Mitzi Gaynor, movie-musical star of ‘South Pacific’ and ‘Anything Goes,’ dies at 93

Mitzi Gaynor, the midcentury Hollywood star who appeared in the movie musicals “South Pacific,” “Les Girls” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” died Thursday. She was 93.

In a statement posted to her official X account, Gaynor’s management team, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, said she “passed away peacefully today of natural causes.”

“For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage. She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer,” Reyes and Rosamonda said. “Off stage, she was a vibrant and extraordinary woman, a caring and loyal friend, and a warm, gracious, very funny and altogether glorious human being. And she could cook too!”

Gaynor, they said, often noted that her audiences were “the sunshine of my life.”

The actor, singer and dancer took up dancing at age 8, beginning with ballet and tap lessons and later performing with the L.A. Civic Light Opera in her early teens. She danced in her 20s when filming 1958’s “South Pacific,” in which she played Ensign Nellie Forbush in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. She also won the hearts of audiences in the 1950s films “Anything Goes” with Bing Crosby and “The Joker Is Wild” with Frank Sinatra.

Later in her career, she endeared herself to younger audiences in many TV specials. She also had a hefty career onstage, notably starring in her annual “Mitzi Gaynor Show” doing stand-up comedy in which she delivered her bits in dialects, one of which she attributed to her father, a cellist born in Hungary. She also appeared in the national tour of “Anything Goes” from 1980 to 1990.

“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,” her team said.

Gaynor, whose birth name was Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber, was born Sept. 4, 1931, in Chicago to a cellist father and ballroom dancer mother who supported their daughter’s interest in the performing arts early on.

“When I was 9 years old, my mother and auntie took me to see Carmen Miranda in the stage revue ‘The Streets of Paris.’ I was mesmerized!” she told Closer earlier this year. “I remember telling my mother, ‘I can do that. I want to do that.’ From that moment on, everything became about making ‘Tootie’ — my childhood nickname — a star.”

Two years later, Gaynor’s family relocated to Hollywood, and at 17, the trained ballerina was signed to a seven-year deal at 20th Century Fox. A studio executive persuaded her to change her name, because he said it sounded like a delicatessen, she told CBS in 2019.

“He said, ‘How about Gaynor, [like] Janet Gaynor?’ My father loved it,” she said.

Gaynor made her film debut in a supporting role in the musical “My Blue Heaven” (1950) alongside Betty Grable. The newcomer was enamored with her famous co-star.

“I would follow her into the john if she had to go to the bathroom,” she said in 2012.

Soon after that, Fox gave Gaynor her first starring role in “Golden Girl” (1951). Appearances rapidly followed in “Bloodhounds of Broadway” (1952); “Down Among the Sheltering Palms” (1953); and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954), featuring Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe.

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Also in 1954, Gaynor married her agent, Jack Bean, who then quit his job at MCA to start a publicity firm. Bean was Gaynor’s husband and manager for more than 50 years until he died in 2006. The couple never had children.

In 1960, two years after Gaynor’s Golden Globe-nominated performance in “South Pacific,” Gaynor and Bean bought their Spanish-style villa in Beverly Hills, where they frequently entertained guests. That year, Gaynor also was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Later, her several television specials were nominated for 17 Emmy awards, winning six.)

Toward the end of her career, Gaynor reinvented herself, touring nightclubs around the United States. She made her Manhattan nightclub debut in 2010, at the age of 78, in her show “Razzle Dazzle! My Life Behind the Sequins.”

Known for her glitzy costumes, Gaynor reminisced about the “lost art” of dressing in a 1993 interview with The Times.

“I can’t handle grunge. I can’t handle the chic of it. Dressing is really becoming a lost art while being real has become popular,” she said. “But for those of us living during the ’50s and ’60s, dressing up was real. All of those things — the lashes, the heels, the glamour — they were real to us.”

She said she became renowned designer Bob Mackie’s first client when she met him during that time. Upon their introduction, Gaynor mistook the young visionary for a fan.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, you’re 13 years old!” Gaynor said, adding that she “just about fainted” the first time she saw his sketches. Mackie went on to design almost 500 costumes for the film star turned Vegas showgirl.

Last year, Gaynor celebrated her 92nd birthday, thanking her fans for their longtime support on social media.

Quoting “Singin’ in the Rain” producer Arthur Freed, she wrote: “Why am I smiling and why do I sing? Why does December seem sunny as spring? Why do I get up each morning and start? Happy and head up with joy in my heart...”

“It’s because of all of you.”