not to, throwing his limbs wide then snapping them shut, like a starfish going sardine. Fosse was clearly the best dancer in the movie. His articulation—sharp, fast, and exact—is the visual equivalent of Olivier’s diction. The dancer can’t act, but he (almost) doesn’t need to; his innate gee-shucks-ness suits the part—so much so that Charlie Grass thought that Fosse, playing Bob Dowdy, was really playing himself. “That’s the teenaged Bob Fosse,”he said.
The picture fizzled. “I was living in a one-room apartmentin Culver City, with a Murphy bed, believing in my own stardom,” Fosse said. “But then, within a year I realized those people who told me I’d be a movie star weren’t telling me the truth.” Stopping by one of choreographer Michael Kidd’s parties,he ran into Gwen Verdon, who was about to head, with Kidd, to Broadway to start rehearsing
Can-Can,
the new Cole Porter show. They recognized each other from around the MGM lot, where Gwen had been working on
The Merry Widow
as Jack Cole’s assistant and lead cancan dancer (“Dance it like a lady athlete,”Cole had told her). Beginning enthusiastically with discussions of Cole and Astaire, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon had a lot to talk about that night. Joan McCracken, Mrs. Bob Fosse, had been one of Verdon’searly role models. Her performance in Joseph Losey’s production of
Galileo
had made an immediate and lasting impression on the teenage Gwen. It was the first time she understood a dancer could act (this was Brecht!), that a musical-theater comedienne could be an artist, and Verdon—who at that age had danced mostly in girlie shows around Hollywood—immediately signed up for acting classes. Fosse’s proximity to McCracken and Verdon’s to Cole raised their esteem for each other, inflaming the flirty lure of mutual curiosity and the snug air of a second date, which, in a way, Kidd’s party was. They had met before, when Fosse and Niles auditioned for
Alive and Kicking.
They talked into the night, agreeing that movies weren’t showing them at their best. Hollywood’s Production Code Administration censors, frowning at every wink, had had their shears out for Verdon since her honky-tonk twist in
The I Don’t Care Girl
—a dance they cut. It set a precedent. “Then came
David and Bathsheba,
”she said. “David wanted to go to war but he was supposed to go home to Bathsheba, and my dance was supposed to put him in the mood to go home to her. Well, I guess it was too much, because everybody who saw it got the same idea . . .” The same thing happened to Verdon in
The Mississippi Gambler,
in
Meet Me After the Show,
in
The Farmer Takes a Wife,
and, again, as she expected, in
The Merry Widow.
“One more body on the cutting room floor,”she would say with a laugh. “So what’s new?”
It gave Verdon a lift knowing someone thought she was too hot to be onscreen, even if she herself didn’t really believe it. “I never think of myself as sexy,”she said. “Most of the time I’m just-kidding sex, you know.”
She could get away with more onstage than on film. There were no censors on Broadway.
In Los Angeles, Fosse was far from McCracken and the grimy New York streets he trusted; his disappointment over
Give a Girl a Break
turned into loneliness,and his loneliness, compounded by his worst fears, turned into despair. The despair shattered him. He blamed Hollywood, the crimes it committed in the name of creativity. He obsessed over the injustice, wondering why he looked better onstage than onscreen, why lesser talents fared better. This time, he was not just being too hard on himself. No one could tell him that his failure lived only in his fears. In
Give a Girl a Break,
he finally had the proof he needed, and his new role, in
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis,
was just as flabby. “My parts were getting smaller,”Fosse said, looking back. “I knew what that meant.”
He confided in Peggy King, a young singer he’d met in
The picture fizzled. “I was living in a one-room apartmentin Culver City, with a Murphy bed, believing in my own stardom,” Fosse said. “But then, within a year I realized those people who told me I’d be a movie star weren’t telling me the truth.” Stopping by one of choreographer Michael Kidd’s parties,he ran into Gwen Verdon, who was about to head, with Kidd, to Broadway to start rehearsing
Can-Can,
the new Cole Porter show. They recognized each other from around the MGM lot, where Gwen had been working on
The Merry Widow
as Jack Cole’s assistant and lead cancan dancer (“Dance it like a lady athlete,”Cole had told her). Beginning enthusiastically with discussions of Cole and Astaire, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon had a lot to talk about that night. Joan McCracken, Mrs. Bob Fosse, had been one of Verdon’searly role models. Her performance in Joseph Losey’s production of
Galileo
had made an immediate and lasting impression on the teenage Gwen. It was the first time she understood a dancer could act (this was Brecht!), that a musical-theater comedienne could be an artist, and Verdon—who at that age had danced mostly in girlie shows around Hollywood—immediately signed up for acting classes. Fosse’s proximity to McCracken and Verdon’s to Cole raised their esteem for each other, inflaming the flirty lure of mutual curiosity and the snug air of a second date, which, in a way, Kidd’s party was. They had met before, when Fosse and Niles auditioned for
Alive and Kicking.
They talked into the night, agreeing that movies weren’t showing them at their best. Hollywood’s Production Code Administration censors, frowning at every wink, had had their shears out for Verdon since her honky-tonk twist in
The I Don’t Care Girl
—a dance they cut. It set a precedent. “Then came
David and Bathsheba,
”she said. “David wanted to go to war but he was supposed to go home to Bathsheba, and my dance was supposed to put him in the mood to go home to her. Well, I guess it was too much, because everybody who saw it got the same idea . . .” The same thing happened to Verdon in
The Mississippi Gambler,
in
Meet Me After the Show,
in
The Farmer Takes a Wife,
and, again, as she expected, in
The Merry Widow.
“One more body on the cutting room floor,”she would say with a laugh. “So what’s new?”
It gave Verdon a lift knowing someone thought she was too hot to be onscreen, even if she herself didn’t really believe it. “I never think of myself as sexy,”she said. “Most of the time I’m just-kidding sex, you know.”
She could get away with more onstage than on film. There were no censors on Broadway.
In Los Angeles, Fosse was far from McCracken and the grimy New York streets he trusted; his disappointment over
Give a Girl a Break
turned into loneliness,and his loneliness, compounded by his worst fears, turned into despair. The despair shattered him. He blamed Hollywood, the crimes it committed in the name of creativity. He obsessed over the injustice, wondering why he looked better onstage than onscreen, why lesser talents fared better. This time, he was not just being too hard on himself. No one could tell him that his failure lived only in his fears. In
Give a Girl a Break,
he finally had the proof he needed, and his new role, in
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis,
was just as flabby. “My parts were getting smaller,”Fosse said, looking back. “I knew what that meant.”
He confided in Peggy King, a young singer he’d met in
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