Before directing Gigi, Vincente Minnelli dressed shop windows at Marshall Field's
The director of An American in Paris learned his eye for colour and mood arranging antiques in a Chicago department store window. Lester Minnelli later renamed himself Vincente, adding the final e to sound more elegant, and went on to win the Oscar for Best Director with Gigi.
He was born in Chicago on February 28, 1903, into a touring family: his father was musical director of the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater, and his mother was its leading lady. At three he appeared on stage beside her in East Lynne. When fire, floods and the movies finished off the tent show, the family settled in Delaware, Ohio. His grandfather Vincenzo, a Sicilian music professor, had reportedly hidden for 18 months in Palermo's catacombs after the revolution of 1848 before escaping to New York on a fruit steamer.
After high school he took a portfolio of watercolours to Marshall Field's and was hired on the spot as an apprentice window dresser, asking to work on the furniture and antiques displays. He briefly enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago but lost interest, sold sketches of stage actors backstage, and became assistant to the society photographer Paul Stone, whose soft but sharp images taught him how to build atmosphere. He immersed himself in Matisse, Dalí and the films of Cocteau and Buñuel.
Talking his way into the Balaban and Katz theatre chain as a costume and set designer, he followed the company to New York and in December 1932 became chief costume designer at the newly opened Radio City Music Hall, soon promoted to art director. There he designed the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, still performed by the Rockettes each Christmas. He directed Broadway musicals too, including Very Warm for May, the final collaboration between Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.
Arthur Freed brought him to MGM in 1940. After a debut with Cabin in the Sky, he directed Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, married her, and had a daughter, Liza, in 1946. An American in Paris and Gigi both took Best Picture. He left MGM in 1966, and six of his films are now in the National Film Registry.
Source: Vincente Minnelli
