by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life;Films of Vincente Minnelli
For his first time out, Minnelli hits far more than he misses. Ethel’s poignant performance of “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” begins with Petunia crooning at the bedside of her wounded husband. Midway through the tune, there is a deft transition to the Jacksons’ backyard, where an exuberant Petunia is at her clothesline, still singing the same tune but presumably weeks later and in the company of an almost fully recovered Little Joe. Miraculously, her prayers have been answered.
Minnelli’s female leads may have clashed bitterly off screen but they are both sublime in the film. Hearing Waters croon the title tune in her trademark raspy delivery, or witnessing her strutting and high-kicking her way through a spirited reprise of “Honey in the Honeycomb,” gives one a pretty good idea of what a showstopper Waters must have been on Broadway. After a saucy bubble-bath number, “Ain’t It the Truth,” was axed, Horne’s performance became a largely nonmusical one, but she makes every appearance count nonetheless. Each time Georgia Brown moseys into a scene, Minnelli indulgently allows Horne a Modern Screen “moment” while the camera simply bears witness to her incandescent beauty.
“Vincente Minnelli has done a really inspired job in the direction of the picture, without which it would not be the good entertainment that it is,” enthused the Hollywood Reporter. “He handles his characters and story pace with a knowledge of the mannerisms and the superstitions of the Negro, leveling on the important sequences and doing a quick shift with the unimportant bits that were required to hold the story together. It is his first picture effort and the job stands out.” The New York Times said Cabin was “as sparkling and completely satisfying as the original stage production,” and Daily Variety dubbed it “a fantastic piece of American folklore.”8 MGM’s risky venture also paid off at the box office. In its initial release, Cabin earned a respectable $1,606,624.
But did Minnelli’s first film, which was written, produced, and directed by white artists, have anything meaningful to say to African American audiences? “The fact that Cabin in the Sky is an all-black film, that was made during a period when blacks didn’t have a wide range of representation on screen, makes it incredibly important,” says film scholar Charlene Regester. “Because black audiences were craving these images and you’ve got a ‘Who’s Who in Black Hollywood’ in that film, people flocked to see it, although they were very much aware that some of the representations were stereotypical… . I think if black audiences went to see Cabin in the Sky—and I’m just speculating on this—they went sort of ambivalently positioned.”9
Eva Anderson, the wife of Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, remembers that years after the film’s release, her children were teased in school because of their father’s participation in the film:
They were very ashamed because the kids at school were calling their father “Uncle Tom” and stuff like that. A lot of younger people resented the film, but look at it this way, if we didn’t have Cabin in the Sky, we wouldn’t know Eddie Anderson. We wouldn’t see Ethel Waters perform… . I think that it was a very important film in those days and I think it’s still important today. It shows people what we were all about then and how we came to be what we are today. And by looking at the film, you can see we definitely came a long way.10
When Cabin is screened for contemporary audiences, it is usually accompanied by warnings that the picture is “a product of its time” and that it may reflect some of the racial prejudices that existed when it was produced. Others believe that Cabin still offers compelling evidence of how boldly cutting-edge and ahead of the curve Minnelli could be.
“I would say that the film comes directly out of his New York experience where Minnelli developed what I see as his queer aesthetic,” says film scholar David Gerstner:
Part of the queer thing is that Minnelli shows his nonracist cards for the period, which is to say, he wants to work with the broadest section of people possible and there’s this belief that all people are talented. If there was this prevailing idea that black people weren’t allowed on a Hollywood set or that blacks were inferior, Minnelli didn’t buy into any of that. To me, that’s part of a really interesting queer dynamic. It’s as though he’s asking, “What kind of aesthetics can we produce as an intermingled group of people?” So, I think Cabin is really significant in that way because it not only shows his queer aesthetic that he took from New York and brought to Hollywood but also a queer sensibility in terms of the way he sees relationships between people.11
Vincente didn’t have time to bask in the glow of the warm reviews heaped upon him when Cabin in the Sky was released in the spring of 1943. To the ever ambitious Minnelli, being next assigned to salvage efforts on somebody else’s picture had to have been a deflating letdown. Though he was understandably disappointed, Minnelli was also “flattered” that his superiors at Metro turned to him in an attempt to rescue an incurably muddled mess preciously entitled I Dood It. Originally intended for Roy Del Ruth, who had cranked out scenarios for Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, I Dood It was concocted as a showcase for two hopelessly mismatched MGM contract players: Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell. Why a brash, raucous comedian and the screen’s most stylish stepper were considered perfect chemistry has been lost to some best forgotten casting session.
An uninspired Minnelli signed on but, like his colleagues, approached I Dood It strictly as a job, painfully aware that any attempts at meaningful artistic expression were futile. Screenwriters Sid Herzog and Fred Saidy were called in to revamp Buster Keaton’s final silent film, Spite Marriage (1929). While they may have updated the story of an imbecilic pants presser besotted by the star of a creaky Civil War saga, their I Dood It certainly didn’t improve upon the quirky charm of the original.
In the end, I Dood It would emerge as a confused mélange of contrived comedy, big band interludes, and cardboard espionage. Primarily a vehicle for Skelton’s overcooked buffoonery, the finished film bears little evidence of Minnelli’s trademark directorial flourishes. For those who had been waiting for the kind of movie in which Eleanor Powell attempts to slip Red Skelton a Mickey Finn but ends up ingesting it herself, the wait was over. Ordinarily, when handed a less-than-inspired property, Vincente could at least be counted on to smarten up the mise-en-scène and distract the viewer with some eye-popping decor, but instead, Skelton and Powell romp through stagnant settings or against backdrops that are either bland or insanely cluttered.
Minnelli is on assured footing with a musical audition sequence, though even that seems suggestive of a hasty assembly. Lena Horne sings a sprawling Kay Thompson arrangement of “Jericho,” and Hazel Scott lets it rip on an instrumental “Takin’ a Chance on Love.” Performing against a spangled diaphanous backdrop, Horne and Scott add a touch of class to the proceedings, but still, I Dood It is such a confused hodge-podge that nothing can truly save it.
Adding to the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ambiance, even Minnelli’s French poodle, Baba, is trotted out by Butterfly McQueen at one point.x The presence of Vincente’s canine companion is telling, as I Dood It, though profitable, was a real bowser. Still, the critics weren’t unkind.
As the Hollywood Reporter noted, “Minnelli’s direction is astonishingly expert when it is considered that he has merely one previous picture to his credit. Such a wacky affair could have gotten out of hand in many places but never does.” Time didn’t mention Minnelli but noted, “Most of Skelton’s comedy is Bob Hope laid on with a ball bat. Red goofed up over a kiss, Red getting off lines like ‘I press men’s pants but this is the slack season,’ appeals chiefly to the primordial… . But now and then Skelton’s broad and cheerful silliness comes so thick and fast that the effect is like being held down and tickled.”12
8
5135 Kensington Avenue
WHILE VINCENTE WAS SHOOTING I Dood It and enduring Red Skelton’s pratfalls, a number of MGM’s most capable screenwriters (Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, and William Ludwig among them) had each taken a crack at transforming a wispy, character-driven slice of A
mericana into a tightly plotted, action-oriented screenplay. Sally Benson’s The Kensington Stories, serialized in The New Yorker as 5135 Kensington, recounted a bygone era of Friday night Whist clubs and suitors making their intentions known with ten-pound boxes of Page and Shaw candy.
It was the story of the Smiths, the quintessential American family, living in St. Louis at the turn of the century. Papa is a lawyer. Mama is a dutiful housewife. Their only son, Lon, is preparing to head off to Princeton. Eldest daughter Rose is beginning to receive long-distance telephone calls from Yale boys, while Esther is infatuated with the boy next door. Tootie and Agnes, the two youngest, occupy themselves by burying dolls that have succumbed to at least four fatal diseases.
Two events upset the natural order of things in the Smith household: the arrival of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, and the father’s shocking announcement that, because of a job promotion, the entire family will leave St. Louis and move to New York.
Arthur Freed believed that Benson’s charming stories, though slight and essentially plotless, had the makings of a heartwarming musical that would incorporate popular songs of the period, such as “Skip to My Lou” and the 1904 Sterling and Mills standard, “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” which would inspire the film’s title. With a musical in mind, Freed naturally hoped that the material could be shaped into a vehicle for his brightest star, Judy Garland.
In adapting the stories and attempting to inject some conventional plotting into Benson’s wistful nostalgia trip, some of the original scenarists went too far. In one misguided treatment, the teenaged Esther Smith is embroiled in a kidnap and blackmail plot more appropriate to I Wake Up Screaming than Meet Me in St. Louis.
“Freed had a number of screenplays that we were forced to read that were dreadful,” remembered the next writer in line, Irving Brecher. “Not one of them left me with any impression. Those scripts were rejected in toto. We didn’t get anything from them, so we went back to the short stories.”1
Brecher and collaborator Fred Finklehoffey started from scratch, restoring the whimsical, homespun qualities of Benson’s original narrative. This version of the St. Louis screenplay fleshed out episodes that Benson had only alluded to—a sisterly cakewalk, a ride on the trolley, and a Christmas Eve cotillion. By July 1943, Brecher had turned in a completed script, and although it looked promising, there was unified resistance to Meet Me in St. Louis by MGM’s upper echelon.
“The studio did not want to make Meet Me in St. Louis,” Brecher recalled:
The reason it was made and we were rushed into doing a script was because at that time in Hollywood, there were only two existing Technicolor cameras and they were always in demand because color meant a lot at the box office. All of a sudden, one of the cameras became available and MGM had a contract, which it had to exercise within a brief period of time, to use it. In desperation, Freed and his bosses got the idea with this story, “If it has Judy Garland and color, maybe we’ll make a few bucks.” When it got close to where they were going with casting and all of that, I talked to Freed and we were discussing directors and I said I didn’t think anybody could do it better than Minnelli.2
Brecher had never worked with Minnelli, but he certainly knew of his reputation—and not only as a director:
I met Minnelli when he was shooting Cabin in the Sky. I sensed even in those days that he was maybe a queer. I wasn’t sure. But he didn’t come on to me and he didn’t swish. But there was something about the way Minnelli would open a cigarette box and take one out and light it … very effete. It was almost like a caricature of a gay guy. And there was something about the way he used his hands and twisted his lips and wore green eye shade and hung with all the gays, like Don Loper, the dance director, who was out and I mean out. Vincente was part of the Freed Unit, which was the gay community there. Freed wasn’t gay but the rest of them were… . At any rate, Freed liked the idea of reaching for Vincente as the director of St. Louis. And without question, Minnelli was perfect for that picture.3
Even before shooting a single frame, Vincente was under pressure. If all went according to plan, he’d be entrusted with MGM’s most valuable asset, a twenty-one-year-old supernova named Judy Garland. If the picture was a hit, it could make his career. There was just one problem. Garland didn’t want to make Meet Me in St. Louis. The star had finally graduated to more mature roles in For Me and My Gal and Presenting Lily Mars. The idea that she should regress and play yet another wholesome teenager—and opposite a couple of scene-stealing child stars to boot—didn’t exactly thrill her.
Several key players associated with production #1317 would take credit for cajoling Garland into boarding that St. Louis trolley, including Irving Brecher, who recalled reading the entire script to Judy at the urging of studio chief Louis B. Mayer. “I had a hell of a time with her,” Brecher recalled:
I had to make her believe that her scenes were the most important in the picture. So, when I was reading to her, I threw away the kid sister’s stuff because Judy was afraid Tootie would steal the picture… . Like anyone could steal a picture from Garland. Judy had been to my home a number of times at parties and she liked me and kind of trusted me but she was very ambivalent and troubled about St. Louis. I finally broke her down and she weakly said, “Do you really think I’ll be alright?” I said, “It’s your picture, Judy. It’ll be the best thing you ever did.” And I hoped I was telling the truth.4
In Minnelli’s 1974 memoir, it is Garland’s director who attempts to convince her of the project’s special merits. “I wasn’t aware of her feelings when I first discussed the role with her,” Vincente remembered. “She looked at me as if we were planning an armed robbery against the American public.”
“It’s not very good, is it?” Judy challenged Vincente, expecting that Minnelli, the urbane New York sophisticate, would dismiss St. Louis as nothing more than sentimental, candy-colored tripe.
“I think it’s fine,” Vincente answered. “I see a lot of great things in it. In fact, it’s magical.”5
With Garland more or less persuaded, the other essential bit of casting concerned Tootie, the mischievous five-year-old member of the Smith household, partially patterned on Sally Benson herself. The role required an unusually adept child performer who could convincingly play precocious, execute a sprightly cakewalk, and become tearfully inconsolable on cue. From the moment casting ideas were floated, Margaret O’Brien was the only serious contender. Minnelli would claim credit for “discovering” O’Brien after witnessing her audition for Babes on Broadway, the musical in which she would make her debut. O’Brien’s dynamic audition included her impassioned plea, “Don’t send my brother to the chair! Please don’t let him fry!”
Production began on December 7, 1943. “It’s strange but I can remember everything that happened on that set,” Margaret O’Brien says. “It was a very quiet set because Vincente Minnelli kept everything quiet and lovely for the actors.”6 Through the eyes of a talented six-year-old everything may have seemed quiet and lovely, but the studio’s production reports tell a different story. Injuries and illnesses were almost a daily occurrence. Joan Carroll required an emergency appendectomy. Mary Astor suffered from an acute sinus condition. Margaret O’Brien battled hay fever, influenza, and nervous spells. A month into production, Margaret’s mother, Gladys, wrote to Freed and explained that she was pulling her daughter out of the picture for a few weeks. As she put it, “I was beginning to be greatly criticized for allowing my child to work so hard.”7
And then there was Judy.
Minnelli’s skittish leading lady was still unable to completely relate to the story. Once before the cameras, Garland mocked what she perceived to be the trite, juvenile aspects of the script. On the first day of principal photography, newcomer Lucille Bremer (cast as the oldest Smith sister, Rose) was imbuing her performance with the kind of wholehearted sincerity that Garland ordinarily invested in her roles, no matter how banal. “I want y
ou to read your lines as if you mean every word,” Minnelli told Garland. Known as the quickest quick study in the business, Judy complied, but she seemed thrown by Minnelli’s unconventional approach. Discouraged, Judy confided in Arthur Freed that Vincente’s cryptic direction wasn’t providing her with the guidance she needed. “She says she doesn’t know what you want,” Freed repeated back to Minnelli. “She doesn’t feel she can act anymore.”8
When Garland griped to veteran actress Mary Astor about Vincente’s mystifying direction, the colleague Judy referred to as “Mom” offered a sharp dose of motherly advice. “Judy, I’ve been watching that man and he really knows what he’s doing,” Astor responded. “Just go along with it, because it means something.”9
Although Garland attempted to go along with Minnelli, she didn’t surrender completely. When Vincente summoned the cast for yet another rehearsal, Judy defiantly sped off in her roadster. Minnelli had his star intercepted at the studio gate and brought back to work. Getting Judy to the set and keeping her there would become a regular concern for a number of production assistants on the MGM payroll.
“Well, of course, Judy was always late,” recalls June Lockhart, who costarred in the film as Eastern debutante Lucille Ballard:
It was rather interesting because we would come into make-up at six-thirty and then get under-dressed because in that film, we even wore the underwear of the period. Then they’d give us a robe and we’d wait because Judy hadn’t arrived yet and then we’d wait some more and finally, at about twelve-thirty, they’d say, “Well, Judy’s come through the gate. You can all go to lunch. Come back around two.” So, we’d come back at two and then they would say, “Well, she doesn’t want to work today. So, you can all go home.” And this happened a lot. But let me tell you, when she came on the set all dressed and ready, she knew her lines and where her marks were and she was funny and entertaining to be with and I think by then, was thoroughly enjoying playing the part.10