Movie Biographies: Gypsy

1962 Musical Biography
From Warner Bros.
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Starring
Rosalind Russell
Natalie Wood
Karl Malden
Paul Wallace
Betty Bruce
Faith Dane
Roxanne Arlen
Ann Jillian
Morgan Brittany
Jean Willes

The story of the world's most famous ecdysiast came to the big screen after playing 702 performances on Broadway with Ethel Merman playing (no, not the stripper, thank God, but) the mother of Gypsy Rose Lee.  The play and the movie are very loosely based on the memoirs of the real Miss Lee which was, in turn, adapted by Arthur Laurents.  The music is from Jule Styne and the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.  After WB secured the rights, they assigned directorial duties to one of its staffers, Mervyn LeRoy.  He had been known around WB as a director hard-hitting crime dramas but later became known for his musicals as well.  He was known for his adept handling of actors.

Everyone knows Gypsy isn't quite as much about the stripper but rather her mother, the prototype for the pushy stage mother.  It is also not about much about Gypsy's adult life as the film ends almost as soon as the stripping begins.  These facts didn't facilitate a great deal of positive response from some early moviegoers who knew nothing of the play.

Mama Rose, like most stage mothers, wanted to be a performer herself but when that didn't happen, she pushed her two daughters  into vaudeville.  Most attention was lavished on daughter, June, the cute, blonde one and also the one with the singing and dancing talents.  Louise, a year older, the brunette, had little discernible talent and even less interest.

At a children's audition, the trio runs into Herbie playing Uncle Jocko, the master of ceremonies, who ends up getting canned.  He and Rose meet up again and begin a romance at the same time that Rose makes him their manager.  Rose sings the tender Small World to highlight meeting Herbie. 

Somewhere along the way the child actresses who play June and Louise turn into Natalie Wood and Ann Jillian.  Wood sings the sad Little Lamb to a real little lamb and it always brings a lump to my throat.  Both actresses sing the rousing, anthem-like If Momma Was Married because they want their mother to marry Herbie.

When the teenage June runs off with one of the chorus boys and marries him, Mama Rose decides that Louise will be the new star, much to her horror and Herbie's as well.  The scene at a train station shows Rose's utter desperation to keep it all going even when she's told vaudeville is dying.  She sings Everything's Coming Up Roses to help stimulate her weary daughter and partner.

Finally Herbie books them into a burlesque theater not knowing it is one.  Rose is horrified and wants to bolt but Louise says that she and the troupe, the blonde Torreadorables,will go on.  It has been decided that after the performance, Rose and Herbie will get married and the performing will cease.

Rose and Louise share a dressing room with one of the performers.  While Rose is out of the room, three of the strippers (Betty Bruce, Faith Dane and Roxanne Arlen) tell a fascinated Louise all about stripping with a bump n' grinding song You Gotta Have a Gimmick.

When Rose overhears that the main stripper is a no-show, she volunteers Louise to substitute (put your hair up, wear this dress, put on these gloves, remember you're a lady).  Louise doesn't want to do it but neither sister could ever win in verbal sparring with their mother (which is why June simply vanished).  And Herbie is so mortified that he tells Rose he is leaving... no more managing and no marriage.  And leave he does.  As the curtain is about to open for Louise, between her mother and one of the strippers, she is newly-christened Gypsy Rose Lee.

It is here that the film moves into its final and, for me, most entertaining section.  First are three performances designed to show Gypsy's progress as a stripper.  It is the third one that wowed me when the cork on a six-foot tall bottle of champagne explodes into the air, doors open on the bottle and out steps Natalie Wood (oh, ok, Gypsy) to take command.  As she rounds the apron of the stage, dressed to kill, shoulders, breasts and derriere all in starring roles, she struts with the magnificence of a seasoned and very glamorous stripper.  I rewound this scene about 10 times yesterday.  

Working it

Then comes the confrontation between Rose and Gypsy, in the latter's dressing room, that we have been waiting for throughout the entire movie and it's a doozy... well-written and well-acted by Wood.  It also demoralizes Mama Rose who takes to the stage and empty theater to sing Rose's Turn, a glorious song and a fitting finale where she laments what should have been.  Gypsy has been watching off stage and mother and daughter finally show some love and admiration for one another.

Merman was furious that she wasn't even offered the part and maintained a bitterness about it the rest of her life.  Other names were bandied about and most actresses of a certain age had high hopes of getting the part.  I suspect Rosalind Russell came by it in a very casual way.  She had just finished a film, A Majority of One with LeRoy at the helm and they got on famously.  But while we're at it, she was a performer with enormous vitality, verve and wit (as witnessed in Auntie Mame only four years earlier), all of which would be needed to play Mama Rose.

Aside from the Merman loyalists, there were plenty of others who thought Russell was wrong for the part.  I mean no disrespect to those folks but that just ain't so.  Russell was great as Mama Rose, just great.  Furthermore she knew when a role was right for her and the blowsy theatrics of Mama Rose was something she could nail.
There's always been a lot of speculation about whether or not Russell did her own singing.  She did, in fact, do some of it but the majority was done by singer Lisa Kirk.  That was a stroke of genius for all involved.

Karl Malden said that he'd never gone after a role, at least up to this point, instead just letting roles come to him which they always did.  But he asked LeRoy for the part, the leading man, no less, because he thought he was right for it and he was.  It was a singing role, which he'd never done, and he wanted very badly to sing in a film.  And the two songs he got to sing were both edited out of the final cut.  Malden had worked with Wood earlier (Bombers B52 in 1957) and liked her a great deal.  He said that she and Russell were the two most professional actresses he ever worked with and that working on Gypsy was a lot of fun.

Wood, who had just come off two of her most acclaimed films, West Side Story and Splendor in the Grass, had been coveting the role of Gypsy for over a year.  She had been in a bad way and thought the film would be her ticket to better times.  Newly-divorced the first time from Robert Wagner, she survived a couple of suicide attempts.  She was also involved in a romantic relationship with her Splendor costar, Warren Beatty, who was often on the set.

Wood was anxious to play Gypsy for one reason.  It certainly wasn't for the chance to do the stripping scenes and they, in fact, terrified her, but for a reason closer to her heart.  She wanted to see how it felt and what she might be able to bring to the role of a child actress who is strong-armed by her mother and had her childhood hijacked by constant working.  That was something Wood knew a great deal about.  Maria (Mud) Wood was Mama Rose without the comedy.  The film's big confrontation scene at the end must have been a bit cathartic for Wood.

She was delighted she would be doing her own singing.  She was still smarting from Marni Nixon's voice being used for Maria in West Side Story.  LeRoy told her not to worry because playing Louise/Gypsy didn't require a great voice.

She was nervous about the stripping scenes and particularly the one I love.  But the actress was a quick study and always had been.  She was terrified when she heard the real Gypsy was visiting the set and doncha know, on the days scheduled for the strip.  Wood was not upset having to take off her clothes because that wasn't going to happen.  Throw a glove.  Lower one strap of the dress.  Oh, pant, pant.  People paid for this?

The reel Gypsy meets the real Gypsy

No, Gypsy would teach Wood how to move and on that score, as noted earlier, she more than succeeded.  What is funny is that Wood was beautiful, raven-haired and 5'2" and Lee was big-boned, not a great beauty and 5'8".  But the excellent camerawork of Harry Stradling Sr. (whose specialty seemed to be showcasing actresses) and costumes by Orry-Kelly made the differences a so-what.

The movie is a musical fable.  There's a certain truth that runs through the whole thing.  But it is musical theater and we know what that means to truth.  Call this movie loosely based on and we'll be okay.  There was no Herbie in real life.  That was a whole lotta fiction.  June, the sister, grew up to be actress June Havoc and she had some issues with the whole idea, probably dating back to her sister's memoir.  The truth is not musical-comedy.

And Mama Rose...!  Real name Rose Hovick.  I'm not even going to tease you but look her up, and Gypsy, too, on Wikipedia and sit back for a helluva read.  I mean... let me entertain you.

One of the nicest things about Gypsy, I think, is that Wood and Russell remained close friends forever after.

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