Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (17 page)

All the other parts were cast with dancers and this included Verdon, who at age forty got herself into shape for the part. Dancer Lee Roy Reams told the story of how he knew at the audition that Fosse didn’t like him, he thought because he wore ballet tights and not dance pants. However Reams felt that Verdon did like him because she kept looking at him as they worked through the male dancers’ auditions. It got down to two dancers left for the part of Young Spanish Man. Reams wasn’t worried by the fact that the other dancer was Puerto Rican, since he had taken Spanish at university, and he got the part because his trills were better. Reams said that Verdon and he began a friendship and that she was always very kind to him. He also saw the moment when Fosse commented that a move of his that Verdon had executed was no good. She defended it by saying that it was wonderful and Fosse responded with “Everything I do looks good on you.” Fosse said that he could never tell if it was really good or not.

One of the show’s stage managers Paul Phillips got the job thanks to Verdon. He had known her son Jimmy when he, Jimmy, was in the national company of the comedy
Take Her, She’s Mine
which Phillips was also the stage manager for. In March 1963, when Verdon was in hospital to give birth to Nicole, Jimmy was taken to hospital by Phillips for an appendix operation. His parents needed to be called for permission for the procedure so Jimmy told Phillips that his mother was Verdon—something that he had kept secret from the company. Permission was given and Jimmy had the operation. This meant that he could not do the show, so Phillips filed in for him, and also gave the additional paychecks he earned to Jimmy. A year or so later, Phillips received a phone call from Verdon who told him that she wanted him as one of the stage managers for
Sweet Charity
. Phillips was thrilled because he needed a job and he joined the company on the first day of rehearsal.

Rehearsals began in August 1965. Verdon joined Fosse at Variety Arts and he discovered anew the excitement of seeing his steps on her body. He said that working on the show together rekindled their love and that he couldn’t believe how talented she was. In turn Verdon saw that he was grinning, not at the results, but at her. Believing he was being pleased by her was more stimulating than rousing an entire audience. They would pop in for a midnight sandwich at Dinty Moore’s. Then, as waiters cleared the tables and scrubbed up, if something ignited them the couple would go the Dinty’s kitchen and rehearse more.

Fosse had trouble with the “Big Spender” number, telling Verdon that it stank and that he couldn’t finish it because he didn’t know what to do. She said that he started getting in a panic about what he could do because all the women dancers were waiting for him. Verdon kept telling him to finish it by doing it badly and then he could fix it. So he went out and she stood right next to him and she would finish his sentences when he tried to say what he wanted. Verdon said that he wanted them to come down and entice men. Some sources claim that Fosse’s block came from his ambivalence towards the underside of life that the material confronted him with, but he managed to finish the number. Verdon also had input into the stage design for the show since it came from the way she thought and the way her brain and Fosse’s brain worked. The proscenium was fractured into jagged pieces, the way a child would make it. To this Fosse added filmic touches of silent-movie titles, fast scene changes, and iris-in techniques for closeup effects.

Verdon made her sixth and final
Danny Kaye
guest appearance which was broadcast on December 1, 1965 before
Sweet Charity
rehearsals had begun. She performed a western dance to the song “Mexico” sung by fellow guest star D’Aldo Romano, and appeared in a skit as a liberated woman. A still from the show shows Kaye and Verdon singing with their arms outstretched as they stand in front of a staircase.

Since Charity did not appear in the numbers “Big Spender” and “Rich Man’s Frug,” she acted as Fosse’s assistant for them. Lee Roy Reams felt that Verdon did not present herself as the show’s star. She was part of the company as much as she was part of Fosse. There was no set delineation of responsibility, although natural tendencies emerged. Fosse as the director kept watch over the bigger picture while Verdon the dancer honed in on the details. One dancer said that Verdon could break the steps down in a way that he could not. Having done his shows for so long, Verdon had an eye on how to do them technically—she knew how to get where he wanted to go.

The dancers laughed at costumer Irene Sharaff’s pleas to be careful with her expensive and delicate glittering dresses (made from French silk) with silk stockings and hand-sewn beads. The effort of both of the chorus numbers exhausted them and, as expected, the clothes did not survive the first dress rehearsal performance. They were scrapped and Verdon came up with the solution. But first she had to deal with her own costume. Sharaff had designed a range of costumes for Charity to wear in the show. These included a lime green dress with a purple slip underneath, designed in a fishhook style with a very tight bodice that flared out at the bottom. She had started rehearsing in a Norman Norel evening gown with a slip in it, but finding that she didn’t need the slip, she cut it off. She then reverted to the slip, with a handbag with a rope on it. The handbag was useful because it allowed Verdon to change between scenes. Sharaff had designed a costume for her that was similar to the slip that was covered with crocheted black balls. But the balls kept falling off and getting in the way. They didn’t allow for a clean line and she couldn’t sit down with them. Also, Verdon thought the dress should be like a uniform, very much like Edith Piaf. It was felt by Fosse and presumably Verdon that the impact would be stronger if she stayed in the same little black dress. However a costume was used for the number “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This.” It was hot pink and had a big swishy skit and Fosse had her do the costume change onstage. This sometimes caused an audible gasp from the audience when Verdon’s nearly nude body was revealed. Although she looked sensational, it was still thought to be shocking to see a middle-aged woman like that. A further costume crisis occurred when Verdon’s first scene in the dance hall was upstaged by a handmade robe sewn with big and colorful patches and sequins and beads worn by a chorus girl. Fosse ordered it out.

Verdon’s solution for the other dancers occurred when they went for lunch and she had the seamstresses make up similar shifts with individual variations. When the dancers returned an hour later, they had new and more practical costumes. Dancer Gene Foote says that Verdon bought eight identical black sheaths from Lerners. She slit them up the side, took a piece off the original costume and stuck them somewhere, and the helmets finished the new costumes. Another source claims that the costume problem came from Fosse because he felt they overpowered his numbers, specifically “Big Spender.” He said that he hated them and that they were too bright and shiny, not seedy enough. Fosse also commented that the seven little circles to indicate seven sequins in her sketches became blinding sequins on stage. In response Sharaff supposedly stormed down the aisle with a collection of sketches and threw them in his lap. She reminded Fosse that he had previously approved them and it was Fosse who had them spray-painted to tone them down. Dresses that had cost thousands of dollars were painted over the sequins and the frilly trims were ripped off. One source even claims that Fosse personally did the spray-painting. Kathryn Doby, one of the company dancers, reported that she had a paisley print dress and every single pattern on it was sequined and beaded. She thought it was so beautiful that it belonged in a museum, but it was not suitable for that kind of chorus girl. Doby also agreed that the costumes were upstaging and impractical, like the gloves that slowed down fast costume changes. She said that Fosse had Sharaff take her costume and put it on a mannequin, and it was the designer who sprayed it until there was practically nothing left of the original. This was naturally not a pleasant experience for her and Doby said that she could see the agony on Sharaff’s face.

This was not to be a show about costumes but rather a vehicle for Verdon to showcase her unique combination of sexuality and humor. To highlight this fact, the poster art used her opening pose from the show, peering over her shoulder with a come-hither look of impure innocence. One hand casually rested on her jaunty bottom, one knee was locked and the other playfully bent, the foot rested back on her high heel with the toe up in the air. The look represented the distillation of Fosse’s interest: minimalism with precise movement and detail for effect. Even Verdon’s curled pinkie on the hand that she had on her thigh was meant to show dance in stopped action. The broken look of Charity, being pigeon-toed and knock-kneed like the young Verdon in her orthopedic braces, also said resilience. She said that she had taken the posture from the perfume salesladies at Bloomingdale’s, whose feet burned from standing in heels and who shifted the weight from one foot to another. Verdon also took the kind of movement she observed from teenagers and the way they would sit with their legs wrapped around each other. This movement was used for the show’s opening number which demonstrated Charity’s goofy and nutsy nature.

Verdon built the character of Charity from the dance hall women, and the image of Cabiria hugging the chicken. The actress felt that the woman just wanted something to love. Although the sign for the show would read that it was the story of a girl who wanted to be loved, Verdon believed that it was really the story of a girl who wanted to love someone. She again took what she had learned from Olivier to help create her character, beginning with the dress, her discovery of a need for a handbag, and then the discovery that she had to get off her feet because they were killing her most of the time. These details piled up and when you added the song lyrics, it was quite a combination. The handbag had a rope for a handle since Fosse wanted Charity to have a swayback look.

Another aspect was Charity’s use of foul language. Verdon had seen many young girls who used it though they weren’t even aware that it was foul because it was the only language they knew. This was equally true of Charity because she didn’t know that she was saying things that were offensive. She told Vittorio Vidal that if someone insulted her, she would answer with “Up yours.” Verdon decided that the line should be performed just like you might say, “Oh, eat a banana” or “Take a flying leap to the moon.” The vulgarity was lessened because of the character’s kind of innocence.

Portrait of Verdon from the stage show
Sweet Charity
(1966–1967).

She also worked on how to integrate the songs into the character. Before rehearsals began, Verdon started to learn the song lyrics and the music for the show, as always. She sometimes worked with a pianist, and sometimes the composer would make her a piano dub of just the music. As Verdon learned her dances, she realized that she had to breathe and that she wouldn’t be able to sing that long when she was required to do both simultaneously. She had to figure out when was the best time to breathe on these occasions. She found one place in “If My Friends Could See Me Now” where lyricist Dorothy Fields did not want her to breathe. Fields asked her to breather after “pow” but Verdon found that she couldn’t sing that far into the line without breathing. A solution was to breathe on “landed,” and then take a big breath. Then her dress exploded, popping open in response to the deep breathing. So the next time Verdon had to breathe not quite so vigorously, and Fields had no more comment on the line’s delivery.

Before the company began tryouts, Fosse and Verdon had lunch with 20th Century-Fox executive Robert Linden in New York about an offer from Hollywood. George Cukor was making a new musical called
Bloomer Girl
to star Shirley MacLaine. It had been originally produced on Broadway in 1944 and was a smash hit, but Fosse had concerns about the timing. He decided to wait before making the final decision but the project was cancelled by Fox in March 1966.

Sweet Charity
had tryouts in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre from December 6, 1965, and in Detroit at the Fisher Theatre from December 22. Cy Coleman said that after the first preview there were lines around the block. It was also reported that in Philadelphia police were called in at ten a.m. after reviews came out. This was to supervise a line of prospective ticket buyers who pushed their way to the box office. The stampede became a riot and the box office was closed until the pandemonium subsided. The show sold out its run and scalpers were said to have got two hundred dollars for a ticket that would only cost ten dollars on Broadway.

Fosse had fun rehearsing his wife and John McMartin in their hotel’s bathtub with the shower curtain drawn to capture the claustrophobia that Oscar felt in the elevator scene. However the team was concerned that the show made such a demand on Verdon and feared that it would end prematurely, the way
Redhead
had. This first became apparent when she refused to sing the two slow songs in the show, “Where Am I Going” and “Poor Everybody Else.” It was thought that perhaps Fosse agreed with her but he allowed Verdon to be the one to take the flack, since the director’s limited enthusiasm for slow songs was well known. She argued to Coleman that she had a small voice and that she would do one of the songs but not both. Fosse told Coleman that he could pick the one to be dropped. When the composer hesitated, he was told that if he did not choose, then the choice would be made for him. “Poor Everybody Else” was cut. (Coleman would later use it his 1973 Broadway musical
Seesaw
.) Then Verdon refused to sing “Where Am I Going.” She had decided that she hated it and she begged Coleman to cut it. One source claims that her ego was dented by the fact that the song had been recorded by Barbra Streisand and released prior to the show’s opening. However Streisand’s version was not released until after her television special
Color Me Barbra
(broadcast on March 30, 1966) in which she performed the song, after the Broadway opening.