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Courtesy of the Florence Klotz Collection, Library of Congress.

Raoul Pene Du Bois, scenic and costume designer involved in 12 productions at the Winter Garden Theater, and Tony Award winner for Wonderful Town, n.d. After working on numerous Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland vehicles, usually directed by Busby Berkeley, Arthur Freed gave him his first directorial assignment on Cabin in the Sky (1943), a risky screen project with an all-black cast.

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Broadway Theater District

Vincente Minnelli: the legendary director who hid his sexuality

By Leah Martindale, Third Year, Film & TV

He is remembered as one of the great filmmakers of the 1940s, but his key biographers believe he was also an early example of a gay or bisexual man working in a less than accepting environment.

Vincente Minnelli is widely known for directing spectacular theatrical and cinematic musicals, comedies, and melodramas, as well as fathering Liza Minnelli with the equally talented Judy Garland, who he met onset for Strike Up The Band (1940) and fell in love with onset for Meet Me in St.

Louis (1944). Emerging in other extracts in Griffin’s book are the recounts that Garland was ‘paranoid’ about Minnelli’s bond with Garland’s coworker, the eternally handsome and charming Gene Kelly. Photo by Andy Benedict. Source: Playbill. Minnelli is one of the few directors for whom Technicolor seems to have been invented. In Mark Griffin’s words in A Hundred or More Hidden Things: ‘Despite the fact that Minnelli was married to Judy Garland and three other women…it was generally assumed that he was a closeted gay man who, due to the societal conditioning of his era, felt compelled to marry and procreate.’

So where did this legacy come from to begin with, and how has it survived so tenaciously in the years since his death?

One major player in the rumour mill was the aforementioned first wife, Garland.

Source: Yale School of Drama Special Collections.

Vincente Minnelli in an undated photo.

vincente minnelli gay

Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Scenic design for West Side Story (1957) by Oliver Smith. Source: "Our Theatres Today and Yesterday."

History

From the time of its conversion in 1910-11 from a stable into an enormous theater for musical revues, as well as its interior remodeling in 1922-23, the Winter Garden Theater has hosted an especially large number of productions that are indicative of the contributions made by the LGBT community to American musical theater.

An early hit with LGBT associations was Artists and Models (1925-26), with costume design by Erte and George Barbier, and with actor Jay Brennan.

The midnight shows were intended for a fashionable white clientele embracing the “Negro vogue” at the time. Robert LaVine (Best Costume Design Tony Award)

  • Liza (1974), with music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb
  • Ulysses in Nighttime (1974), with actor David Ogden Stiers
  • Gypsy (revival, 1974-75), written and directed by Arthur Laurents, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and costume design by Raoul Pene Du Bois
  • Pacific Overtures (1976), by John Weidman and Hugh Wheeler, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, costume design by Florence Klotz (Best Costume Design Tony Award), and lighting design by Tharon Musser
  • Fiddler on the Roof (revival, 1976-77), directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins
  • Camelot (revival, 1981-82), with scenic and costume design by Desmond Heeley

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    The Plantation Club
    In 1922, Lew Leslie, one of the first Broadway impresarios to feature Black performers, opened the Plantation Club, a large-scale nightclub over the Winter Garden Theater.

    Source unknown.

    The West Side Story 1957 production team, with (left to right) lyricist Stephen Sondheim, librettist Arthur Laurents, producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith (seated), composer Leonard Bernstein, and choreographer Jerome Robbins (on ladder). He is a member in good standing of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (member page). View all posts by Mr.

    Media® Interviews-Bob Andelman

    Actors, Authors, Comedy, Dance, Drama, History, Movie Stars, Movies, Nonfiction, Writers

    A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli, An American in Paris, Gay, Gigi, Homosexuality, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, MARK GRIFFIN, Meet Me in St. Louis, Movies, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, sexual orientation, The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli, Vincente Minnelli

    Oh, and a new book, too: A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli.

    MARK GRIFFIN podcast excerpt: “Vincente Minnelli liked to slip a lot of subliminal elements into his films.

    Courtesy of the Florence Klotz Collection, Library of Congress.

    (left to right) Michael Bennett, Harold Prince, Stephen Sondheim, and Boris Aronson receiving the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, 1970-71 season, for Follies. Photographer and source unknown.

    Theatergoer Jim Kastner near the Follies marquee at the Winter Garden, 1971.

    As easy as it is to believe that in a pre-internet, and, to an extent, pre-paparazzi world, an openly gay man such as Minnelli may have found it easier to escape scrutiny, this is a fable.

    Born ‘Lester Anthony’, Minnelli came from a family of mixed heritage - French-Canadian on his mother’s side and Sicilian revolutionaries on his father’s.

    With the American Psychiatric Association diagnosing homosexuality as ‘a sociopathic personality disturbance’ in 1952, Minnelli not only risked social and familial disrepute, the fall of his career, and divorce as a consequence of coming out - he risked institutionalisation.

    Minnelli spent much of his life avoiding sexuality speculations, and yet they have followed him beyond the grave.

    (right) Florence Klotz costume design for Follies, 1971. With historians, critics, and amateurs alike able to speculate on breadcrumbs, how much would his legacy be changed by the whole loaf? Source: Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts.

    (left) Irene Sharaff, n.d.. Four times married, with two children, he has a striking and deeply contented second legacy, one debatably as a closeted gay man.

    Minnelli is widely recognised in certain circles without debate as a gay man.

    Despite this interview only being little under a decade old, the latter statement feels centuries more antiquated. This authority with which a man unknown to both can speak on a marriage which ended nearly seven decades ago is exemplary of a common theory, shared by myself, on Minnelli’s potential closetedness.

    Gigi (1958) / Warner Bros.

    Jane Fonda notably told Levy, ‘We could do drugs and have orgies and there was no press.’ However, as Levy goes on to note, a studio Minnelli worked with were upset by his wearing makeup, after which it immediately ceased.

    Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.

    Winter Garden Theater marquee for Mexican Hayride, by Cole Porter, 1944.

    Cover art for the original cast album of Wonderful Town (1953).