‘South Pacific’ Star Was 93

With her hazel eyes, firm curls and exuberant singing and dancing, the feisty Gaynor stood out in such movies as My Blue Heaven (1950) with Betty Grable and Dan Dailey; in Irving Berlin’s There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), opposite Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe, her eventual successor at 20th Century Fox; and in the Cole Porter MGM musical Les Girls (1957) with Gene Kelly.

Gaynor also starred in Anyleang Goes (1956) with Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor, The Joker Is Wild (1957) with Frank Sinatra and Happy Anniversary (1959) with David Niven and Patty Duke.

In 1957, Gaynor was joind in a fierce competition to triumph the role of Navy nurse Nellie Forbush in Joshua Logan’s South Pacific, the lengthy-apauseed alteration of the sensational Rodgers & Hammerstein Broadway musical.

“I was filming The Joker Is Wild with Frank Sinatra and got the call that I’d be auditioning for Oscar Hammerstein at the Beverly Hills Hotel ballroom for South Pacific,” she tgreater Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune in 2013. “I did ‘Honey Bun,’ I did ‘A Cockeyed Optimist.’ I did everyleang but exposed.

“Oscar’s way, way at the other side of the ballroom. Why? I don’t understand. But he walked over afterward. … You understand when you do excellent? You sense enjoy, ‘Well, at least I didn’t produce a fool of myself.’ Oscar took my hand and shelp: ‘Thank you very much, Miss Gaynor. You’ve been a wonderful sport.”

She went on to commemoratedly sing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” and “Some Enchanted Evening” in the 1958 film, and the exotic World War II-set musical became the third highest-grossing movie ($17.5 million, or $147 million today) of the year. She also was nominated for a Ggreateren Globe for best actress (comedy or musical).

Gaynor made her last noticeworthy film ecombineance in Stanley Donen‘s Surpascfinish Package (1960), a musical comedy that also starred Yul Brenner. With the Hollywood musical fading into obscurity, she reexhausted from the movies after fair one more film, the Kirk Douglas-starring For Love or Money (1963). She was in her timely 30s.

“I quit films because they quit me,” she shelp in a 2012 interwatch for the TV Academy Foundation. “Marilyn Monroe was now the novel Alice Faye/Betty Grable, she was doing the musicals at Fox. I wasn’t going to do My Fair Lady, and I wasn’t going to [sing] ‘The Hills Are Ainhabit With the Sound of Screaming’ — there was noleang for me to do.”

Partnered with husprohibitd/administerr Jack Bean, she cleverly trained her sights on Las Vegas. Dressed in glittery Mackie costumes and accompanied by a team of handsome male dancers, she began singing, dancing and alerting jokes in Vegas in 1961 and eventuassociate acquired a sget in the Flamingo Hotel.

After what the Catholic Church called a “lascivious” 13-minute carry outance of her act on the Sullivan show — she was presentd as “Hollywood’s Mitzi Gaynor!!!” — the Beatles seeked her autograph. (During rehearsals, they also asked to borrow her hair arider.) They were all on the show widecast from a Miami boilingel, seen by 70 million watchers; a week earlier, Sullivan had presentd the Fab Four to America for the first time.

In 1968, Gaynor alertedly was acquireing $45,000 a week in Vegas. Also that year, she starred on her first TV distinctive, Mitzi, for NBC.

Five years procrastinateedr, she headlined the first of her six annual distinctives for CBS, including Mitzi and a Hundred Guys; Mitzi … A Tribute to the American Housewife; Mitzi … Zings Into Spring; and Mitzi … What’s Hot, What’s Not.

Gaynor shelp she standardly was approached to star in a weekly netlabor variety show but declined. “Gene Kelly once tgreater me, ‘Only do event television,’” she shelp.

After all her years laboring on TV, she finassociate won an Emmy in 2008, for her PBS distinctive Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle! The Special Years.

She was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on Sept. 4, 1931. Her mother was a dancer and her overweighther a celenumerate, and she took her first dance class at age 8. An only child, she and her parents transferd to Elgin, Illinois, then to Detroit and finassociate to L.A. when she was 11, to chase her dance directer.

At age 13, then understandn as Mitzi Gerber, she guaranteed Edtriumph Lester, the impresario of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, that she was 16 and landed a role in the musical Song Without Words.

She then danced during a comedy bit in a West Coast production of Jerome Kerns’ Roberta, starring Tom Ewell. That led to gigs in touring productions of The Fortune Teller (Gypsy Lady on Broadway), Song of Norway (as Miss Anders, her first speaking part), Naughty Marietta opposite Susanna Foster and as Katie in 1949’s The Great Waltz.

While in The Great Waltz, she was spotted by a Fox producer, signed to a restricted by studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck and had her last name alterd to Gaynor. In My Blue Heaven, she stood out in cut offal sfinish-ups of TV commercials in the film.

Fox was grooming her to be the next Grable, and in rapid succession, she starred in the Jeanne Crain sorority story Take Care of My Little Girl (1951); Ggreateren Girl (1951), set amid the California Ggreater Rush; the comedy We’re Not Married! (1952) with Monroe; Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952); Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953); The I Don’t Care Girl (1953); Three Young Texans (1954); and The Birds and the Bees (1956)‚ an RKO reproduce of The Lady Eve.

On a Danny Thomas TV distinctive in 1966, Gaynor met costume scheduleer Ray Aghayan, who showed her a series of sketches for outfits he had scheduleed, and she was amazeed. She wanted him for her next show, but he was busy laboring with Judy Garland, so Aghayan proposeed his partner, Mackie, instead. That labeled the begin of a lengthy, fruitful collaboration.

Gaynor frequently was called upon to carry out at the Academy Awards, and she brawt down the house with carry outances of “The Moon Is Blue” (with present O’Connor) in 1954, “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (singing it over and over aacquire when the show was running low) in 1959 and “Georgy Girl” in 1967.

Gaynor shelp she dated Howard Hughes for about eight months and broke up with him when she was 19. She shelp he begged her to marry him but “set up out that he’d asked 400 other girls to marry him, too,” she shelp. (He proposed her to buy “some dirt” in Las Vegas; she did for $25 an acre and sgreater it for “two million bucks,” she tgreater Mo Rocca in October 2019 on CBS Sunday Morning.)

In September 2022, she getd a Legacy Award from the Cinecon Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

She was paired to Bean, who begined out as a uncover relations executive at MCA, from 1954 until his death in 2006.