Going to Mitzi Gaynor’s home is like being invited over for a play date with your soon-to-be new best friend and her gal pals. Not only do Nellie Forbush and Ethel Merman make cameos but Lindsay Lohan and Grace Kelly likewise show up – sans BFF status.

Suffice it to say the dustup with Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco concerns a hilarious publicity event incident at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival involving the South Pacific star, a Balenciaga black lace dress and certain shoulders of the French Royal Navy.

Flash forward 53 years. The 70-something triple threat entertainer is enjoying a career resurgence clad in new Bob Mackie couture created for her one-woman show, Razzle Dazzle: My Life Behind the Sequins, playing a double-header at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts on May 14. Gaynor says she tries to treat her audiences like welcomed guests.

“I love the people,” emphasizes the Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominated star of film, television and stage whose storied career spans six decades. “I love them. You came over to my house and now we’re going to play. We’re going to talk a little bit. We’re going to get to know each other. I’ll sing for you, dance for you, move around and change clothes. I am going to tell stories about me that maybe you don’t know. Share my feelings. We’ll have fun.”

It’s the perfect description of a Friday afternoon spent at Gaynor’s longtime Beverly Hills residence — without the wardrobe changes. Clad in a white Indian tunic top embroidered in blue, ankle length blue jeans and royal blue flats, she offers a hug in the foyer before grabbing a hand to guide you to an empty parquet-floored living room undergoing renovation. She apologizes for the inconvenience, then leads the way to an intimate study featuring walls lined in hues of green and pink striped fabric, bookcases and an original Chagall painting.

In person, Gaynor is surprisingly petite and glowing with energy. Her signature blond-hair-and false-eyelash glam style remains as timeless as the high wattage smile and bawdy laugh. She deftly dances between the profane and the profound, often within the same story, while every so often punctuating a personally triumphant tale with a sassy z-snap phrase, “Yes, it is!”

Miss Mitzi Gaynor is in the house. Thank you very much.

Other impromptu mini-performances range from a demo of her mid-1950s smoldering-eyed, self-titled “wolf-girl” look to actress Kaela Settle’s inspired dope dealer take on Bloody Mary witnessed during South Pacific’s opening night at CTG’s Ahmanson last year. When interrupted to inquire about the dazzling diamond-trimmed emerald and sapphire earrings she’s wearing, Gaynor replies they were a gift from her late husband and manager of 52 years, Jack Bean, who died in December 2006.

The pair married in 1954. Ella Fitzgerald’s former manager, Bean was instrumental in helping Gaynor land the highly sought after Nellie Forbush role. He negotiated her landmark 1961 Las Vegas debut and produced her celebrated series of Emmy Award-winning television specials throughout the late ’60s and ’70s. They were an inseparable unit during the four decades she toured the country performing her sold-out nightclub act and concerts. His death nearly ended any desire she still harbored to resurrect her public career.

“I didn’t want to be Mitzi Gaynor anymore,” she admits softly. “I didn’t know if I could be Mitzi Gaynor anymore. I had been with my husband over 50 years. I had two men in my life: my husband and Tommy Carlino [who passed away in 2010]. Tommy Carlino was my hairdresser. He created this.” She points to her hair. “So we were going to sell some costumes.”

Coincidently, Rene Reyes, director of Public Programs & Festivals at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, had been trying to track down Gaynor to honor her television work. In early 2007, Reyes sent a letter to a business address that returned four weeks later with “addressee unknown” stamped on the envelope. The very next day, a friend of Gaynor’s called to assess the center’s interest in displaying some of her legendary Bob Mackie costumes prior to auctioning them off to benefit the Professional Dancers Society. Reyes was thunderstruck.

“I was looking at the phone because I couldn’t believe that had happened,” he admits, who has been sitting in on the interview. “I said absolutely. I would love to do this and out of that came our evening, Mitzi Gaynor Razzle-Dazzle: The Special Years.

The April 2007 event featured clips from her eight television specials, which aired annually on NBC then CBS between 1968-78, plus a moderated discussion and Q&A with Gaynor, director/choreographer Tony Charmoli and Mackie. Gaynor’s specials garnered 17 Emmy nominations, winning one for Charmoli and two for the legendary costume designer. In conjunction with the event, the Paley Center also launched a month long exhibit of Mackie’s famously spangled designs for Gaynor’s TV specials and live concerts entitled, Mitzi by Mackie.

“That was a fabulous night,” she admits. “That night I thought, I guess there will be a Mitzi Gaynor then. I had a ball. I felt like Jack was with me. I feel like Jack is with me all the time.”

The evening also sparked both a personal and professional partnership with Reyes and partner Shane Rosamonda’s Polly O. Entertainment. The two not only became her management team but produced and wrote a subsequent 2008 PBS musical documentary and DVD of the same name. The show earned a 2010 NATAS Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment Program/Special, marking the seventh win for a Gaynor television special.

Building upon the positive momentum, the team conceived and constructed a new one-woman show written by Gaynor entitled Razzle Dazzle: My Life Behind the Sequins, An Intimate Evening of Love, Laughs & Music. She called upon old friends Charmoli and Mackie, plus Emmy nominated musical arrangers Dick DeBenedictis and Bill Dyer to help put it together. Orchestrations are by Ovation Award winner Colin R. Freeman and Helen Hayes Award nominee Nick DeGregorio. The show world premiered at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre in January 2009 to critical acclaim. It earned similar accolades on the opposite coast when Gaynor made her New York debut at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in May 2010.

Asked to present at Drama Desk Awards that same month, Gaynor became the hit topic of the evening when actress Martha Plimpton announced, “Mitzi Gaynor just complimented me on my shoes. Who needs drugs?” Matthew Modine shortly followed with, “Mitzi Gaynor said she liked my underwear. Who needs drugs?” Jim Brochu, whose Zero Hour garnered Best Solo Show, accepted his award by announcing, “Mitzi Gaynor just told me to go fuck myself.” Brooke Shields finished up the riff by adding, “I can’t even repeat what Mitzi Gaynor said backstage.”

“I just had such a good time,” she admits. “They made me feel so good. They made feel I guess the way I should have felt for a long time. My husband was ill for a long time. I kind of forgot all about that. Jack was very strict as far as don’t get a big head. Yes, Yummy, that’s nice. Ahh!” She gasps. “A ‘that’s nice’ from Jack Bean would be like receiving a diamond Emmy!”

It’s something Gaynor believes troubled young stars of today lack. “Nobody ever said to Lindsay Lohan, you are full of shit and you’re not going to do this. You need a good spanking. That is why these kids go wrong. There is nobody there to say no. I think that’s another reason why I have staying power because I know I’m full of shit but I control myself.”

A Stage Natural

“She belongs on the stage,” says Charmoli, during an afternoon visit to his home above Sunset Plaza. He admits Gaynor had to coax the octogenarian out of retirement. “She’s good in pictures but there are so few people we see who can contact an audience like she can. When you go to the theater, you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth with Mitzi. She’s included you rather than just look at me how great I am. That’s a wonderful trait she has.”

Charmoli first worked with Gaynor in the spring of 1973 devising a new stage show for her first appearance at the Tropicana Hotel’s new 1,150 seat Superstar Theatre in Las Vegas. An acclaimed choreographer for such stars as Dinah Shore, Cyd Charisse, Gwen Verdon and Shirley MacLaine, he expanded her normal team of four male dancers to six and added four females. He dubbed the show Mitzi and a Cast of Thousands.

From there, Charmoli went on to both direct and choreograph five Gaynor specials beginning in 1974 with her fourth outing, Mitzi…A Tribute to the American Housewife, followed by Mitzi…and 100 Guys, Mitzi…Roarin’ in the ’20s, Mitzi…Zings into Spring and Mitzi…What’s Hot, What’s Not. Each dominated its time slot as “must see” TV and set new standards for the variety show category.

“I love Tony,” says Gaynor. “He’s a remarkable man. He brought out so much in me I didn’t know I had. I was asked to do a lot of weekly shows. I said no because Gene Kelly told me if you are going to do anything, make it an event.”

Besides devising things like the sexy “I Can Cook” kitchen number for Gaynor, Charmoli employed every new development in television technology to enhance the viewer experience including things like shooting three images of the same thing at the same time, freeze frame, dissolves, animation and other special effects. Much of it can be seen in his favorite “Rhapsody in Blue” segment that utilizes a dream sequence, a large billowing parachute and three Gaynors dancing together.

“Mitzi has a high kick,” he explains. “I said, don’t worry about stopping. Just kick as high as you can. And she did. She would come out of it but I froze it when her leg was at the very top. So it looks like her foot is really way over her head. And then another Mitzi dances away, comes back and I unfreeze it. I thought, well, I have to use television. That’s what she’s doing: a television show.”

Between Mackie’s revealing costumes and Charmoli’s suggestive choreography, Gaynor’s specials often walked a tight line with network censors. A shot from “I Can Cook” was nixed. “There’s that facet about Mitzi. She can be cute, perky and coy but she’s a very sensual woman, too. So I liked to show both sides and she didn’t mind it either. Otherwise you just had a cute, pert girl and she’s way beyond that. She’s really multifaceted.”

“If it’s supposed to be sexy, I will make fun of it,” Gaynor says, downplaying the label. “Like I can cook, too. I had such a good time with that. People say wow, was that sexy! I say it’s fun. Rolling off the counter or the stove is kind of amusing and I’m ‘hot stuff.’ It’s like this one period in my life where I used to shave the ends of my eyebrows. I call it my wolf-girl period.” She points out a ’50s era photo then demonstrates a smoldering versus not smoldering look, laughing. “Isn’t that funny?”

For the new Razzle Dazzle solo act, Charmoli worked out musical numbers with dancer Sonja Haney, a long time stand-in for Gaynor, before asking the star to then step in and “Mitzi it up.” When asked to explain, he replies, “I dial into Mitzi very easily. I know what fits on her but I can only get so far with something before I say well, now you ‘Mitzi it up.’ Every woman moves differently from any other. As a choreographer, I always work with a style that works best for the personality of the star because you don’t want to turn Mitzi into Shirley MacLaine. And vice versa. It has to fit them.”

Viva Las Vegas

July 7 marks the 50th anniversary of Gaynor’s legendary 1961 Las Vegas debut at the Flamingo Hotel a few months shy of her 30th birthday. The show was the screen star’s first return to the stage since performing with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera as a teenager. Legendary founder Edwin Lester signed the Detroit import at 12. Under the guidance of its famed choreographer Ada Broadbent, she rose from the corps de ballet to playing key roles in its Los Angeles and San Francisco productions including Roberta, Naughty Marietta, The Louisiana Purchase, Song Without Words, The Fortune Teller and The Great Waltz. In 1946, Gaynor made her Broadway debut at 15 when the troupe opened in The Gypsy Lady.

“It was just a job,” she replies when asked about the experience. “The cast outnumbered the audience many times! It was fun. We worked at what was called the New Century Theatre, which was right down from Central Park at 58th. That’s where they stabled the horses for the bridle path. So we’d have to go up the stairs sometimes. It was a ball. From there I went to Philadelphia to take over Miss Anders in Song of Norway.”

Gaynor describes her time with the LA CLO as “one of the most incredibly fabulous experiences of my life. There is no place where you can go like that again. Dancing is so totally different now like you see on Dancing with the Stars. At my peak I could never have done some of that because I didn’t have the technique. I never did a double flip in a dance number. All the acrobatic things you just didn’t do unless you were an acrobat. I studied ballet, although ballet dancing now is a lot more acrobatic than it used to be. I think that show alone has done more for the dance world than anything in the past 50 years.”

Gaynor’s CLO performances caught the attention of composers like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Film director Henry Koster plus producers Sol Siegel and George Jessel arranged a screen test at Twentieth Century Fox. The studio signed the 19-year old to a contract where she made a series of films including There’s No Business Like Show Business with Ethel Merman, Dan Daily, Donald O’Connor and Marilyn Monroe. She later moved to Paramount for Anything Goes with Bing Crosby and The Joker is Wild alongside Frank Sinatra. Next came Les Girls with Gene Kelly for MGM and a film that would change her life.

“I don’t think I was very good in the movies,” she admits, reflecting. “I was okay. I was good in my first pictures like The Golden Girl and so on because I could just do whatever I wanted to do. Then all of a sudden I started to get sexier: the wolf-girl. I kind of lost myself around in there somehow. Then I did South Pacific and washed my face.”

Gaynor says making the 1958 movie was a very good experience for her it, but hard. Hard because director Josh Logan was under immense pressure to produce a blockbuster and he’d made an unpredicted choice for the coveted lead.

“He had one of the most important pictures supposedly ever made with Todd-AO, high colonic sound,” she laughs. “I think we won an Academy Award for sound. They asked, was it Mitzi Gaynor he really wanted? Up until that time I had been all tits and feathers, ass and teeth, wolf-girl eyebrows. Josh saw me back when I was on the stage. In his mind, he knew what I could do.”

South Pacific became an international box office success. Gaynor was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical. The soundtrack album topped the charts for years and has never gone out of print. Besides winning for sound, the film received Oscar nominations for musical direction and cinematography – despite the still highly contentious color filters utilized by Leon Shamroy in its song sequences. According to Gaynor, “Leon and Josh did not get along well. Leon would say, ‘That son of a bitch, he wants color, I’ll give him color.’ That kind of thing. I can say that now because it’s the truth.”

What was also the truth was playing Nellie Forbush did not catapult Gaynor’s movie career into the kind of stratosphere others had predicted. Her next film projects were Happy Anniversary with David Niven, Surprise Package with Yul Brynner and Noel Coward, and For Love of Money with Kirk Douglas. She says she knew a transition time was coming. That is when Morris Lansburgh, co-owner of the famed Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, offered her a lucrative deal to perform at his casino resort.

“I hadn’t been on stage since I had gotten into films,” Gaynor explains. “Compared to live stage work, film is very easy. In films you can do it over and over again. You can pre-record. They do everything for you. It is easy to play a part because that’s not really you. The hard thing is to be yourself. On stage, it’s just you.”

Lansburgh offered Gaynor $40,000 a week plus 2.8% of the casino. She had never done a nightclub act before. “Unheard of,” she emphasizes. “Tony Martin and I had a percentage of the hotel. In those days, they didn’t give it to you. Can you imagine almost 3% of the whole gambling at the Flamingo?”

Before making her decision, Lansburgh flew Gaynor and her husband to the hotel to watch a middleweight prizefight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Gene Fullmer. “He sent a plane for us and I said to Jack, if Gene Fullmer wins, I will do a Vegas act. And he won! Jack looked at me and I said yes. So we got [choreographer] Bob Sydney with whom I’d done Bloodhounds of Broadway and we were off to the races.”

They rehearsed the show in secret at The Vapors in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a club owned by gangster Owney Madden who ran the Cotton Club in New York during its fabled ’20s heyday. “No press. No reviews. No, where is she staying? Jack learned that from Roger Sardou [Gaynor’s personal press agent] at my Cannes debut. Opening night was earth shattering.”

The show was an overnight sensation and broke all records for the hotel. Life Magazine proclaimed, “Mitzi fractures Vegas…she began at the top and climbed even higher.” Backed by four male dancers, Gaynor pioneered a new live show format that featured singing, dancing, comedy and audience banter packaged in glitz and glamour. She performed two shows a night, seven nights a week, for six weeks. At 29, Gaynor had found her niche.

“I’ve never worked with anyone who is more at home on the stage,” Charmoli offers. “She can ad lib and she contacts her audience. She can get across those footlights to the people sitting out there better than anybody I know.”

“It was a ball,” Gaynor enthuses. “We would go to the third shows on Saturday night and they would stop whoever was doing anything. They’d say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mitzi Gaynor and her gang!’ I am not kidding you. I wouldn’t lie about something like that. It was amazing.”

Whenever other headliners had a day off, they would come to Gaynor’s show as well. “Of course my guys were over the moon! I wouldn’t allow them to wear any makeup because I wanted the men in the audience to think they were really terrific. Not ‘look at those silly queens, they’ve got more make-up on than she does.’ If it weren’t for the guys that danced with me, I would not have become whatever I am right now because every man I have ever worked with has been fabulous to me.”

Back to the Strip

Gaynor played Las Vegas as a top headliner for many years. In May 1970, the Rivera proclaimed, “Mitzi Gaynor banished the old theater rule of thumb that three minutes must be allowed for an actor to make a change. She changed in 45 seconds.” Gaynor also received the Star Entertainer of the Year trophy from then Nevada Governor Paul Laxalt.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary, Gaynor will return to several of the cities she played throughout that era including Vancouver on September 9, where she tried out new nightclub material, and Las Vegas on October 14 weekend. For now, the still energetic entertainer is excited to be performing for fans on her own home turf.

“When you have your overture and there’s people in the house – who paid money to come see you and who want to be with you – who have heard about you or know you from somewhere – do you know what a thrill that is? Can you imagine? Let me at them!”

**All photos and images courtesy of Green Isle, Inc. and Polly O. Entertainment.

For updates on Mitzi Gaynor’s upcoming appearances, visit www.missmitzigaynor.com.

Razzle Dazzle! My Life Behind the Sequins, presented by La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment, plays Sat., May 14 at 2 and 8 pm. Tickets: $40-$80. La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada; 562-944-9801 or 714-994-6310 or lamiradatheatre.com.