Many times the plum assignments went to other directors but all studios had those who were just reliable guys who got the job done, under budget and with a minimum of temperament or problems on the set. Chuck Walters was one of those men.
He didn't talk a lot about being gay. It wasn't the smart thing to do in those days. In his early New York period, everyone knew he was and that was fine. He was so damned likable that little else seemed to matter. By the time he got to MGM he knew L. B. Mayer was a homophobe despite his strange affection for Van Johnson. No problem, Walters surmised, he would just do what he always did... stay under the radar. Once said, there was something out of the ordinary for a man who didn't wish to make waves. He lived openly with his partner.
He always said he was born to dance. It is somehow responsible for all the good things that happened with his career. Born in Pasadena in 1911, he said that his mother instilled a love of music in him from as early as he could remember. The family later moved to Anaheim where they would remain. He also remembered his mother would persuade him to do little dances for guests who would visit.
As he was growing up he studied every type of dance that he could imagine. He would learn them and teach (or try to) his friends how to join in. Later he would say how pleased he was that his parents taught him to have discipline and to reach for the sky. He began singing and dancing in school plays and recitals.
He considered himself a freak... especially in Anaheim. He only palled around with those interested in music and dance. He seemed to rise above the crowed when he was given the opportunity of putting on the senior class play. He would write, direct, choreograph, build scenery, handle advertising, hire an orchestra and actors and perform himself.
After the briefest of times attending USC, through friends in the dance world, he heard of a chance to perform as part of a dance team and travel around the country and he eagerly grabbed it. Then he put on a play at the Pasadena Playhouse which, in turn, fortified him to make a move to New York. He spent years there cultivating wonderful friendships and dancing on Broadway, eventually doing choreography and directing, making quite a name for himself. All the time, he said, his goal was to end up doing something important at MGM.
He was a definite workaholic but he found time to fall in love with handsome John Darrow, a former actor and now a talent agent, who became his partner.
When Walters was around 28 and at the top of his game, he surprised himself when he realized he no longer liked performing. He did, however, love choreography and a number of successful Broadway shows became very happy about that.
Gene Kelly, whom Walters had worked with on Broadway, had gone to MGM and now asked Walters to join him and choreograph a number for Kelly's Du Barry Was a Lady (1943). The rest, as they say, is history. The choreographer had just landed his dream job... Metro Goldwyn Mayer. He would work in the (Arthur) Freed Unit which would produce for MGM some of its finest musicals.
After choreographing such films as Girl Crazy, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies and others, in 1947 MGM gave Walters good news. That is to say he was given Good News as his first directorial assignment. It is a corny (even then) college musical starring June Allyson and Peter Lawford. Walters said at the time that he wanted to make movies that entertained, pure and simple.
It is, shall we say, an enthusiastic flick about flaming youth. It was the standard youthful romance theme with burgeoning libidos, petty jealousies and being or not being part of the right crowd. At stake is the big football game and the QB who will not play if he doesn't pass a French exam. Luckily the French teacher is smitten with him.
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| Enjoying a break with June Allyson |
Lawford is woefully miscast but earnest. I loved Allyson... MGM made her so appealing and I bought it. I wouldn't miss any of the largely routine stuff she made. In Good News, of course, there is the big production number... the entire class in the gym dancing and singing their little hearts out to the Varsity Drag. Walters and choreographer/friend Bob Alton got the dance numbers underway and the film, which Walters loved doing, was a certified hit
Freed loved talent and if one were someone he respected, his loyalty knew no bounds. Walters fortunately became one of those people. For his work on Good News, Freed gave him a lovely prize and surprise... the chance to direct two of the studio's biggest musical stars, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, in Easter Parade (1948).
The period piece is a songfest of Irving Berlin tunes, including the title song that always manages to cause a lump in my throat. I'm sure it's that rotogravure, doncha think? Astaire is a dancer who loses his partner and grabs a girl from the chorus, promising that he can turn anyone into a dancer. The film with its glittering stars was a mammoth success and Walters was the darling of the Freed Unit and the studio.
Walters and Darrow decided to spend some of those dollars they were collecting. They began purchasing vacant land in Malibu, parcel by parcel. They were sure they were set for life. Walters would never leave.
MGM, so pleased with Easter Parade, hired Walters, Garland and Astaire to make The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). It focuses on a longtime dance team that busts up when she tires of his incessant coaching and decides to become a dramatic actress.
Then Garland, as they liked to say, began acting up (it's the up that was the problem) and she was replaced with Ginger Rogers. The public was ecstatic and so was Walters... a dancer-choreographer directing a movie starring Hollywood's most famous dancing couple. They made nine popular films at RKO throughout the thirties but they hadn't worked together in 10 years. Astaire, who always complained a lot on his film sets, told Walters that he wasn't too keen on Rogers but he would get through it and he did. This was their only color film and the public ate it up. Walters, however, always felt it could have been better. He was sorry it wasn't.
Around this time Dore Schary was brought on board and before long he would replace Mayer as the head of the studio. Not everyone liked Schary... Walters did not and the feeling was mutual. He started wondering if his dream job would be coming to an end.
Walters wanted to direct Annie Get Your Gun and did as much campaigning to get it as he was likely to ever do but it was given to another and Walters signed on to direct Summer Stock (1950). How odd that Garland was fired from Annie but was around to work with Walters on Summer Stock. Actually Garland was signed first and Walters afterwards because he could work well with her.
Garland and costar Gene Kelly cannot be faulted but this cornball barnyard romance is just too much. The story is too slight to waste time on and is only for fans of the pair as I see it. Oh yes, there is Get Happy... one of the most glorious Garland songs ever.
They saddled him with not only three Esther Williams movies... Texas Carnival (1951), Dangerous When Wet (1953) and Easy to Love (1953)... but three of her least popular ones although the latter, a remake of Libeled Lady, was kinda fun. Walters might complain but it wasn't too loud.
It's too bad that this third time with Astaire was not the charm. Walters didn't see what some others saw in The Belle of New York (1952) but everyone saw the truth afterwards. Walters thought the fantasy-musical story of a playboy falling for a mission worker was too cornball for 1952. (Never mind a similar story with Guys and Dolls three years later.)
The songs were tepid, Astaire was crabbier than ever and Walters couldn't stand working with Vera-Ellen. He said there were no sparks between the leads despite the fact that it was their second film together. It became one of Astaire's least successful pictures and Walters says it was his all-time hate.
The director hit pay dirt with Lili (1953). It was imagined as one of the studio's premier productions of the year and it was going to Walters? He could hardly believe his good fortune. The studio was high on Leslie Caron since she made her splash two years earlier with An American in Paris. They thought Lili was the perfect vehicle and they were right.
Lili is an orphaned 16-year old who joins a traveling circus through France. She is attracted to a married magician while a crippled puppeteer loves her but can only express himself through his puppets. Walters imagined it as a simple, delicate and enchanting fable that would have a ballet a part of it. It was a rousing success for everyone and remains one of the director's favorite works. He was thrilled to receive an Oscar nomination and Hi Lili Hi Lo won for best song.
Walters was one of the few directors of a Joan Crawford film that she didn't sleep with and yet she personally requested him to direct her in one of her better 50s' flick, Torch Song (1953). She plays a haughty musical theater star who falls (improbably) in love with a blind pianist, played blandly by Michael Wilding. Walters is even seen onscreen in the beginning dancing with Crawford. I see it as a campy old thing that is kinda fun.
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| Dancing with Crawford |
The Glass Slipper (1955) was another chance for America to gaze upon its favorite waif, Caron. This is, of course, another version of the Cinderella story but without some of the silliness like pumpkins turning into carriages and mice that become horses. Unfortunately it again had Wilding as the male lead... the prince this young girl is mad for. She would have to be mad. Of course there was another ballet. The film was not the success the studio was hoping for. That always made Walters nervous.
Walters was supposed to helm I'll Cry Tomorrow, the story of the rise and fall of alcoholic songstress Lillian Roth. He let the studio know that he wanted his Good News star, June Allyson, to play Roth. He knew well that she wasn't the goody-two-shoes MGM heralded her as being. He knew she was tough and feisty and felt she'd be a great addition. But in the background Susan Hayward was doing battle and when she won the part, Walters took a hike.
Around this time he opened up a haberdashery in Palm Springs. He could easily have won an award for best-dressed at the studio and he thought he knew a little something about men looking their best. But the experience drained him and both his excessive smoking and drinking increased. Adding to his woes was his breakup with Darrow. It had been 20 years but it was over. Walters said that Darrow always wanted to be the center of attention which simply did not work out.
The Tender Trap (1955) was a chance for Walters to show that he could mount a romantic comedy that wasn't a musical. He didn't think much of the project and I think he was right. It not only offered nothing new but rehashed well-worn themes such as a womanizer deciding to settle down. Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds didn't cut it for me as a duo.
MGM wanted to musicalize its 1940 mega-hit The Philadelphia Story. For the newly-christened High Society (1956), finding stars to make one forget Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart would be quite the coup. Of course, it didn't work but putting Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong in the same film was a musical stroke of genius. Hiring a real-life Philadelphia-born, high society goddess like Grace Kelly, making her final film, wasn't too shabby either. Walters was the perfect person to direct. One of his great abilities was handling big egos.
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| Walters with Sinatra and Kelly |
The story of a socialite about to marry a stuffed shirt at the family estate is complicated by the frequent appearances of her ex-husband. There are also probing journalists who work for a rag and want to be hands-on to report the wedding in exchange for not publishing a salacious article about the bride's philandering father.
Cole Porter wrote the songs and Crosby and Kelly won a gold record for their recording of the ballad True Love. By all accounts it was a happy production. It was Walters's favorite of all his films and I concur. Released four months after the leading lady became a princess, it was a huge hit.
Walters wasn't sure what he could bring to Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) about a family with four sons and a sheepdog but he was one of the few contract directors left at MGM. He also admitted he hadn't previously been particularly impressed with Doris Day, The story is a fictionalized version of writer Jean Kerr's married life with theater critic Walter Kerr, played by David Niven. But Walter need not have worried. He loved the script, became a big Day fan and his film was another big success.
In addition to his own films, Walters would take over direction of some others' films for whatever reasons. Gigi, Cimarron and Go Naked in the World are three where he received no credit but the studio loved how it could count on him in such cases.
By 1961 the grip the censorship folks had on Hollywood loosened some so studio head Dore Schary, never particularly fond of musicals, thought it was time to shake the place up a bit. He offered Walters to direct a story not even close to anything he'd done before or would again. Two Loves is the wobbly story of a Pennsylvania schoolteacher, a virgin, who travels to New Zealand for work. She becomes the uncomfortable object of attention of two men... a neurotic male coworker and an unhappily married school inspector.
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| The feuding MacLaine and Harvey |
Everything that could go wrong did. The sexual tension was overwrought and sometimes embarrassing and the studio never really stood behind the movie. The filming was hurried and tense, most of it apparently brought on by the antics of Shirley MacLaine and Laurence Harvey who hated one another and were not known for being easy to work with. It was not a good experience for anyone.
Jumbo (1962) should have been done 10 years earlier... oh wait it was. It was called The Greatest Show on Earth. In 1962 folks didn't think it was so great. Actually the story had been lying around the studio for years. It concerns a circus with a lot of debts and possible closure but with one star attraction... the gentle giant, Jumbo. The movie is lovely to look at, with a breezy Rodgers & Hart score, an engaging Doris Day performance and a surprise musical turn by hunky Stephen Boyd. Walters was hot on the film and disappointed that it did poor business.
He wanted MacLaine for the title role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and she wanted to do it but her contract with Paramount's Hal Wallis wouldn't permit the loanout. MGM tried to push one of its beloved ex-contract players on Walters... Debbie Reynolds. He enjoyed working with her on The Tender Trap but thought she was all wrong for Molly. He told her she was too short for the part. I'm too short for the part? countered Debbie. How short is the part? That won over Walters.
Molly is a fictional version of a real-life backwoods girl who becomes rich, survives the Titanic and wins over her snobby Denver neighbors. It was a huge success for Reynolds and for Walters, too, but it was the last time the MGM musical machine operated at full capacity.
It was then that the studio hierarchy changed for the fourth time since Walters came to the studio 22 years earlier. He thought he was being offered a lot of crap. Darrow, still acting as Walters's agent, opted for a bluff. They asked for him to be released from the two years still on the director's contract and to their surprise, the studio accepted. He was more surprised when there was no sendoff, no thanks, nothing. Unfortunately Walters started drinking more.
Then former MGM producer, Sol C. Siegel, now at Columbia, asked Walters to come over and direct Walk, Don't Run (1966), a comedy with Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton. The director had never worked at another studio and was wary as he accepted the offer. The story centers around the lodging shortage in Tokyo at the time of the 1964 Olympics that has the three principals sharing an apartment and Grant playing Cupid. It's a cute flick which turned out to be the last for Grant and Walters.
His next 16 years were a mixed bag. He'd taken a new and younger lover and their relationship lasted for 15 of those years. Although he directed some television, he frequently didn't know what to do with himself after a lifetime of constant work. The release of That's Entertainment in 1974 revived an interest in his work and a retrospective of it at USC pepped him up.
After years of heavy smoking, Walters passed away at age 70 from lung cancer in 1982.
His lifetime disinterest in self-promotion has resulted in an undeserved obscurity. His reasoning was his gay lifestyle during a time when homosexuality was against the law. He said I had to work harder and couldn't do the social thing and play the game others were playing. I had to work that much harder and hurdle the evils by doing good work.
And doing good work is exactly what he did. I very much enjoyed his films because I loved musicals. He knew what he was doing. Some said he was a woman's director but more said he was an actor's director. He was easy-going and got actors to respond through kindness and an easy-going manner. Thanks Chuck.
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A handsome, tough
character actor
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