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and his MOVIES
directing some of the studio's immortal classics, including (righi) "Meet Me in St. Louis," the ever-engaging Judy Garland musical. |
Minnelli talked candidly
about his many films
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In June of 1979, Jim Bawden arranged and conducted a private one-on-one interview with film director Vincente Minnelli. Bawden was at that time the TV columnist for The Toronto Star. He now revisits that interview in a three-part series for us, giving us rare insight into the thinking of the great director who died in 1986. |
of TheColumnists.co;m
I hadn't really expected
to land an exclusive interview with Vincente Minnelli so easily
when I impulsively phoned his home on that sweltering day in
June of 1979, but Minnelli himself answered the phone and immediately
agreed to talk with me.
"This afternoon," he told me."It's the only time I've got open in the next few weeks."
Minnelli's home was on a corner lot near
the famous Beverly Hills Hotel, away from the traffic noise on
Sunset Boulevard, behind a line of trees. His fourth wife, Lee,
a publicist, opened the door after the first ring and whispered,
"Beware! He’s very inarticulate. He’s been fretting
all morning about this. So be on your guard.”
As she guided me upstairs to his study, I glimpsed downstairs
rooms all decorated in white. Minnelli was dressed in his usual
canary yellow sports jacket. The room was medium sized, painted
white and soft yellow, with library shelves stacked with art
books. On a desk illustrations were spread out for a project
on Zelda Fitzgerald that he intended as a star vehicle for his
daughter Liza Minnelli. (The film was never made).
Minnelli looked a bit uneasy at first, so I tried to put him
at his ease by mentioning I’d just watched on TV his film
noir classic, "Undercurrent" (1947) with Katharine
Hepburn, Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum and found his use of
black and white just as exciting as his trademark use of bold
colors.
“Shooting in black and white was always a challenge at Metro,”
he said. “They wanted every shot to gleam. But some scenes
had to be under-lit, you know, to get the tension developing.
I felt 'The Cobweb' would have succeeded only in black and white.
Color took all that suspense away. It just drained off the tension.
People expected a comedy, it looked so lovely.”
I was there to discuss his feature films. He'd specified "no
personal questions, please."
He brightened up when I asked him to describe the feeling the first time he walked onto the MGM lot as a director.
“Well, I’d worked at Paramount
(in 1937). But MGM was not only bigger, it had everything I’d
ever needed. Why Arthur Freed picked me, I just don’t know.
MGM was into a drive to recruit younger directors. Clarence Brown,
Jack Conway, Robert Leonard were seen as an aging cadre. From
shorts, Metro plucked George Sidney and Fred Zinnemann. Also
up from the ranks came Jules Dassin. Arthur saw my work on the
New York stage and impulsively hired me. But to do what?
“You see Arthur had just seen the stage version of 'Oklahoma.'
He knew a revolution in musicals was coming and he wanted to
be in on the movie end of all that. He vowed no more backstage
stories. He also needed new directors who could work through
these problems. When I started he was having horrible problems
finishing 'Panama Hattie '(1943). There was a clash between the
star, Ann Sothern, and director Norman Z. McLeod, so Roy Del
Ruth was brought in and I was asked to shoot a new musical number
for Lena Horne.
The first film Minnelli was asked to direct
by himself was "Cabin in the Sky," the all-black musical
that the studio saw as a test run for bigger things.
“We made it for $600,000 and it made money for MGM despite
restricted screenings in the South," said Minnelli. "I
got veterans from the Broadway smash (Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram)
and Freed added Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and Lena
Horne.
"A huge cat fight ensued because Ethel thought I was throwing scenes to Lena. And she was right –Lena was younger and prettier. Add Duke Ellington’s music. And I knew we might have a hit. I shot it fast to prove I could go on to bigger things.”
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was upset because she thought Minnelli was playing up young and beautiful Lena Horne, right, over her, which Minnelli admits was true. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, center, seems to be favoring Horne in this photo, too. |
Minnelli spent months directing segments of "Ziegfeld Follies"
in 1944 “again to prove I was up to color and handling big
names.” He said he took the subsequent invitation to direct
"Meet Me In St. Louis" quite calmly.
"But inward I was delighted," he said. "The huge
sets supervised by Cedric Gibbons were already going up. Originally
they’d wanted to (just) redress the Andy Hardy street.”
Freed had purchased the stories from The
New Yorker which examined a St. Louis family circa 1903,
“but Mr. Mayer (MGM chief Louis B. Mayer) said there was
no story line. He said to me: 'A family in St. Louis wants to
move to New York. So what?’ One of the story readers had
to act it out for him before he really got excited.
“My concern was the main house looked too big, too important.
After all this was going to be about an average American family
to get audiences really interested.
Freed provided me with a first rate cast. Judy Garland was set
as the lead but initially she said she couldn’t believe
in it. I told her to remember her own days as a young girl when
her dad ran a movie theatre. But it took time to get her to play
understated. She’d been used to big moments.
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with Judy Garland, who played O'Brien's older sister in "Meet Me in St. Louis." |
“Mary Astor and Leon Ames were perfect as the parents. Mary was only 16 years older than Judy. We wanted to emphasize her youthfulness. Did you know Van Johnson was initially the boy next door but he was recovering from a bad accident and we couldn’t work around that. So in came one of MGM’s spare boys next door–Tom Drake. If he hadn’t worked out, then it would have been Robert Walker. Marjorie Main was the housekeeper. Think of all the dusting she would have had to do in that house!”
Minnelli said he’d first seen Margaret O’Brien in Freed’s office a year earlier, “All dressed in tartan. By the time we’d gotten to her she’d become quite the little actress, so I worked on turning her natural again. My favorite scenes include the ketchup bit where all the women are making it and some think it’s too sugary while others want more salt. Another is the family rushing through dinner much to Leon’s irritation so the trunk call can come from New York. And, of course, the whole Halloween scene, but I really didn’t torture Margaret at all. Despite what she says these days. She loved the whole idea of being scared.”
"Meet Me in St. Louis" turned out to be an enormous hit for the studio upon its release in 1944, introducing several memorable songs, including "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," "The Boy Next Door" and one of Garland's biggest recording hits, "The Trolley Song."
After that triumph, Vincente Minnelli was definitely the director everybody at MGM wanted to do their next film.
NEXT WEEK: Minnelli talks about directing "The Clock," segments of "Ziegfeld Follies," "Undercurrent" with Katharine Hepburn, "Yolanda and the Thief" with Fred Astaire and "Madame Bovary" with Jennifer Jones.
©2009 by Jim Bawden. The photos are courtesy of MGM. This column first posted March 30, 2009.
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