Mitzi Gaynor

Mitzi Gaynor was a dynamo.

She appeared in movies and in stage shows, and was continually lauded for her ceaseless energy.

In 1950, producer Georgie Jessel saw her, shoved her into the cast of the Betty Grable/Dan Dailey picture My Blue Heaven, borrowed a surname from Janet Gaynor and turned Mitzi Gerber into Mitzi Gaynor (the original Gaynor was reportedly not impressed with 20th Century-Fox unilaterally absconding with her moniker).

Her biggest film role was likely Mary Martin’s leading part in the stage musical South Pacific (1958) but she was out of movies within a few years.

Why?

The Associated Press hunted for the reason in a column published May 31, 1964.

Movies Wrong For Gaynor
By JAMES BACON
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Mitzi Gaynor is a victim of box-office chemistry.
And that may also be what’s wrong with the movies.
The last time Mitzi was cast opposite the right leading man — Rosanno Brazzi — the picture, “South Pacific,” wound up seventh in the top 10 list of all-time moneymaking films.
Her next two pictures were comedies opposite Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas.
Result: Mitzi had to go into the nightclub field where she commands $40,000 a week.
At the Las Vegas Flamingo she was given two points—two per cent — of the action of the entire hotel-casino operation to sign a 10-year contract.
Jack Entratter of The Sands, who wishes he had her under contract, comments:
“She’s the only new night club star to emerge in the last decade.”
But there are no movie scripts. Josh Logan once said Mitzi can do more things better than anyone else in Hollywood. That’s partly her trouble. When Brynner and Douglas, both serious actors, chose Mitzi, she was so good that she made them look bad.
A smart producer would cast her opposite Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant — and you would have a female Sandy Koufax pitching against a Willie Mays.
Also, she was producer Ray Stark’s first choice to do “Funny Girl” on Broadway, but declared:
“I knew I wouldn’t be believable as Fanny Brice so I turned it down. And look what Barbra Streisand is doing with it.”
Jack Bean, her husband and manager, explained why she refused the role.
“Fanny Brice was no beauty. Neither is Barbra—she kids about it herself. Look at Mitzi. How can you make her unpretty?”
Now Stark has a Broadway show called “The Passionate Witch,” based on the old Fredric March-Veronica Lake movie “I Married a Witch.”
Mitzi’s interested. If she takes it, you may see a repetition of the Betty Grable saga.
For years Betty get herself arrested around Hollywood. Then she did “Dubarry Was a Lady” on Broadway and the movies discovered her.
For the next ten years, she was in the movies’ top 10 box office list—usually the only woman there.

She shone on the Vegas strip. She toured nightclubs. Vancouver loved her. She tried out her Vegas material in the city. Gaynor first appeared in Vancouver in 1966. There were long lines outside the Cave supper club. Two weeks became four. People were still turned away.

Gaynor didn’t cancel a vacation in Banff and stay in Vancouver just for the money. The Bolshoi Ballet was arriving and she wanted to catch their matinee performance. Actually, she decided to do more than that. She asked local show producer Hugh Pickett to invite them to her late performance and then take them all to a nearby Italian restaurant. “But, my dear, there’s 140 of them.” It ended up the invitation was accepted by the company’s 30 principals.

She returned a number of times to Vancouver, though the days of expensive supper club shows being funded in higher-valued American money were waning. A columnist for the Province tried to get Gaynor to be introspective in a column published May 24, 1969.

Mitzi Gaynor . . . way it is all right by her.
By KAY ALSOP
Offstage, too, she’s a life-size Barbie doll—same round eyes, pert nose and that incredible figure . . . Watching her perform, the way she wound an audience around here finger, I’d thought to myself: “Nuts—no woman over 21 can be all that adorable. She’s GOT to be bitchy before breakfast, or have some dirty shoulder straps—SOMETHING!”
Then I met her—Francesca Mitzi Marlene de Charney von Gerber Bean—Mitzi Gaynor.
I had been talking to Cave band-leader Fraser McPherson, and hadn’t noticed her approach until suddenly:
“Hi!” she bubbled. “Waiting for me?”
And in the dim light, there at the top of the stairs, I swear it was like she was lit by sparklers!
Easy now, I thought. Adorable, eh? You’re going to have to show me . . .
While she chattered on about this and that—(“Hey, like to sit here? I think I’ll sit myself—phew!”)—I grabbed a couple of sneaky peeks around at the star’s dressing room.
During the past few months I’ve been in it several times, and seen it in all manner of disarrat. And you know? This time it was parlor-tidy, costumes lined up, plastic-covered. No powder spills on the table, lounge laid tidily with cotton cover.
I looked at this doll, composed on a straight chair, a flame-colored shirtwaist playing up those curves, silk scarf knotted at the throat, eyes swagged in two-inch lashes.
She read my mind.

“My face is ready,” she cracked. “And believe me, it takes time. These eyes are a production!”
“Listen,” I began, “I’ve got only three questions, all ‘how-do-you-keepers.’ First, how do you keep your bounce?”
“Easy,” she said. “I’m naturally energetic, but I take vitamins too, tons of them. And I try to get enough sleep. Even though my life is topsy-turvy—I go to bed at 4 a.m. and get up at 2 p.m. But I do run down occasionally, and when I really get tired I flop! (and she slumped dramatically in the chair to show me.)
“Then my husband drags me off for a rest, and I don’t do a thing but plop! Otherwise I’m lucky—I have lots of git-up-and-go.”
“Okay—second question. How do you keep your figure?”
“Exercise,” she said instantly, “and I watch my diet. I was REALLY fat fifteen years ago, you know—42 inch hips, 23 inch waist (normally, I’m 21 inches around the middle). I looked like this: (and she drew parentheses in the air to indicate balloon proportions.)
“I was engaged to Jack then, and he told me bluntly: ‘Diet!’ So I did. I lose 35 pounds in three months. My stomach growled all day long. I was so grouchy. But I got my shape back.
“Since then I don’t really diet, but (she looked at me levelly) let’s face it—I work a lot of it off out there on the stage. And I exercise regularly every day.”
“Final question. How do you keep your husband?”
Her answer came back like a shot.
“I ADORE him, and I tell him so CONSTANTLY! He’s the boss, he’s my manager my companion, my love and my friend.
“We’ve been married for fourteen years, and I can hardly wait for the next fourteen. I wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly get panicky. I think: ‘My God! What if I had never met Jack? What if something happened to him? What would I DO?”
“Sometimes I get terribly crabby, like when I’ve sprained my ankle, or cut my finger, or put my back out. I feel disgustingly sorry for myself then. But Jack knows all I need is lots of loving. And I GET it!”
I had forgotten the ‘adorable’ bit by now. I was remembering, instead, that Mitzi Gaynor was one of those ‘overnight’ successes who had been slugging away for more than 20 years before she was ‘discovered’ in “South Pacific.” I was recalling that the crew she works with—the backstage people who really know a star—dote on her.
I thought about the fat girl who gritted her teeth, ignore the famished stomach, and whittled her 42 inch hips down to a curvy 36. And I looked at this performer who, in the best tradition of show business, worked doggedly at her craft, polishing, practising, till she was letter-perfect and gesture-sure.
My mind flashed back over the number of female performers I’ve interviewed in the past, whose off-stage lives loomed bleak and lonely because they’d not known how to work at a marriage as well as a career, and I mentally applauded this Gaynor gal for her shrewd, basic logic, her ability to put things in proper perspective, first things first.
She’s at the top of the heap, earning some $45,000 a week at Las Vegas. Vancouver crowds line the streets and the stairs, waiting to squeeze in to see her perform. Critics rave. And Mitzi Gaynor raves too—about her husband!

At age 66, the Cave long demolished, Mitzi was emotional when her 1996 performances at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver prompted the city to declare July 9th as Mitzi Gaynor Day. Just shy of 80, she performed at a Vancouver-area casino. Entertainment critics still lauded her enthusiasm on stage. She gave her all to her audiences. She'll be long remembered for it.