Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [76]
Preminger stopped by the dressing room and said (in the kind of voice that let me know he wanted something), “Frank, are you sure you want me to print that last take?”
Frank just looked at him while taking a sip of his Jack Daniel’s. “Uhhuh,” he said.
And that was that. When Dean and I saw the film in a theater, we knew Frank had been right. The scene knocked our socks off, and the audience’s, too. Frank definitely should have gotten an Oscar for that performance, but ultimately, I think, the film’s subject matter (which caused the Production Code to refuse it a seal of approval) was just too controversial for its time. Frank always did push the edges.
Not long after New Year’s, Hal Wallis and I traveled to New York to find an ingenue for the new Martin and Lewis movie, Artists and Models. It’s funny: As contentious as Wallis and I could be about business—and there were times I could have murdered that humorless skinflint—we could have a ball just hanging out. One thing we had in common was that we both loved to shop for shoes and clothes, and the New York trip featured plenty of that, as well as theatergoing. One cloudy Wednesday afternoon we were discussing what to do, and I said, “Let’s go to a musical—I love musicals!” I looked in the paper and my eyes immediately went to the listing for The Pajama Game, choreographed by my friend Bob Fosse.
But Wallis told me he had to meet with some lawyers and that I should go to the show myself. We would meet back at the Plaza for dinner. After dinner, Paramount had set up a cattle call in the hotel’s main ballroom so that Wallis and I could scout the talent and, we hoped, find the right girl for our movie.
I called the St. James Theater and easily arranged for a single ticket. I settled into my seat, not too happy about being alone (in fact, now that I think of it, this may have been the one and only time I ever went to the theater by myself). It made me feel all the more wistful to remember that the St. James was the very same theater to which Dean and I had brought June Allyson and Gloria De Haven to see Where’s Charley? six years earlier. I missed Dean—it was hard for me to admit how much I missed him.
Then it’s two o’clock, and there’s no downbeat and no curtain. And suddenly, a man walks to center stage and makes an announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen—due to an ankle injury, the role played by Miss Carol Haney will be played this afternoon by her understudy, Miss Shirley MacLaine.”
There was a loud sigh of disappointment from the audience. Now, please understand: At this point, Shirley MacLaine was still Shirley Who? Carol Haney was the fabulous protégée of Gene Kelly, around whom Bob Fosse had built The Pajama Game’s showstopping “Steam Heat” number. Oh well, I thought. I’m here. Let’s see.
Then the show went on, and the rest is Broadway legend, the kind of story line that, if it happened in a movie, most people would simply find too far-fetched to believe. Shirley came on and absolutely electrified me and everybody else in that audience. By the final curtain, we were all on our feet, yelling for her to come out again and again.
Then I ran out of the theater, hailed a cab, and went back to the Plaza. I wasn’t in my suite three minutes before Wallis called, saying he was back and had plans for us that evening. I said, “I’ll be right over!” I ran down the hall to his suite, banged on the door, and almost screamed in his face: “You have plans for tonight! I don’t think so! You must let me take you to the theater to see the girl we’re looking for!”
“Really,” he said with a smirk—as if to say, “ You found the girl?”
I picked up the phone and asked for the hotel’s concierge. I told him I needed two orchestra seats for that night’s performance of The Pajama Game, for Mr. Wallis and myself.
Wallis shook his head. “I’m not going to the