Mitzi Gaynor

When Mitzi was four the family moved to Detroit. At the age of nine, after seeing Markova in Swan Lake, Mitzi decided she was 'going to be a Dancer!' (another performer also left her mark on the impressionable Mitzi, Carmen Miranda, whom she saw in the successful review, The Streets of Paris) and began to study ballet and dance in earnest with Mme. Kathryn Eteinne. When Mme. Eteinne moved to California so did Mitzi and her mum. There the young dancer/mimic began appearing in USO shows, doing her Miranda and 'soffering' Russian ballet star impersonations. By the time she was 14, Mitzi had more than 1000 hours of USO entertaining under her belt.

Mitzi (Gerber's) first professional appearance was at the Redlands Bowl, Redlands, California, July 7 1944, with other members of the Etienne Ballet. Three months later, on October 6 1944, Home on the Range (a new American musical comedy) opened at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in LA, with Mitzi in the role of Annabel Stuart. Kathleen Freeman was also featured in the cast. Up next was a little something called Song Without Words (1945) one of those lives-of-the-great-composers operettas, on this occasion concerning a certain P.I. Tchaikovsky.

Aida Broadbent, dance director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, believing the 14-year-old Mitzi was 16, cast her in the CLOs production of Roberta (1946). "I had 12 words: 'Flowers for the lady.' I said it three times." For the Los Angeles (and San Francisco) Civic Light Opera, Mitzi appeared in The Fortune Teller(1946), Gypsy Lady (1946), which took 'the dancing gypsy' to Broadway, Song of Norway (1946/47), on tour, Louisiana Purchase (1947), Naughty Marietta (1948), and The Great Waltz (1949). She was discovered by Fox while performing in the latter production and, after running away with most of the laurels in Betty Grable's My Blue Heaven(1950), Mitzi(Gaynor)was given a studio contract. She returned to the stage, in 1952, for the CLOs Jollyanna an unsuccessful West Coast reworking of Broadway's Flahooley.

The talented Mitzi sizzled her way through many a Fox film of the early-to-mid 1950s, winning Look magazine's Most Promising Female Newcomer award, for her excellent work in Golden Girl(1951) - she was also chosen, by the readers of Photoplay, as their favorite new actress of 1951. Her other films of this period were; (1951), Down Among the Sheltering Palms, a South Seas saga which was filmed in '51 but wasn't released until 1953, Bloodhounds of Broadway(1952) a rip-roaring Damon Runyon musical, and the cut-to-smitherines The I Don't Care Girl(1953), a musical hodge-podge based on the life and loves of Vaudeville's Eva Tanguay. Mitzi aint bad at all and is a wow in the three Jack Cole choreographed production numbers, including the wonderfully outrageous After appearing in Three Young Texans(1954) (it was a Western!) Mitzi and Fox came to "an amicable parting of the ways" before shooting began on There's No Business Like Show Business(1954). The Studio should have waited for Mitzi 'neatly wrapped up and walked away with the picture.'

Paramount imediatly signed her for Bing Crosby's Anything Goes(1956). Then, having proved her comedic ability in George Gobel's The Birds and the Bees(1956), Mitzi was cast in MGM's glorious Les Girls(1957), where she gave a blockbuster of a performance. Girls proves, yet again, why Mitzi Gaynor is one of the top musical performers to come out of Hollywood. The range and depth of her, heretofore, underused dramatic ability was given full reign in Sinatra's The Joker is Wild(1957).

This immensely talented, and sometimes under-rated, actress is, probably, best known for her role as Ensign Nellie Forbush in Fox's very, very successful South Pacific(1958). where she gives a beautifully multi-layered performance, filled with truth and honesty. In scene after scene Mitzi subtly conveys, with humor and great sensitivity, Nellie's ever-changing moods. Her combined talents as actress, singer, dancer and comedienne, are indeed 'star spangled.'

The nicely spicy, sophisticated, adult comedy Happy Anniversary(1959), (filmed in Sinemascope) with David Niven, followed, as did a couple of very listenable LPs and a nicely successful 45 of the tile song from the film coupled by the hauntingly beautiful I Don't Regret a Thing. Surprise Package(1960), Stanley Donen's unfortunate attempt to film Art Buchwald's "A Gift From the Boys," was next. A comedy which suffered from Yul Brynner's completely humorless performance. Mitzi looks and is delicious and Noel Coward is marvelous as ... Noel Coward.

On July 6 1961 Mitzi made her nightclub debut at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and turned the evening into one of the greatest personal triumphs of that or any other season. Since then she has continued to dazzle audiences with her sensational nightclub and stage acts, her right on the money performance in the splendidly mad Universal comedy For Love Or Money(1963), her highly rated television specials, a road tour of the Lincoln Center revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes(1987) and her An Evening with Mitzi Gaynor - a sparkling mix of dance, song, and show-biz chat. Ah, what a glorious spell the Gaynor talent does weave.