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The whole aspect of his sexuality, which had been long rumored about, was definitely something I wanted to explore, because it infuses the films in an important way.”
Griffin, who writes film reviews for the Boston Globe, MovieMaker and Genre, has written and compiled and exhaustive biography and filmography of the late director who was known as much for films such as Meet Me in St.
Louis, An American in Paris and Gigi as for marrying Judy Garland and fathering Liza Minnelli.
Minnelli was also the subject of much innuendo and rumor, during his lifetime and since, about his sexual orientation.
Mark GriffinBlog • Twitter • Order A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli from Amazon.com
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Published by Mr.
Media® Interviews-Bob Andelman
Bob Andelman is the host and producer of Mr. Media® Interviews. In Mark Griffin’s words in A Hundred or More Hidden Things: ‘Despite the fact that Minnelli was married to Judy Garland and three other women…it was generally assumed that he was a closeted gay man who, due to the societal conditioning of his era, felt compelled to marry and procreate.’
So where did this legacy come from to begin with, and how has it survived so tenaciously in the years since his death?
One major player in the rumour mill was the aforementioned first wife, Garland.
Robert LaVine (Best Costume Design Tony Award)
The Plantation Club
In 1922, Lew Leslie, one of the first Broadway impresarios to feature Black performers, opened the Plantation Club, a large-scale nightclub over the Winter Garden Theater.
Photo by Andy Benedict. Or a story to share? This reinvention, delving into the flamboyancy he is so fondly remembered for, may also have catalysed his reinvention into the image of an acceptable straight man.
History remembers the careers of men whose image has been shaped by their coming out, Freddie Mercury and Elton John to name just two immortalised recently in cinematic biographies.
Source: Playbill. Starting in the early 1940s, the Winter Garden produced a significant amount of hits, almost all of them musicals, with many of the most important LGBT artists on Broadway:
- Sons o’ Fun (1941-43), with scenic and costume design by Raoul Pene du Bois
- Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 (1943-44), with costume design by Miles White, and with actor Jack Cole
- Mexican Hayride (1944), with music and lyrics by Cole Porter
- As the Girls Go (1948-49), choreographed by Hermes Pan
- Wonderful Town (1953-54), with music by Leonard Bernstein (Best Musical Tony Award), scenic and costume design by Raoul Pene Du Bois (Best Scenic Design Tony Award), and with actor Cris Alexander
- Plain and Fancy (1955, opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater), with scenic and costume design by Raoul Pene Du Bois
- Bus Stop (1956, opened at the Music Box Theater) by William Inge
- West Side Story (1957-59 and 1960), perhaps the most famous of the Winter Garden’s musicals, and in which all of the major members of the creative team were gay, lesbian, or bisexual: Jerome Robbins, who directed and choreographed the show with Peter Gennaro (Best Choreography Tony Award); Leonard Bernstein, who wrote the music; Arthur Laurents, the librettist; Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist; Oliver Smith, the scenic designer (Best Scenic Design Tony Award); Irene Sharaff, the costume designer; and Jean Rosenthal, the lighting designer; the production also included actors Larry Kert, who was the male lead, Grover Daleand Tommy Abbott
- The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960-62), with scenic design by Oliver Smith, and costume design by Miles White
- Once Upon a Mattress (1960; opened at the Phoenix Theater), co-authored and lyrics by Marshall Barer
- Carnival! (1962-63, opened at the Imperial Theater) by Michael Stewart, with costume design by Freddy Wittop
- Funny Girl (1964-66), with costume design by Irene Sharaff
- Mame (1966-69), based on the 1955 novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escape by Patrick Dennis (a pseudonym for Edward Everett Tanner III), with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, costume design by Robert Mackintosh, and lighting design by Tharon Musser
- Purlie (1970-71, opened at the Broadway Theater), with actor Linda Hopkins
- Follies (1971-72), directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett (Best Direction of a Musical Tony Award), with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (Best Original Score Tony Award), choreography by Bennett and Bob Avian (Best Choreography Tony Award), costume design by Florence Klotz (Best Costume Design Tony Award), and lighting design by Tharon Musser (Best Lighting Design Tony Award), and with actor Mary McCarty
- Much Ado About Nothing (revival, 1972-73), directed by A.J.
As easy as it is to believe that in a pre-internet, and, to an extent, pre-paparazzi world, an openly gay man such as Minnelli may have found it easier to escape scrutiny, this is a fable.
Born ‘Lester Anthony’, Minnelli came from a family of mixed heritage - French-Canadian on his mother’s side and Sicilian revolutionaries on his father’s.
Courtesy of the Florence Klotz Collection, Library of Congress.
(left to right) Michael Bennett, Harold Prince, Stephen Sondheim, and Boris Aronson receiving the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, 1970-71 season, for Follies. Photographer and source unknown.
Theatergoer Jim Kastner near the Follies marquee at the Winter Garden, 1971.
It was decorated in faux Southern style with explicitly racist connotations, but this club gave major early career boosts to Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, and, especially, Josephine Baker, who was offered a job in Paris.
Entry by Jay Shockley and Andrew S. Dolkart, project directors (March 2017; rev.
(right) Florence Klotz costume design for Follies, 1971. He is also the author or co-author of 16 books, including The Wawa Way with Howard Stoeckel, Building Atlanta with Herman J. Russell, Fans Not Customers with Vernon W. Hill, founder of Commerce Bank and Metro Bank UK, Mind Over Business with Ken Baum, The Consulate with Thomas R.
Stutler, The Profiler with Pat Brown, Built From Scratch with the founders of The Home Depot, The Profit Zone with Adrian Slywotzky, Mean Business with Albert J. Dunlap, and Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. He stayed at MGM for the next 26 years. Click here to see Bob Andelman's Amazon Central author page. Would you like to suggest a different historic site?
August 2019).
NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.
Building Information
- Architect or Builder: A.V. Porter (rebuilt as American Horse Exchange); W. Albert Swasey (converted into theater); Herbert J. Krapp (interior redesigned)
- Year Built: 1896 (rebuilt as American Horse Exchange); 1910-11 (converted into theater); 1922-23 (interior redesigned)
Sources
“The 1st List of: Gay/Lesbian/Bi Industry People, Both in Front and Behind the Camera,” www.imdb.com, May 31, 2013.
Adam Hetrick, “The Work of Broadway’s Gay and Lesbian Artistic Community Goes on Display Nov.
14 When the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation Gallery Presents ‘StageStruck: The Magic of Theatre Design’,” Playbill, November 14, 2007.
Anthony W. Robins, ed., Winter Garden Theater Designation Report (New York: Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1988).
Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
Emanuel Levy, Vincente Minnelli, Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2009).
Internet Broadway Database.
Kim Marra and Robert A Schanke, eds., Staging Desire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay LA: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (New York: BasicBooks, 2006).
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Broadway Theater District
What kind of things did you do in high school that affected you for the rest of your life?
For Mark Griffin, watching a Vincente Minnelli movie, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, gave him both a career—and an obsession.
This authority with which a man unknown to both can speak on a marriage which ended nearly seven decades ago is exemplary of a common theory, shared by myself, on Minnelli’s potential closetedness.
Gigi (1958) / Warner Bros.
Jane Fonda notably told Levy, ‘We could do drugs and have orgies and there was no press.’ However, as Levy goes on to note, a studio Minnelli worked with were upset by his wearing makeup, after which it immediately ceased.
Source unknown.
The West Side Story 1957 production team, with (left to right) lyricist Stephen Sondheim, librettist Arthur Laurents, producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith (seated), composer Leonard Bernstein, and choreographer Jerome Robbins (on ladder). This was followed by the ambitious period piece Meet Me in St.
Louis (1944) whose star Judy Garland he married in 1945. Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.
Winter Garden Theater marquee for Mexican Hayride, by Cole Porter, 1944.
Cover art for the original cast album of Wonderful Town (1953). (right) Costume designs for West Side Story by Irene Sharaff.
Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago on February 28 1903, his father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Source: Playbill.