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

Woman . Back in the ’30s, Minnelli and Cole had worked together at Radio City Music Hall. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
    I love that movie. Greg Peck, of course, became one of my dearest friends. We had a funny, wonderful script to work with. I had never played a part like that before, which I adored. And then we had Vincente as our director. . . . He was always very sure of what he wanted. I remember there would be a cigarette box on the table and he would come over and move it about an eighth of an inch to the left or to the right. I mean, he was cuckoo about that kind of thing. But even that was funny. He had his own idiosyncrasies but there was nobody like him. He wouldn’t let anyone run over him. Not that anyone ever tried. I certainly never tried. 5
    Like The Long, Long Trailer , Designing Woman was the kind of lighthearted romp that didn’t demand much of Vincente. He realized that he was there to shepherd his good-looking leads through a frothy comedy, and without complaint, he did exactly that—though just beneath the glossy veneer of Designing Woman is the kind of slyly cutting-edge, ahead-of-its-time exploration of gender roles that gets film scholars and academics salivating. And
yet the yin-yang dynamics of the story aren’t exclusively concerned with a marriage of opposites.
    Jack Cole’s character, Randy Owen, is the furiously theatrical ringleader of Marilla’s “show crowd,” which she describes as “a pretty neurotic bunch.” Randy is so flamboyantly effeminate that he makes Tea and Sympathy ’s Tom Lee look like a Navy SEAL by comparison. Inspired by the notion of staging an undersea ballet, Randy offers a preview of his best seahorse. Marilla and her friends are delighted by the wild exhibition, though Mike and his Wednesday-night poker pals are speechless.
    Later, when Randy overhears Mike questioning his manhood (“Is that guy for real?”), he immediately whips out photos of a wife and three sons and offers to beat both of Mike’s ears off. Randy can be considered something of a spokesperson for Minnelli, who was, as film historian Stephen Harvey diplomatically put it, “a somewhat suspect figure as well.” 6
    At first, the very presence of Randy Owen in Designing Woman seems rather daring (for 1957), but after the revelation regarding the wife and kids, it becomes clear that it’s all just another misunderstanding. As attentive audiences should have learned from Tea and Sympathy , appearances can be deceiving. Just because something looks one way doesn’t mean that it is that way. Randy Owen, like Vincente Minnelli, would appear to be the victim of his own artistic flair. Or maybe the character, like the director, needed the photos of the wife and kids to convince himself.
    “That whole dimension of Vincente’s life interested me,” says writer William Gibson. “It did in John Houseman, too. Houseman had a reputation of being homosexual also. And yet, both of them were married and the fathers of young children. On the surface, everything was standard, but it was curious because you felt that there was also a need to display this picture of a young, happy family. . . . I had the impression that both guys were trying very hard to live a ‘normal’ American life.” 7
    Designing Woman opened in January 1957, and the picture was generally well received. As Time noted, “Director Vincente Minnelli plays his game of pseudo-sociological croquet with the careless good form of a man who does not have to worry about making his satiric points. He plays for the box office score instead, working the sex angles and the big names and the production values—yum-yum Metrocolor, flossy furniture, slinky clothes—with the skill of a cold old pro.” 8 Thanks largely to its A-list star power, Designing Woman returned $3,750,000 to the MGM coffers.
    There was also a surprise in store. When the Oscar nominations were announced for the 1957 ceremonies, Designing Woman netted a nomination for “Best