Mark Griffin by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life, Films of Vincente Minnelli Page A

said Cyd Charisse was the only woman who looked as good naked as she did dressed.” 1
    Like her better-known rival, Edith Head, Rose had a talent for accentuating nature’s gifts and downplaying the defects. In 1953, the two-time Oscar winner put down her measuring tape long enough to submit a simple yet irresistible scenario for a movie: Fashion maven weds sportswriter. Although Rose’s Designing Woman seemed to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Woman of the Year , studio chief Dore Schary was so taken with the concept that he decided to produce the movie himself. Metro executives agreed that a lighthearted comedy would offer a refreshing change of pace from Schary’s deadly earnest, socially conscious “message pictures,” such as The Red Badge of Courage and The Next Voice You Hear .
    Screenwriter George Wells fashioned a slickly witty script from Rose’s original scenario. The paper-thin plot concerned the connubial collision of
chic fashionista Marilla Brown (caught up with her fittings and fall collections) and avid sportsman Mike Hagen (whose Runyonesque world is populated by punch-drunk middleweights and guys with names like “Charlie the Sneak”).
    In terms of casting, Schary’s initial idea was to reunite the stars of Hitchcock’s Rear Window —Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly—as the squabbling newlyweds. Joshua Logan was slated to direct. However, when Kelly abdicated her Hollywood throne in favor of the real thing by marrying the Prince of Monaco, Schary’s production was suddenly without its Designing Woman . Minus her majesty, the project didn’t seem as appealing to either Stewart or Logan and both bowed out. The directorial chores were then shifted to Minnelli, fresh from Tea and Sympathy . It seemed that the director couldn’t completely shake his high-minded exploration of gender roles, though, and some of that “sister boy” stuff would spill over into Designing Woman ’s riotous battle of the sexes.
    Gregory Peck, who inherited the role of the newspaperman, had contractual approval over his costar. He green-lighted Minnelli’s choice: Lauren Bacall. Though Humphrey Bogart’s better half had displayed her comedic abilities in How to Marry a Millionaire , the sultry star usually found herself cast in dramatic roles. There had been a string of hard-boiled, noirish dramas at Warner Brothers. But by the mid-’50s, even those were hard to come by. “My career had come to a dead stop,” Bacall remembers. “No one offered me anything. . . . So I called Dore, told him I could play it, wanted to, and when I cut my salary in half, he finally said yes.” 2
    The supporting cast would include two Kismet survivors: Dolores Gray as Peck’s brassy former paramour Lori Shannon, and choreographer Jack Cole, in a rare before-the-cameras turn, as dancer Randy Owen, a flamboyant friend of Bacall’s uptown girl. The initially reticent Cole was persuaded to take the role by his analyst. “He told me this might help bring me out of myself,” Cole said. 3
    Shooting began in September 1956 and both leads eagerly threw themselves into their work. Since Roman Holiday , Peck had subsisted on a steady diet of somber dramas ( Night People , The Purple Plain , The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit ). The stalwart leading man relished the opportunity to flex his comedy muscles and he marveled at Minnelli’s “wonderful sense of pacing . . . of not letting things get boring, keeping it dancing along.” 4
    Bacall was coping with the failing health of her real-life husband, Humphrey Bogart (who would die of throat cancer the following year). The virtually carefree set of Designing Woman proved to be the perfect refuge. “The whole experience for me was absolute heaven,” Bacall says:

    Choreographer Randy Owen (Jack Cole) gets inspired as squabbling newlyweds Marilla (Lauren Bacall) and Mike (Gregory Peck) realize how very different their worlds are in Designing