Song and dance legend Mitzi Gaynor made her name in the movies — starring in 17 feature films including 1958’s “South Pacific,” for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination — but her lasting success has come in television and from her decades as a celebrated nightclub headliner.
“I loved being a movie star, but I’m not sure I was all that good. The camera always got in my way. I was never as comfortable making a film as I am on television or on stage in front of a live audience,” explained Gaynor by telephone recently from her home in Beverly Hills.
Gaynor was a fixture in Las Vegas for much of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, but stepped away from the spotlight in 1996 when her husband and longtime manager, Jack Bean, became ill. Bean passed away on Dec. 4, 2006, with his wife of 52 years at his side.
“I was sure I wouldn’t work again, because I didn’t know if I could even be Mitzi Gaynor anymore. We were one person, Jack and I. We were the Beans. We weren’t Mitzi Jack, we were just the Beans. When Jack passed away, I thought he took me with him. A short time later, I decided to auction off some of my beautiful Bob Mackie costumes to benefit the Professional Dancers Society.”
When Rene Reyes, director of Public Programs and Festivals at the Museum of Television Radio, now known as the Paley Center for Media, in Beverly Hills, heard that Gaynor was interested in displaying some of her famous sequined costumes before the auction, he suggested something more than just a clothing exhibit. In April 2007, an evening called “Mitzi Gaynor Razzle Dazzle: The Special Years” — featuring a discussion with Gaynor, costume designer Mackie, and choreographer Tony Charmoli, plus clips from Gaynor’s many television specials (1968-‘78) — launched a monthlong “Mitzi by Mackie” exhibit.
“We had such a ball putting together that retrospective. It was just fabulous,” Gaynor recalls. “It was then that I realized that there would still be a Mitzi Gaynor after all. I felt like Jack was with me that night. I feel like Jack is always with me.”
The event’s success led Reyes and his partner Shane Rosamonda to become not only Gaynor’s new management team but also her producers on a documentary of the same name that aired on PBS and earned a 2010 Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Program. Gaynor soon began work on a new one-woman show. Titled “Razzle Dazzle! My Life behind the Sequins: An Intimate Evening of Love, Laughs, and Music,” the show premiered at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre in 2009 and Gaynor brought it to Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in New York the following year.
“In my new show, I tell stories about how I got into the business, my father being a Hungarian cellist and my mother a dancer, my training to be a ballerina and dancing with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, and my movie and television career. I also sing and dance, of course, and while I’m changing costumes, clips from my movies and television specials are shown.”
Born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago, Gaynor was only 17 when she signed a seven-picture deal with Twentieth Century Fox. Her early Hollywood success included a romance with one of the world’s most famous men — aviator, film producer and business mogul Howard Hughes.
“I was working on a picture called ‘Bloodhounds of Broadway’ when Howard had a friend tell me he wanted to see me about buying out my Fox contract. I was 18 or 19 years old so my mother came to my first meeting with Howard. My mother always liked hats and she wore a very elaborate one that day. Howard was divine and nothing like the creep people describe. We were together for about seven months. He gave me gorgeous jewelry, which I still have, and excellent advice about buying land in Las Vegas which I took. I’m not sure I was the only woman in his life, but he made me feel that way. Our breakup was big news and I was distraught over the headlines. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before I met Jack Bean. From that point forward, I didn’t even want to speak to anyone else.”
Gaynor and Bean were married in 1954, and that same year Gaynor made “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” a musical with an all-star cast where she met both a Broadway legend and a film legend in the making.
“I played Ethel Merman’s daughter in that picture and we became best friends. I was her maid of honor when she married Ernest Borgnine. I always called her by her real name, Ethel Agnes Zimmerman, and she called me Mitzala. Marilyn Monroe played a hat-check girl in the picture, but she wasn’t around all the time. She was busy creating Marilyn Monroe. If you see that picture now, though, and really pay attention to it, you realize that Marilyn steals the whole damn picture.”
Even when it was happening, that was probably fine by Gaynor, who may already have known that her biggest success, and greatest professional pleasure, would come in front of an audience, not a camera.
“God gave me one gift — the ability to entertain people — and it has always made me feel blessed. It is why I still love to perform,” says Gaynor. “When you hear your overture and you know there are people who paid to come see you just waiting to be with you, then you know it is time to rejoice. For me, performing is like a play date. I love the excitement and the warmth of a live audience. The whole experience is just thrilling.”