"Mata Hari"-Dress Rehearsal (World Exclusive!)

Since the inception of the Marisa Mell Blog several entries have been dedicated to the musical "Mata Hari" from producer David Merrick, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Marisa Mell and "Bonaza"-star Pernell Roberts. Fresh from the success in movies like "Le Dolci Signore" or "Danger: Diabolik!" in the second half of the 60's the powers that be found it time to transfer Euro-beauty Marisa Mell from Italy to the USA in the wake of other Italian sirens like Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Claudia Cardinale, Virna Lisi.... The fact that she was not Italian but Austrian did not matter. Her appearence was all Italian-like with thick auburn hair, big emerald green eyes and lush voluptious lips. What could you ask for more??? After several appearences in magazines like Vogue and McCall's introducing her to the American audience it was time to throw her into the deep end of the showbizz waters, ready or not! And ready she was not! Being trained as a theatre and movie actress she had no idea what it required to be a musical actress. Although there is a lot in common between the two disciplines its major requirement is that, next to being a stage presence, you need to be trained as a musical singer. Not a common singer of pop songs or classical pieces but in the specific technique of using your singing voice on stage while acting. So you need to master two disciplines. And Marisa Mell was no singer. That was a talent she had not! She could dance, sword fight, ride a horse,... but singing she could not! Compare the 1995 re-recording of the musical sung by professional musical singers with the 1967 bootleg recording then you know what I mean. So the whole adventure in the USA turned into a disaster for her. After a try-out in Washington, D.C., the whole show was canceled and never got to Broadway much to dispair of Marisa Mell. She had high hopes that this production of "Mata Hari" would be her ticket to the USA and showbizz. It did not! She came back one year later very disappointed and desperate. People close to her mention that in fact she never recovered from it and was scarred for life! Others clame that this gave her carreer a whole other direction and was the beginning of her downfall as an A-list actress, once starring opposite Marcello Mastroianni in "Casanova 70".
"Mata Hara" is only a footnote in the musical dictionaries mentioning the musical flop that it was. So there is not much material available on the memorabelia market. Luckily there is the bootleg recording of the production with the voices of the entire cast, including Marisa Mell, speaking her role as Mata Hari with a singing pitch! We are still waiting for original film footage of the production to appear. And now there are these pictures. In my knowledge they have never been published before in any magazine in the world since the days of the production. They show Marisa Mell during a dress rehearsel of the musical on stage. From today's point of view and even from the 60's point of view they are horrible. Marisa Mell had a very sexy slime figure in those days but by the looks of it the producers did everything to cover and distract from it. They are big, dark, depressive and formless cloths. Maybe they should have reflected the poverty of the character or the dispair from World War I. Even Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady", starting out as Eliza Doolittle, the poor flower girl in Victorian London, had more beaufitul cloths than this. If these pictures give some kind of impression of the production quality than it is no wonder that, with everything else we know at the moment, this production was a faillure from the beginning. What is even more a mystery is that these cloths were drawn and made by Irene Sharaff, a 5-time Academy Award winner for productions like West Side Story, The King and I and... Cleopatra with Elisabeth Taylor. Maybe she had a headache the morning when she drew these cloths after a long night of partying and boozing in town? Who knows!

/

The pictures come from the personal archieve of Marisa Mell thanks to Guido from Italy!

The covers that never were!

During the height of her career Marisa Mell has graced hundredth of covers around the world, not only in the Anglo-Saxon world but also on magazine covers in the Arabic, East, Far East and Latin world! To my knowledge, she has never appeared on the covers of Glamour, Esquire and Vogue. Although she did appear during her Mata Hari musical rehearsal period several times in Vogue and McCalls with a fashion spread but never on the cover! So here are the covers that never were but could have been!

GLAMOUR
ESQUIRE

VOGUE

Jellabiya

During her filming of "Danger: Diabolik!" in 1967, Marisa Mell was invited to New York to audition for the role of Mata Hari in the musical with the same name which was going to open in New York, Broadway in the following year. When she got the part, as mentioned in another blog entry, the producers found it a good idea that Marisa Mell should appear in several magazines in the States to make her name a house hold name. So she appeared in McCall's Magazine but also as a fashion model in the November 1967 issue of Vogue, the number one fashion magazine in the world. What is so special about this picture is the fact that this photo brings together the middle-east and the west in one person. Marisa Mell has done her hair in a typical 60's hair-style like almost all the fashion models of that time but her dress is not at all western, it is a classical middle-eastern dress called "Jellabiya". The Jellabiya or in Arabic: الجلابية , pronounced Gellabiya in Egypt, is a traditional arab garment native to the Gulf region worn by women as a casual dress or as evening wear depending on the amount of work, complication of design beadwork as in this dress worn by Marisa Mell. The Jellabiya dates back to early days of civilization in the Arabic countries of the Gulf. Jellabiyas are also created for men; however, these include a minimal amount of design and are usually just striped or plain in a variety of colors. You have three kinds of Jellabiya: a) the casual Jellabiya: This is often a casual garment using a minimal amount of textiles and design; b) the evening Jellabiya: several different mediums are used to create these Jellabiyas. They include, beadwork, embroidery, different stich patterns as well as various textiles such as silk, lace and even wool and c) the wedding Jellabiya: Jellabiyas worn by the bride at weddings are much like evening Jellabiyas; however, they usually are quite excessive. Unfortunately her role in Mata Hara was a short one and she never got to Broadway, just some try outs in Washington DC. This faillure was very hard for her to swallow and took some time to get over with.

An Egyptian peasant women sitting on the banks of the river Nile in the 1890's looking at the Temple of Philae during sun set wearing a traditional black Jellabiya.

McCall's Magazine

In 1968 Marisa Mell’s career was getting more and more noticed in the public eye on an international level outside of Europe which resulted in a lot of offers. One of these offers was to star in a leading role in an American musical version of the life of the famous WWI-spy “Mata Hari”. The musical was based on a book by Jerome Coopersmith and music by Edward Thomas with lyrics by Martin Charnin. The musical was to open on Broadway in New York after an initial run off-broadway. The name “Marisa Mell” was not yet a household name in America, so the producers found it a good idea that she would appear in a magazine with a high print run that was read by a lot of American women, especially housewifes. The choice of the producers fell on a magazine called “McCall’s Magazine”. McCall's was a monthly women's magazine that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of six million in 1960. The origin of the magazine goes back to 1880. Sadly the magazine disappeared at the beginning of this 21st century due to mergers between publishing companies after some legal battles over it's ownership. But in 1968 the magazine was in good health. What makes this photo shoot so special is that Marisa Mell got the cover of the magazine which is rather exceptional because most of the time the cover model was a well known American women like an actress, model… and she was not but what was even more exceptional was the fact that the photo shoot was a production of 'the' art director of that moment (that moment in time would later become known as the Golden Age of magazine design) the late great Otto Storch. Otto Storch (°Brooklyn-New York, February 15th 1913) was a magazine art director and advertising photographer who introduced an expressive typographic style to women's magazines as part of a revolution in editorial design. He was one of a handful of graphic designers who helped transform and modernize the visual content of American magazines. He belonged to what the graphic design historian Philip Meggs calls the "New York School", a group of editorial and advertising designers who based layouts on unified visual ideas rather than merely embellishing the page with ornamentation. Typical of this approach was a 1961 layout in McCall's for ''The Forty-Winks Reducing Plan,'' in which a picture of a sleeping woman lying on top of the text distorts the text to simulate a sagging mattress. Mr. Storch used a variety of photographic processes to make type twist, turn and vibrate in the days before computers made such special effects commonplace in magazine layout. He also helped revive late 19th-century Victorian wood typefaces, which had been passe for decades, to add graphic impact and contrast to the printed page. Although he later rejected this approach because it had become a cliche, the style is in use to this day. After leaving McCall's in 1969 he opened his own photography studio where he worked on assignments for many commercial clients, including American Express, Celanese, Golden Books, Sunbeam and Volkswagen. Otto Storch died at the age of 86 years on September 29th 1999. The article introduces the American audience to a new European star and what her part will be in the new musical "Mata Hari" on Broadway. Looking back, the article had not much impact on Marisa Mell's career and the musical never got to open on Broadway but that's an entire other story. Finding a mint copy of the McCall's-issue is not an easy task because almost all the issues got a adress label of the subscribers on the left hand side at the bottom of the cover page. Some magazine's have their label removed but they are not mint anymore due to the damage from removing the label or the old glue from the label.