Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen

Chapter 8: So This Is Harris

At the beginning of June 1940 Darryl Zanuck had an Alice Faye Technicolor extravaganza on his hands and no Alice Faye to star in it. His solution to the problem, typical of Hollywood in that era, eliminated the shortterm problem of replacing Alice in Down Argentine Way. It also solved the long-term question of how to prevent Alice Faye from causing this kind of problem again. Zanuck brought in the girl he sent Walter Scharf to New York to see. Building up another blue-eyed, blonde singer-dancer who could succeed Alice Faye at a moment’s notice would insure that Alice would think twice before balking at future assignments. Actress Celeste Holme later asserted that “Zanuck always ran the studio by having actors afraid of somebody else.” The new girl was, as Gregory Peck described her, the kind of actress Zanuck seemed to favor, a “dishy” sort of girl, just like Alice. Her name was Betty Grable. Grable had knocked around Hollywood for several years, landing contracts first with RKO, then Paramount, but never ascending into the ranks of A pictures at either studio. She was performing in an act with Jack Haley at the San Francisco World’s Fair when a Twentieth Century-Fox talent scout spotted her. The studio signed her to a long-term contract, which they agreed to defer when she landed the ingenue’s part in DuBarry Was a Lady on Broadway. “There was no guarantee that Du Barry Was a Lady would be solid hit or that I would get good notices in it,” Grable said, 138 So This Is Harris CHAPTER 8 “but both things happened.” Nevertheless, Grable knew from experience that she could still misfire on the screen, regardless of good stage notices. Down Argentine Way gave her “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said, putting her over the top with movie audiences. “Alice’s misfortune was my good luck . . . with the same opportunity that Down Argentine Way afforded me, many another still unknown girl struggling in Hollywood could have reached the top.” On Friday, June 21, 1940, exactly two weeks after Alice underwent surgery, Betty Grable reported to work on the picture. Her costars, in addition to Don Ameche and Carmen Miranda, included veteran character actors Charlotte Greenwood, J. Carrol Naish, and Leonid Kinskey. Kinskey replaced Cesar Romero at the last minute, when Romero contracted a typhoid -like illness and found himself in the same hospital as Alice Faye. Romero’s absence from Down Argentine Way reduced the number of Latin American cast members by fifty percent, leaving only Carmen Miranda to lend a sense of authenticity to the first of Twentieth Century-Fox’s famous Latin American cycle. Technically, even Miranda was not a native South American. She had been born in Portugal to a family that immigrated to Brazil when she was a child. Zanuck’s development of the Latin American musicals stemmed only in part from his desire to showcase the popular Miranda. Central and South America represented important new markets for Hollywood to tap in order to maintain their international revenue stream should Europe fall to Hitler. Unfortunately, none of Zanuck’s minions, or anyone else in Hollywood, questioned the assumption that the only kind of movies a Latin American audience could appreciate were those that took place in Latin American settings, with Latin American themes, punctuated by the rhythm of Latin American music. By underestimating both the sophistication of Latin American audiences and the diversity of the cultures they represented, Zanuck created quite a stir south of the border, but not of the kind he had envisioned. When Down Argentine Way played in Buenos Aires, Argentines took SO THIS IS HARRIS 139 offense at the way the film depicted them, including as it did typical clichés of Hispanics as shady characters running crooked race tracks or fat, somnolent , burro-riding peasants; while the Americans, as always, played the good guys. Despite a sour reception overseas, Down Argentine Way proved phenomenally successful for Betty Grable, who eventually earned a place as one of the top ten moneymaking stars between 1942 and 1951 and became Fox’s longest-term leading lady. Zanuck had what he wanted, another dishy blonde, and he lost no time in putting her in the role he had developed with her in mind when he gave her a contract, Tin Pan Alley with Alice Faye. Grable’s...