Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon (January 13, 1925 – October 18, 2000) was an American actress and dancer who won 4 Tony Awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was considered the best dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s. She is also strongly identified with her husband, director/choreographer Bob Fosse, both as the dancer/collaborator/muse upon whom he choreographed much of his work and as guardian of the Fosse legacy after his death.
Biography
Early life & career
Verdon was born in Culver City, California, the second child of Gertrude Lilian (née Standring; October 24, 1896-October 16, 1956) and Joseph William Verdon (December 31, 1896-June 23, 1978), who were British immigrants to the United States by way of Canada.[1] Her brother was William Farrell Verdon (August 1, 1923-June 10, 1991). The Verdon family could be described as "showpeople." Her father was an electrician at MGM Studios, and her mother was a former vaudevillian of the Denishawn dance troupe, as well as a dance teacher.[2]
As a child, Gwen was afflicted with rickets, leaving her legs so badly misshapen she was called "Gimpy" by other children and spent her early years in orthopedic boots and rigid leg braces. Her mother put three-year-old Gwen in dance classes; ballet training strengthened her legs and improved her carriage.
By age six, the redheaded Gwen was performing on stage as a dancer. She went on to study multiple dance forms, ranging from tap, jazz, ballroom and flamenco, to Balinese and juggling. At age 11, she appeared as a solo ballerina in the musical romance film The King Steps Out (1936), directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Grace Moore and Franchot Tone. She attended Hamilton High School in Los Angeles and also studied under the renowned ballet master, Ernest Belcher. While in high school, she was cast in a revival of Show Boat.
Verdon shocked her parents and instructors when she abandoned her budding career at age 17 to elope with her first husband in 1942. In 1945, she appeared as a dancer in the movie musical The Blonde From Brooklyn. After her divorce, she entrusted her young son, Jimmy, to the care of her parents.
Career as an adult
Early on, Verdon found a job as assistant to choreographer Jack Cole, whose work was respected by both Broadway and major Hollywood movie studios. During her five-year employment with Cole, she took small roles in movie musicals as a "specialty dancer". She also gave dance instruction to performers who eventually became stars, such as Jane Russell, Gene Kelly, Fernando Lamas, Lana Turner, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.
Verdon started out on Broadway as a "gypsy", going from one chorus line to another. Her breakthrough role finally came when she was cast by choreographer Michael Kidd as the second female lead in Cole Porter's musical Can-Can (1953), which starred French prima donna Lilo. Out-of-town reviewers hailed Verdon's interpretation of Eve in the Garden of Eden ballet as a performance that upstaged the show's star, who jealously demanded Verdon's role be cut to only two featured dance numbers. With her role reduced to little more than an ensemble part, Verdon formally announced her intention to quit by the time the show premiered on Broadway. But her opening night Garden of Eden performance was so well-received, the audience screamed her name until the startled actress was brought out of her dressing room in her bathrobe to take a curtain call. Verdon received a pay increase and her first Tony Award for her triumphant performance.
With her short shock of flaming red hair, the exquisite body of a pin-up girl and a guileless vulnerability onstage and off, Verdon was considered the best dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s. That reputation solidified during her next show George Abbott's Damn Yankees (1955), based on the novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. She would forever be identified with her role as the vampish "Lola", and it was on this show that Verdon first worked with Bob Fosse as her choreographer. In the story, Verdon's Lola is a woman who was once "the ugliest woman in Providence, Rhode Island" but has sold herself to the Devil to be the beautiful woman we see in the play. The Devil (played by a wryly comic Ray Walston) convinces a baseball fan to sell his soul so he can play and win the Series for the Washington Senators. The Devil then employs Lola (Verdon) for her seductive ability to keep the guy ("Joe") from escaping the Devil's grasp. The hitch is that Lola falls for the guy and has to choose between her love for Joe and her beauty-pact with the Devil. The musical ran for 1,019 performances. She won another Tony and went to Hollywood to repeat her role in the 1958 movie version, Damn Yankees, singing the memorable lyrics, "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets." (Fosse can be seen in the film, which he choreographed, partnered deliciously with Verdon for the witty mambo duet, "Who's Got the Pain.")
She also memorably played a dramatic role associated with film-actress Greta Garbo, Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, the hard-luck girl fleeing from her past as a prostitute, in the musical New Girl in Town, winning a Tony Award for her work. When Fosse directed as well as choreographed his first Broadway musical, it was Redhead, it starred Verdon, and she won her fourth Tony Award (her third as Best Leading Actress in A Musical) for it. In 1960 Fosse wed Verdon.
In 1966, Verdon returned to the stage in the role of Charity in Sweet Charity, which like many of her earlier Broadway triumphs was choreographed and directed by Bob Fosse, now her husband. The show is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria. However, where Fellini's black-and-white Italian film concerns the romantic ups-and-downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute, the musical makes the central character a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance-hall. The trademark Fosse showmanship, a dynamite musical score and theatre-goers' affection for the exuberant, 41-year-old Verdon put the show over, despite the fact that Fellini's source material strained against the cleaned-up, Broadway-ized storyline. It was followed by a movie version starring Shirley MacLaine as Charity, featuring Ricardo Montalban, Sammy Davis Jr. and Chita Rivera, with Fosse himself at the helm of his very first film as director and choreographer. Verdon, with her characteristically generous spirit, pitched in to help implement the choreography in the film. The numbers include the iconic "Big Spender", the fast-paced "Rhythm of Life", the witty "If My Friends Could See Me Now" and "I'm A Brass Band" which had Shirley MacLaine's Charity marching down the middle of Manhattan's Wall Street district. Verdon would also travel to Berlin to be of assistance to Fosse with Cabaret, the musical film for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.
Although estranged as marriage partners, Verdon and Fosse continued to collaborate on projects like Chicago (1975) (in which she originated the role of murderess Roxie Hart) and the musical Dancin' (1978), as well as Fosse's autobiographical movie, All That Jazz (1979). The help-meet/peer played by Leland Palmer in that film is based on the role Gwen Verdon played in Fosse's real life. Gwen Verdon also developed a close working relationship with Fosse's domestic companion, a likewise celebrated Broadway dancer named Ann Reinking, and she instructed for Reinking's musical theatre classes. Reinking can be seen in All That Jazz playing the protagonist's lover, the role she played in Fosse's real life. She, as much as Verdon, would become responsible for keeping Fosse's trademark choreography alive after Fosse had passed on. Reinking played the role of Roxie Hart in the highly successful Broadway revival of "Chicago" which opened in 1996. She choreographed the dances "in the style of Bob Fosse" for that revival.
After originating the role of Roxie Hart opposite Chita Rivera in Chicago, Verdon focused on film-acting, playing character roles in movies such as The Cotton Club (1984), Cocoon (1985) and Cocoon: The Return (1988). She continued to instruct dance and musical theatre and to act, including receiving three Emmy Award nominations for appearances on Magnum PI (1988), Dream On (1993) and Homicide (1993). Verdon appeared as Alice's mother in the Woody Allen movie Alice (1990) and as Ruth in Marvin's Room (1996), co-starring Meryl Streep and Hume Cronyn. In 1999, Verdon served as artistic consultant on a plotless Broadway musical designed to showcase examples of classic Fosse choreography. Called simply Fosse, the revue was conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Ann Reinking and choreographed by Reinking and Chet Walker. Verdon's daughter Nicole received a "special thanks" credit. The show received a Tony for best musical.
Verdon played Alora in the movie Walking Across Egypt (1999) and appeared in the movie Bruno, released in 2000.
Most recently, a 1969 Verdon performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, of a routine most likely choreographed by Fosse and set to the song Mexican Breakfast, served as the inspiration for Beyoncé's 2008 music video Single Ladies.
Verdon received a total of four Tonys, for Best Supporting Actress for Can-Can (1953), and for Best Leading Actress for Damn Yankees (1955), New Girl in Town (1957) and Redhead (1959), a murder-mystery musical. She also won a Grammy Award for the cast recording of Redhead.
Personal
Verdon had two husbands, tabloid reporter James Henaghan (married 1942, divorced 1947) and Bob Fosse (married 1960, his death 1987). She and Henaghan had one son, Jim Henaghan (born 1943); she and Fosse had a daughter, Nicole Fosse (born 1963).
In 1971, Verdon filed a legal separation from Fosse (but never divorced) because of his extramarital affairs. Verdon was accompanying Fosse to the 1987 revival of Sweet Charity starring Donna McKechnie in Washington and held him in her arms when he suffered a fatal heart attack on the sidewalk outside the theatre.[3]
Verdon died in her sleep in 2000 of a heart attack at the home of her daughter, Nicole, in Woodstock, Vermont[4] , at the age of 75. At 8 p.m. on the night she died, all marquee lights on Broadway were dimmed in a tribute to the actress. [3]
Work
References
- ^ Sweet Rarity | Gwen Verdon | Obituary | News | Entertainment Weekly
- ^ Gwen Verdon Biography (1925-2000)
- ^ a b Berkvist, Robert."Gwen Verdon, Redhead Who High-Kicked Her Way to Stardom, Dies at 75,"The New York Times, originally published October 19, 2000, accessed June 4, 2009
- ^ Kuchwara, Michael, The Associated Press, "Gwen Verdon, Broadway's Lola, Sweet Charity and Roxie Hart, dies at 75", October 19, 2000,
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