to a Rashomon-type telling of the story where each woman has a different version of what happened.  Gene Kelly is their boss and has affairs with each of them.  Gaynor never danced better (and that's saying a mouthful) and called Kelly her best partner.  Comedienne Kay Kendall again was superb but I found Taina Elg miscast.

Then came South Pacific (1958).  Gaynor's casting as nurse Nellie Forbush is sheer perfection.  It is absolutely astonishing that Elizabeth Taylor was considered for this part but director Josh Logan insisted that she audition but she refused as did Doris Day.  I'm so glad.  Gaynor had no problem auditioning for Rodgers and Hammerstein and wowed them.  

Washing that man right outta her hair

She sang most of the film's songs and delivered a sincere dramatic performance as a young woman far from home in a war she didn't understand.  Her infectious, bubbly personality is challenged when a surprising racial prejudice unfolds in her as she discovers her older, widowed French boyfriend has Polynesian children.  

Happy Anniversary (1959) is a racy little comedy by 50's standards but neither the film nor Gaynor were particularly good.  She enjoyed working again, however, with David Niven, who was a costar in the infamous The Birds and the Bees.

Surprise Package (1960) wasn't.  Yul Brynner is a deported gangster and Gaynor his moll and it just didn't work.  Even with the debonair Noel Coward in the cast couldn't raise the visibility.  She has said that although he was a pain in the ass, she loved Brynner and so did he.  She went on to say that one delightful aspect of her movie career is that she enjoyed all the actors she ever worked with.

For Love or Money (1963) is one of those sex comedies that Universal was so fond of making in the 60's.  I guess Rock and Doris and Sandra were busy so welcome Gaynor and Kirk Douglas (what was he thinking?).  It helped that Thelma Ritter was handy in a story of the matchmaking of three sisters but I found myself wishing this would have been the second Gaynor film I missed.

She, too, decided things apparently weren't going so well because it was her swan song to movie-making.  But the best was yet to come.  Gaynor's true calling was as a chanteuse where she could sing, kick up those glamorous legs and do her very funny impressions.  Live audiences needed her and she needed them.  She started with Vegas and segued into supper clubs and theaters across the country.

Even television better served her than the movies.  In 1967 she performed Georgy Girl on the Oscar show that is indelible in my mind to this day.  I've known other Oscar devotees who agree.  But the best of all her work was in a series of television specials over the years.  I think she made 10 or so of them throughout the 60's and early 70's and they were of superior quality and she was never showcased better.

In 1964 she was not only on the same Ed Sullivan show that brought the Beatles to America but they asked her for her autograph!  She loves to tell that story.  I don't blame her.

She's still kicking today... well, ok, perhaps not with those legs but she is 87 as we speak and I'll bet the self-deprecation and the humor are still intact.  I always loved the twinkle in her eye.  She had that wonderful sense of humor seemingly about everything and really now, isn't that the key?

All the best, Mitz... and thanks. 


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A good 50's film