"Everybody Has Something To Hide" Reprise (Mata Hari)

In the autumn of 1967, Marisa Mell was in full rehearsal mode for the opening of the musical Mata Hari, planned for January 13th 1968 at the Alvin Theatre in New York City. So dress fittings were also on her agenda. This is a very rare photo from one of the dress fittings with famous costume designer Irene Sharaff, who did almost all famous Broadway musical productions of that era like Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly! with Barbra Streisand, and of course movies like Cleopatra with Elisabeth Taylor or the King and I with Yul Brynner. And as always Marisa Mell, being a heavy chain smoker, is smoking a cigarette during the dress fitting. 

"Everybody Has Something To Hide!" (Mata Hari)

Marisa Mell rehearsing her dancing steps for Mata Hari

During the autumn of 1967 Marisa Mell was rehearsing in America for her leading part as Mata Hari in the David Merrick musical with the same name. The promotional wagon was in full swing and gearing up for the January 13th premiere in New York City at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway. First the Broadway show should have some pre-Broadway shows in the cities of  Washington DC at the National Theatre from November 13th untill December 3rd, Boston at the Colonial Theatre from December 5th untill December 17th  and Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre from December 20th untill January 6th. 

Vincenti Minnelli giving instructions to Pernell Roberts and Marisa Mell

Although Vincenti Minnelli had some serious movie flops at the box office in the years prior to his directional stint for Mata Hari his name still had some weight in the movie and theatre business and of course the American audience still linked him to his former wife Judy Garland and daughter Liza Minnelli so the producer David Merrick took him under contract to direct his new musical hoping to gain momentum by attaching his name to the project. Although David Merrick was not sure if Vincenti Minnelli could achieve his task in making the musical a success on Broadway the next step in his plan was to surround Vincentti Minnelli with a group of professionals like Martha Schlamme as co-singer or stage designer Jo Melziner or choreografer Jack Cole or wardrobe designer Irene Sharaff.  Even with the help of those professionals the rehearsals and the end product was a disaster from the beginning. Not only because Vincenti Minnelli saw this project as a movie on stage giving the cast a lot of difficulties to perform but also because the script was boring and uninspired from the first page. But that was no problem for producer David Merrick. He told casting director Hugh Fordin when asked about the bad state of the script: "I don't care! It is not my money! It is RCA/Victor's money!". Record company RCA as the major investor of the musical hoped to make a lot of money on selling records of the original cast when the musical became a hit on Broadway like they did in the past with other musicals. An official record of the musical was never to be produced after the terrible first performance in Washington D.C.

Pernell Robert and W.B. Brydon confront Marisa Mell

For the role of Mata Hari's lover Captain Lafarge the role was first offered to French movie super star and singer Yves Montand. After his decline the role was offered to tv's western "Bonanza" star Pernell Roberts. After six years playing the role of son Adam Cartwright he left the show to become part of the Mata Hari cast. Marisa Mell was not cast by director Hugh Fordin but by Denise Minnelli, then wife of Vincenti Minnelli. The story goes that she saw Marisa Mell as a model in photo shoots in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. They both met in Rome and had lunch together. Denise Minnelli was completely smitten with the European beauty of Marisa Mell, especially her husky sexy voice. She told her husband later via cable: "She is your girl!". Euginia Sheppard, reporter of the Washington Post Times Herald was also present at that lunch and she remarked afterwards that Denise Minnelli spoke only Italian with Marisa Mell  and had completely forgotten to ask her if she could speak English and could sing. Marisa Mell could both not. Oeps! Casting director Hugh Fordin later told when asked why Marisa Mell got the part, that she only got it because she had a love affair with Denise Minnelli.

Pernell Robert and Martha Schlamme try to comfort Marisa Mell

Martha Schlamme was Austrian just like Marisa Mell. She was famous for her folk song repertoire but also sang opera and musicals. During her career she also became a very well known recording artist especially singing work of German composer Kurt Weil and Israeli composer Nachum Nardi. She died in 1985 at age 62 from a stroke while on stage performing in Jamestown, New York. Marisa Mell is wearing in this picture a top by French fashion designer André Courrèges, who was at that time very en vogue with his space like fashion creations, having a big fan in Audrey Hepburn. What is also strange is that Marisa Mell and Pernell Roberts are both wearing an Ankh pendant. The Ankh is regarded as an Egyptian symbol of "Life". Does this mean that they were a couple during the production and rehearsals of Mata Hari?

The Beauty That Broadway Won't See! (Mata Hari)

During the run up to becoming the female lead in the new musical "Mata Hari", directed by Vincente Minelli, Marisa Mell stayed some time in America. The promotion circus was in full swing in the course of 1967 to promote the unkown Austrian actress in the States. She got photo spreads in magazines like "Vogue" and "McCall's" or was invited to high end functions at state houses, embassies or at private homes of the powers that be, especially in Washington D.C. were the musical was having its try-outs before going to Broadway!

In the newspaper "Toledo Blade" from October 15th, 1967 Marisa Mell gave an interview stating: "I have a higher goal than making one stupid picture after another." She believed that her casting of Mata Hari by Vincente Minelli was to be and would push her career into another direction! In the interview she also told that Minelli selected her for the role after seeing her in the movie "Casanova 70" with Marcello Mastroianni. The audition took place in New York! Although her singing range was not very broad it was enough for what the director Vincente Minelli and producer David Merrick had in mind. 

And so Marisa Mell became the talk of the town or the flavor of the week in Washington D.C. being at the centre of  this gala evening event in the autumn of 1967. Personally I love these pictures of Marisa Mell. Pictures of her can always be catigorized in 3 groups: a) the official publicity photos; b) the photos specially made for magazines or papers, official or unofficial and c) pictures taken by private persons at a function like these ones. They are not staged and show a Marisa Mell in a complete different setting or posture than the first two groups of photos. And they are of course the rarest to be found! What I also like about these pictures is the the theme that Marisa Mell chose for the evening. Her apprearence is very Cleopatra-like, only a few years after the famous and notorious movie with Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. The man holding her fur coat is friend of the moment Bernardo Antonio de Pinho Coutinho Soares de Albergaria Teixeira de Silva or in short "Tony", a diplomat working in the capital. As mentioned in other entries of this blog the American adventure with Mata Hari did not end well for Marisa Mell. The production became a fiasco and never got to Broadway! Marisa Mell was devastated by the failure and took it very hard emotionally. I personally think that one way or the other she did not get over it at all and threw her career and the way she looked at her movies into a complete different direction. Not a good one as time will tell in later years. Thankfully for Marisa Mell in her day and age there was no internet so information, although widespread via television, newspapers and magazines, was still very limited to the countries that they were serving so almost nobody in Europe knew that her stay and musical appearance was a failure. When asked she always told everybody that the musical Mata Hara was a big success in the States and that she made it for several months to Broadway.

So you think you can dance!

Entry made in collaboration with Naldo.

A lot has been written about the faillure of the musical "Mata Hari" during the course of the years since it's inception, often targetting the perfomance of Marisa Mell as the main raison for this faillure. What people forget or mostly do not know is that Marisa Mell was a classical trained stage actress at the famous Austrian Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, a fact that not many other Eurocult actresses could present on their CV's. She had followed the whole repertoire to get her degree like courses in singing, dancing, fencing, horse-riding, drama, comedy,.... This musical was directed by Vincente Minnelli. What does he remember from this production as written in his autobiography "I remember it well":

(Vincente Minnelli in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, US, 1984)

"David Merrick asked me to join him in London to talk about the project of a musical centering around Mata Hari. He had already proposed to me other subjects, but I had found none of them interesting enough. The second half had still to be written, but the first part was so exciting that I accepted right away... even if I hadn't been working in Broadway for almost thirty years! Theater world had changed a lot. Back in the old days, preparing a show was always a pleasure; nowadays, it was sort of slave's work. It was out of the question to have people not syndicated, let alone demanding them to supply efforts if it was not written on their contracts... I was used to the more flexible rhythm of working in the cinema world, and I had already forgotten how difficult it was to organise rehearsals and put together a show. I tried to write down the second half of the show, along with Merrick, keeping on mind a clear conception of the main character. Mata Hari was always described as a spy, even as a femme fatale, while in fact she remains a mystery. Many historians have said that she was falsely accused and executed. I wanted audiences to leave the theater wondering about this woman's real personality. Even if it was a very demanding work, I thought it was essential to develop this aspect of the character. At the beginning of the second part of the show, Mata Hari is having an affair with the private of the National Bureau who was supposed to arrest her, but in the end he falls in love with her. I had in mind the scenery of a Swiss mountain house, with a background of birds singing, kind of an impossible dream. The forest where Mata Hari was to be executed had to be occupied with a group of soldiers, who were supposed to remind us of the terrible fate that was to come. While I was on rehearsal, Irene Sharaff worked on the wardrobe. I had showed to her some pictures taken from old newspapers, and we settled that every scene of the show should have a predominant colour. This would range from soft yellow and grey to orange and brown. I had already worked with Irene in movies, but this was the first time we worked together in the theater, which was her main territory. I have to say that she did a wonderful job on the wardrobe, being as good as what she did in « The king and I », both for cinema and theater. On the other hand, I was having some difficulties working with the main stars of the show: Marisa Mell who was Mata Hari, and Pernell Roberts who was playing the private. On top of that, Jack Cole the choreographer got sick and the scenery was not working as well as I had expected! Marisa Mell was very beautiful and she sang really well. She was playing some of the sequences with particular charm, but some of the musical parts demanded her a lot of work. I think that she was not well suited for the part. She loved the theater, no doubt about that, but she was much more interested in her private life! Pernell Roberts had just left the successful tv show « Bonanza », where he was not allowed to show his capacities as a baryton singer. He had played that part with a piece of hair that he refused to wear on our show, and prefered to present himself with his bald head and a long beard. He explained that he wanted to show some authenticity and destroy his public image as a tv young romantic lead. When we arrived at Washington D.C., we had to rush rehearsals as we couldn't postpose the première of the show. David Merrick announced to the audience that they will see the « avant-première »… and then everything went from bad to worse. Scenery and wardrobe changing took much more time than expected, resulting on uncomprehensible delays. Nevertheless, I have to say that after two weeks all these problems were more or less arranged and some people even come to say that they enjoyed the show! Anyway, David Merrick being a very realistic person, took the decision to cancel the show – which had costed almost a million dollars- and so we never reached New York. We remained good friends!" (French version of his autobiography)

Mata Hari-Time Magazine, December 8th 1967

Merrick Shoots Mata
Friday, Dec. 08, 1967
In a world where the popular image of a spy alternates between gadget-crammed fantasy and faceless seediness, can Mata Hari, the cooch-dancing agent of World War I, carry a lavish musical on her bare shoulders?
Producer David Merrick thought so — to the tune of an $800,000 investment, plus Hollywood's Vincente Minnelli to direct, plus a buildup for curvaceous star Marisa Mell that included coverage in Vogue and McCall's. But Merrick was wrong. After a ludicrous Washington preview at which everything from the scenery to the sound system came apart at the seams, Mata Hari opened to lethal reviews.
Last week Producer Merrick, who modestly describes himself as "the most vital force in the theater today," decided once again that mortality is sometimes the better part of vitality. He decreed that Mata Hari would have to be shot before opening on Broadway. Last year he similarly closed Breakfast at Tiffany's, losing a mere $400,000.