Summed up in the entertainment books with such characterizations as
”leggy, amply-proportioned blond song belter,” she has been the quintessential creature of show-business: a precocious child performer who would go on to score smashes in the theater (”Annie Get Your Gun,”
”Follies”), segue to motion pictures (”Kismet,” ”Designing Woman”)
and television (”The Buick Circus Hour”) and bowl them over in big-bang nightclubs (the Copa, the Empire Room, Studio One).
More to the point, Dolores Gray made her film debut in MGM`s surprisingly cynical ”It`s Always Fair Weather” (1955), which she will be discussing Monday night during the opening of ”Hollywood Musicals on Halsted,” a 12-week series at the Halsted Theatre Center, 2700 N. Halsted St. (The screening is set for 7:15 p.m., followed by Gray`s remarks and a question-and- answer session.)
The movie-co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, with music by Andre Previn and lyrics and screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green-involves a sour 10-year reunion of three Army buddies (Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd). Gray plays the unctuous hostess of a ”This Is Your Life”-like TV show and puts over a socko number, ”Thanks a Lot But No Thanks.”
”What I didn`t know at the time was that there were a lot of serious artistic differences between Donen and Kelly, and a great deal of animosity,” she recalled a few days ago in a phone interview from her home in Manhattan.
”As it turned out, that was the last time they worked together.
”In the late `40s I`d done `Annie Get Your Gun` in London, and it was an unbelievable hit. I got the most brilliant press, and I was the darling of England. MGM wanted to make the movie version with Judy Garland, but she got very ill and (producer) Arthur Freed flew to London and tried to get the management to release me for six months so I could do it, but they wouldn`t let me go. That almost broke my heart.
”Of course, Betty Hutton got the part, and I felt she wasn`t right for it. There was so little vulnerability in the roles that she plays. Anyway, I went to see the movie in London and sat up in the balcony of the Odeon Theater and cried my eyes out.
”Later, Freed assigned me to do a film called `The French Quarter,`
which was supposed to be with Fred Astaire, but there was trouble with the script and he signed instead to do `Daddy Long Legs` at Fox. So they put me in `It`s Always Fair Weather.` But I always felt that it was not exactly the way to be introduced to the movies-playing a larger-than-life character on the periphery of the story. I know, deep in my heart, that it hurt my career. But Arthur said if I did it, he`d give me a wonderful role in my next movie, and he did: Lalume in `Kismet.` ”
Born in Chicago and reared in Los Angeles, Gray entered show business at age 7, when she won an amateur contest as a tap dancer.
By the time she was 16, she was singing with a dance band and making appearances on Rudy Vallee`s radio show. Next up was a part in Billy Rose`s
”The Seven Lively Arts,” followed by such Broadway shows as ”Carnival in Flanders” (for which she won a Tony), ”Destry Rides Again” and ”Two on the Aisle,” in which she costarred with the legendary-and often irascible-Bert Lahr. (”He didn`t mean to be difficult. It`s just that he didn`t trust his own genius, and found fault with the people around him because of that insecurity.”)
Gray, whose last appearance in Chicago was in 1985 in ”42nd Street,”
recalled that originally she was rejected for ”Annie Get Your Gun” by producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for being ”too glamorous.”
(”They`d seen me in a show called `Are You With It?` in which I played a carnival queen and wore very scanty costumes. They told my agent, `She`s absolutely wrong, for God`s sake. She`s got those legs and the platinum hair and the body. She certainly isn`t a little waif from the dark hills of Ohio.` ”) She would return to London, replacing Angela Lansbury in ”Gypsy” in 1973 and, two years years ago, bringing down the house with Stephen Sondheim`s
”I`m Still Here” in the revamped ”Follies.”
These are lean times, of course, for musical comedy. ”Three little men
(the New York theater critics) can kill you,” she said, ”and there are no composers. There`s also the costs. Ethel Merman and all of those people did three shows a season, because it cost only $50,000 to put on a musical. These days, you`re looking at $8 million a show, and there`s no place to try things out anymore.”
As for Dolores Gray herself, she`ll be going to London in November to do a charity event at the Palladium. ”And that`s about it for now. Tommy Tune hoped he could create a role for me in `Grand Hotel,` but it didn`t work out. I know something will turn up, but, honestly, at the moment I`m going bonkers.”
