Mitzi Gaynor Dies: Dancing Star Of ‘South Pacific’ And Las Vegas Stage Was 93

Greg Evans
·3-min read
Mitzi Gaynor Dies: Dancing Star Of ‘South Pacific’ And Las Vegas Stage Was 93

Mitzi Gaynor, the actor, singer and dancer who starred in such 1950s Hollywood musicals as South Pacific and There’s No Business Like Show Business before going on to conquer the Las Vegas stage and TV variety specials, has died, her management team announced today. She was 93.

“As we celebrate her legacy, we offer our thanks to her friends and fans and the countless audiences she entertained throughout her long life,” Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda of Gaynor’s MGMT team said today in the statement announcing her death.

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See the entire statement below.

The statement added, “We take great comfort in the fact that her creative legacy will endure through her many magical performances captured on film and video, through her recordings and especially through the love and support audiences around the world have shared so generously with her throughout her life and career. Please keep Mitzi in your thoughts and prayers.”

Born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on September 4, 1931, Gaynor had grown to national fame by the early 1950s as the star of Hollywood’s new wave of musicals such as There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), Anything Goes (1956) with Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor; and Les Girls (1957) with Gene Kelly.

Mitzi Gaynor, ‘South Pacific’ (1958)
Mitzi Gaynor, ‘South Pacific’ (1958)

The same year as Les Girls, Gaynor was cast in one of her most memorable roles as the girlfriend of nightclub comedian Joe E Lewis (played by Frank Sinatra) in The Joker Is Wild.

But her signature role came in 1958 when she was cast as Nellie Forbush in the screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. In her Golden Globe-nominated performance, Gaynor was treated with one of the musical’s most popular musical numbers: “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.”

By the end of the decade Gaynor had also made inroads into TV variety shows, and by 1968 she was starring in her first NBC special called, simply, Mitzi. Gaynor and her show were so popular that she became a TV fixture in the 1970s, headling annual variety specials on CBS from 1973 to 1978.

Gaynor made many guest appearances on other variety shows, perhaps most notable on the February 16, 1964, episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, which also happened to feature the second appearance of The Beatles. During the episode, Gaynor, like the Beatles, performed from the stage of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach. Her nine-minute segment including her memorable performance of Cole Porter’s Too Darn Hot.

In addition to her TV career, Gaynor was an immensely popular nightclub and Vegas performer. Her Vegas breakthrough came in 1961 with her show at the Flamingo Hotel, which reportedly broke box office records and reportedly made Gaynor the city’s highest-paid female entertainer. She would remain a Vegas, nightclub and touring performer for most of the rest of her life, with her later career including a 2008-2011 tour called Mitzi … Razzle Dazzle! My Life Behind the Sequins.

In 2008, the PBS documentary Mitzi Gaynor Razzle Dazzle: The Special Years highlighted her TV variety show specials.

Gaynor married Jack Bean, the man who would be her husband and manager until his death in 2006. The couple did not have children. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

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