Mitzi Gaynor

Mitzi Gaynor (born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber; September 4, 1931 – October 17, 2024) was an American actress, singer and dancer.

Her notable films included We're Not Married! (1952), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), The Birds and the Bees (1956), and South Pacific (1958) – for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical at the 1959 awards.

Gaynor was one of the last surviving actors of the "Golden Age" of the Hollywood Musical.

Early life

Mitzi Gaynor was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on September 4, 1931, to Henry de Czanyi von Gerber, a violinist, cellist and music director of Hungarian descent and his wife Pauline, a dancer.

By her father's second marriage, she became stepsister to anti-war activist Donald W. Duncan. The family first moved to Elgin, Illinois, then to Detroit and later when she was age 11 to Hollywood. She trained as a ballerina as a child and began her career in the corps de ballet. At 13, she was singing and dancing with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera company. She lied about her address so she could attend Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood.

Career

20th Century Fox

Gaynor signed a seven-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox at age 17. She sang, acted and danced in a number of film musicals, often paired with some of the male musical stars of the day. A Fox Studio executive thought Mitzi Gerber sounded like the name of a delicatessen and they came up with a name that used the same initials.

Gaynor made her film debut in the musical My Blue Heaven (1950); Betty Grable and Dan Dailey starred and she had a supporting role. A college drama Take Care of My Little Girl (1951) followed, with Gaynor playing the roommate of Jeanne Crain.

Stardom

Fox then gave Gaynor a star part playing Lotta Crabtree in the musical biopic Golden Girl (1951). It was a mild success at the box office. Gaynor was one of several stars in the anthology comedy We're Not Married! (1952), and then she was top billed in the musical Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), which made $2 million (equivalent to $22.95 million in 2023).

Fox put her in The I Don't Care Girl (1952) as Eva Tanguay. The film made $1.25 million.[12] Gaynor starred in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953), playing a South Sea island girl. She was the female lead in Three Young Texans (1954). Gaynor's most popular film in her time at Fox was Irving Berlin's There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). She was billed after Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, and Johnnie Ray.

Jack Bean

Gaynor married Jack Bean, a talent agent and public relations executive for MCA, in San Francisco on November 18, 1954. Their home was on North Arden Drive in Beverly Hills, California. She had just been released from Twentieth Century-Fox (before the start of There's No Business Like Show Business) with four years left on her contract and decided that, since she had the time off, she would get married. The union was childless. After their marriage, Bean quit MCA, started his publicity firm named Bean & Rose, and managed Gaynor's career.

Paramount

In 1956, Gaynor appeared in the Paramount remake of Anything Goes, co-starring Bing Crosby, Donald O'Connor, and Zizi Jeanmaire, loosely based on the musical by Cole Porter, P. G. Wodehouse, and Guy Bolton. Paramount cast her in The Birds and the Bees (1956), playing the role originated by Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941). Her third film for Paramount was The Joker Is Wild (1957), a biopic of Joe E. Lewis starring Frank Sinatra, in which Gaynor played the female lead. In 1957, Gaynor appeared in MGM's Les Girls, directed by George Cukor, with Gene Kelly and Kay Kendall.

South Pacific

Gaynor’s biggest international fame came from her starring role as Ensign Nellie Forbush in the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. For her performance, she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical at the 1959 awards.

Gaynor followed this movie with Happy Anniversary (1959) with David Niven and the United Kingdom production Surprise Package (1960), a musical comedy thriller directed by Stanley Donen. Her co-stars were Yul Brynner and Noël Coward. The film's theme song was composed by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, music and lyrics, respectively. Dancing and singing in a duet with Noël Coward, Gaynor performed this song in the film. 

Her last film role of this period was For Love or Money (1963), starring Kirk Douglas.

Later career

Following her film work, Gaynor performed in other media. She appeared between two sets by The Beatles when they made their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 16, 1964. She has recounted the irony of members of the band, already famous for their distinctive “mop-tops”, borrowing her hair dryer behind the scenes. Afterwards she had dinner with them and they asked for her autograph. Gaynor performed for a nine-minute segment from the stage of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, separated by one commercial break. She sang "Too Darn Hot" and a blues medley. At the 1967 Academy Awards ceremony, she sang the theme from the film Georgy Girl. Gaynor later added the number to her concert repertoire. Through the 1960s and 1970s, she starred in nine television specials which garnered 16 Emmy nominations.

During her nightclub years, Gaynor developed and rehearsed her routines at The Cave, a club in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She became fond of the city and frequently made guest appearances on local television for interviews. "Mitzi's back in town" became an annual slogan when Gaynor would come to the city for a number of weeks each year to develop her Las Vegas routines.

Gaynor recorded two albums for the Verve Records label, one called Mitzi and the second called Mitzi Gaynor Sings the Lyrics of Ira Gershwin. She also recorded the title song from her film Happy Anniversary for the Top Rank label. For several decades, Gaynor appeared regularly in Las Vegas and at nightclub and concert venues throughout the United States and Canada.

During the 1990s, Gaynor became a featured columnist for The Hollywood Reporter.

On December 4, 2006, Jack Bean, Gaynor's husband of 52 years, died of pneumonia in the couple's home. He was 84.

On July 30, 2008, Gaynor – along with Kenny Ortega, Elizabeth Berkley, Shirley MacLaine, and the cast members from High School Musical, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and other performers – appeared on the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences TV Moves Live, a celebration of 60 years of dance on television. Gaynor appeared performing the final few bars of "Poor Papa", a song-and-dance number from her 1969 TV special, Mitzi's 2nd Special. Four months later, on November 18, 2008, City Lights Pictures released Mitzi Gaynor Razzle Dazzle: The Special Years, a documentary celebrating Gaynor's annual television specials of the 1960s and 1970s. The film, which was broadcast on public television and released on DVD, includes moments from the original specials (digitally remastered in 5.1 stereo) along with newly taped interviews with Gaynor colleagues, friends, and admirers, including Bob Mackie, Carl Reiner, Kristin Chenoweth, Rex Reed, Tony Charmoli, Alton Ruff, Randy Doney, and Kelli O'Hara. Gaynor's one-woman show Razzle Dazzle: My Life Behind the Sequins toured the United States and Vancouver from 2009 thru 2014, including a two-week engagement in New York City.

Personal life and death

From 1954 until his death in 2006, Gaynor was married to Jack Bean, who also served as her manager. In 1960, they acquired a Beverly Hills home in which they lived until Bean's death. Gaynor and Bean had no children.

Gaynor died from natural causes in Los Angeles on October 17, 2024 at the age of 93.