Mitzi Gaynor, who died Oct. 17 in Los Angeles, put the “viva! in “vivacious,” the adjective most likely to succeed with columnists and press agents looking for a word to capture the quintessence of 1950s and ’60s flash and sparkle.
Although she did a lot before “South Pacific,” and plenty after, “South Pacific” made her not just Mitzi Gaynor but Mitzi Gaynor! The 1958 film, taken from the 1949 Broadway smash, showcased the Chicago-born entertainer’s musical, comic and dramatic chops as Ensign Nellie Forbush, the female lead of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical taken from James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Tales of the South Pacific.”
By then, she was a seasoned, versatile presence in American pop culture, best known for movie musicals and nightclubs and the newer phenomenon of the Las Vegas showroom. (Also, she dated Howard Hughes for a while; he encouraged her to buy a few acres of the Vegas Strip. She did; it made her a small fortune.) She toured for decades; back in the ’80s, she played Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” and brought with it a truckful of outlandish specialty gowns designed by Bob Mackie. Well. A star’s gotta star.
This one is gone, at age 93.
She was the sort of star who’d pick up the phone, having never met you, and belt out the line “Hi, darling! It’s Mitzi!” like a cue for an Act 1 finale. That first interview came around the time of the “Anything Goes” national tour. Decades later, I met her in person for a short, sweet 2013 interview preceding her Music Box Theatre introduction of a “South Pacific” screening set up by Turner Classic Movies.
Here’s the story from that interview. May she rest in peace, and in dazzle, and in razzle.
Mitzi Gaynor’s opening line: “Call me Mitzi!”
Real name: Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber. “I’m a Hungarian by descent. And a Virgo. And a Catholic. So if you want guilt, talk to me, darling.”
Born: Chicago, Sept. 4, 1931.
Credits: Films include “Golden Girl,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Les Girls” and, most famously, in 1958, “South Pacific.” Numerous dance-intensive TV specials over the decades. Countless stage and nightclub appearances.
Most recent Chicago appearance: March 19, 2013, in a Music Box Theatre presentation of “South Pacific,” introduced by Gaynor and film historian Leonard Maltin. Gaynor’s sold-out show was part of the Turner Classic Movies “Road to Hollywood” screening series. Earlier that day we spoke in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton downtown. “My mother used to say, ‘Darling, when you read the Trib, it’s the truth. The Colonel knows. The Colonel knows.”
After Chicago: The Gerbers moved to Elgin, and then to Detroit, and then when Mitzi was 11, to Hollywood. “My mother and my auntie would take me to the theater in Detroit. Any play, any ballet, they’d take me. I saw Carmen Miranda in ‘Streets of Paris.’ They’d buy one ticket. First act, I’d go and sit in my mother’s lap. Second act, she’d leave, and my auntie would come in and I’d sit in her lap. And then I’d do the entire show for them when we got home. They’d sit and smoke cigarettes and drink tea and do Tarot cards, and get out their astrology magazines.”
Mitzi the shameless flatterer: “Are you an actor? You have a wonderful voice.”
Mitzi on the secret to her 52-year marriage to Jack Bean, a producer and public relations executive for MCA: “We loved each other.” Bean died in 2006.
Mitzi on Howard Hughes: “We dated for about six months. I was 19 and so hot! I’d already done a couple of movies. Then I found out he was asking a hundred other girls to marry him too. I liked him, but wasn’t in love with him. He said to me: ‘I want you to buy some dirt.’ Land, you know. I said, ‘I don’t want dirt! I want sables! Diamonds!’ He told me, ‘Yes, but you should buy some dirt.’ So I bought five acres on the Las Vegas strip. And I was rich.”
On Bing Crosby, her co-star in the 1956 film version of “Anything Goes”: “He used to call me Brookie. I said: ‘Why?’ And he said: ‘When you walk away you look like a little brook trout, swimming upstream.’”
On “South Pacific”: “I was filming ‘The Joker is Wild’ with Frank Sinatra, and got the call that I’d be auditioning for Oscar Hammerstein at the Beverly Hills Hotel ballroom for ‘South Pacific.’ I did ‘Honey Bun,’ I did ‘Cockeyed Optimist,’ I did everything but strip. Oscar’s way, way at the other side of the ballroom. Why? I don’t know. But he walked over afterwards. … You know when you do good? You feel like, ‘Well, at least I didn’t make a fool of myself.’ Oscar took my hand and said: ‘Thank you very much, Miss Gaynor. You’ve been a wonderful sport.’
“And if I hadn’t done ‘South Pacific,’ you and I would not be sitting here.”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
