Stanley Donen

Born in Columbia (South Carolina), on April 13, 1924, into a family of Jewish merchants, Stanley Donen was really fascinated by dancing. During his teens he took dance classes, and at 16 he left for New York determined to succeed in the theater. A year later he made his Broadway debut in the play ‘Pal Joey’, starring Gene Kelly , who became his inseparable friend. MGM offered both Kelly and Donen a contract, who made his film debut as an assistant choreographer in the musical Best Foot Forward , where he also appeared as a dancer in a number performed by young cadets.

As Gene Kelly did not quite stand out in the cinema, MGM decided to transfer him to Columbia to star in The Models , with Rita Hayworth . At Columbia they gave Kelly free rein to create his own musical numbers, so the dancer decided to ask Donen for help, and the two of them shot them without any intervention from Charles Vidor , the film’s director, concentrating solely on the dramatic sequences. They both certainly shined, especially for the famous ‘Alter Ego’ number, in which Kelly dances with himself. The film is considered one of the pinnacles of the musical genre, as it was a turning point due to the excellent integration of the musical numbers into the plot, which progressed smoothly. And it established Gene Kelly as a great movie star.

Donen continued to choreograph for MGM on titles such as Festival in Mexico , La gran vida , Así son las mujeres and Me besó un bandido . He also created the musical numbers for The Beautiful Dictator with Kelly , with such brilliant results that both decided to make their directorial debut together.

Kelly and Donen’s first film was going to be a great masterpiece, A Day in New York , an adaptation of a musical by Betty Comden and Adolph Green , who, hired to write the script, introduced many changes, although they kept the initial premise. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin were sailors who enjoy 24-hour leave in the Big Apple, totally unknown to them, where they will fall in love with three colorful women. The dialogues naturally lead to dazzling musical numbers, which can start in the Empire State Building and end in the middle of the street, when until then it was normal to shoot musicals on sets. Such was the success ofOne day in New York that producer Arthur Freed commissioned Donen his first film as a solo director, Royal Wedding , where he directs the quintessential star of musicals, the legendary Fred Astaire . Once again, Donen stunned the audience with one of the most impressive musical numbers in his filmography, ‘You’re All the World to Me’, in which Astaire dances off the walls and ends up on the ceiling.

Although Donen was successful as a director, he never did very well on a sentimental level. In 1948 he married Jeanne Coyne, a renowned dancer and assistant to Gene Kelly. But they immediately divorced and she would end up marrying Kelly, whom he accompanied until her death, and with whom he had two children. Donen was later joined by actress Marion Marshall ( What a Pair of Sailors! ), fellow actress Yvette Mimieux ( Hands on Time ), Adelle Beatty and Pamela Braden. It is also said that Donen had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor when she filmed De ella Marido a la fuerza , a pleasant romantic comedy in which the actress plays a dance teacher.

For the person signing these lines, the best musical by Donen, Kelly and MGM is Singing in the Rain . I had the opportunity to talk with the director himself about this musical, during his visit to the Marbella Film Festival in 1998. “Arthur Freed, from MGM, told me that the production company had the rights to several songs for which he had written the lyrics in the late ’20s and early ’30s. Among them was ‘Singin in the Rain’, from the 1929 film The Hollywood Revue . It was common in the genre for the plot to be secondary, a mere excuse to link those songs, but Fred was wise enough to entrust the script to two very imaginative people, the authors of A Day in New York(Adolph Green and Betty Comden), and they took advantage of the fact that the songs were from the era of the arrival of silent movies to write a satirical and funny chronicle of the time, with really brilliant dialogues. I think unlike some of my other musicals, that script would have worked on its own without the songs,” Donen explained. “Then I met with Gene Kelly, and he told me that he had quite a few ideas. He wanted to change the script to include Donald O’Connor as a supporting role.” Rarely has a movie conveyed the feeling of joy so well, as when Kelly – who shot that sequence despite his severe ribbing – is so happy to have walked Debbie Reynolds home., with whom he is falling in love, who does not hesitate to dance to the rhythm of the song ‘Singin in the Rain’, even if it rains and there are puddles on the ground. “It was a movie from another era. I think that if we had shot it now, it would not have been believable that Gene Kelly was dancing happily and nonchalantly. It would probably look a lot better for him to look around to make sure he wasn’t going to get mugged,” said the sarcastic Donen. The film had a new song, ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’, written expressly for the film, which Donald O’Connor performed in a hilarious number. The song is said to be very similar – almost a blatant plagiarism – to Cole Porter’s ‘Be a Clown’, but Cole Porter decided not to file a lawsuit, because he stated that he had been enthusiastic about the film.

Throughout the 50s, Donen maintained a very high level in his musicals, as he directed Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , and above all the unforgettable A Face with an Angel , again with Fred Astaire, and with the unbeatable Audrey Hepburn ., in the role of a shy librarian who dreams of visiting Paris, and ends up traveling there to pose as a model for the magazine in which a funny photographer works. “When we started shooting, Astaire was very concerned because he thought that the viewers did not believe that he, at 58, could have an affair with Audrey Hepburn, who was 28. I think that as it appears in the script, that The story is hard to believe, but the songs were so good that I tried to make the spectators turn a blind eye when they heard them”, explained the modest Donen, who once again excelled with the choreography, especially the one in which Hepburn, at the Louvre , emulates the Winged Victory of Samothrace, on the steps where the famous statue is exhibited.

A year after this film, Donen directed Indiscreet , an elegant romantic comedy that brought together the mature Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman , twelve years after the legendary Notorious . This film about the romance between a married diplomat and a veteran stage actress represents a turning point in Donen’s career, who in the 60s abandoned the musical, a genre that entered into crisis. Paradoxically Donen opts for suspense, imitating Hitchcock’s style in the masterful Charade , starring two old acquaintances of his: Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. “I have never hidden that I was fascinated by Hitchcock. He was a great teacher. I feel an absolute fascination for his cinema, especially forTo Catch a Thief and With Death on its Heels , both with Cary Grant. I had been toying with the idea of ​​making a film that would pay homage to Hitchcock, starring him for years,” explains Donen, although his desire was almost frustrated because Grant – like Astaire – was quite reluctant to share the screen with Hepburn, much younger. In the end, he accepted because the script jokes about her age, and because it is she who seduces him and not the other way around. The film seems practically shot by Hitchcock, except that the sense of humor in many of the scenes is more typical of Donen, who got a lot out of the witty dialogues (‘How do you shave?’ ‘In the same way as the porcupines make love, very carefully’). Donen tried to repeat the move with Arabesco, with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren , a pleasant pastime that, however – unlike Charade – has remained very outdated on an aesthetic level, due to its 1960s photography.

The greatest exponent of Donen’s evolution towards new paths in the 1960s is Two for the Road , a nostalgic drama about the effects of time passing on a marriage, written by Frederic Raphael , which used an imaginative structure. At the beginning of the film, the main couple (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney ) begin a road trip during which they will recall, through flashbacks, all the phases their relationship has gone through, from the moment love was born until the marriage broke down. In his book ‘Here Kubrick’, the famous screenwriter of the film, Frederic Raphael, also author of Eyes Wide Shut, highlighted Donen’s ability to work as a team, and compared him to Kubrick. “The difference between Donen and Kubrick is that Donen has been a dancer, and that has always made him appreciate his dance partner. His creativity is dependent, he knows what choreography is, and he likes that dependency. Kubrick was first a photographer and his relationship with creativity was solitary. Donen admired and was amused by the other artists. Kubrick was not a dancer and his job, of course, was never to dance. It’s not a criticism, it’s just a contrast.

Two for the Road is the last major work by Donen, who then shot several smaller films ( Bedazzled , The Staircase , The Adventurers of the Lucky Lady ). He also returned to the musical, in 1974, with The Little Prince , a correct adaptation of the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . Donen came to try his luck in the field of science fiction, with Saturn 3 , which tried to capitalize on the success of Star Wars , released two years earlier, with the story of two scientists who face a psychopath in a space station that he has brought with him a monstrous robot. But even though it had great actors (Kirk Douglas , Harvey Keitel and the attractive Farrah Fawcett ), it is clear that Donen was not comfortable in this genre, and the film is quite irregular. The failed comedy Lío en Río , shows that Donen had been outdated in a film industry that had hardly anything to do with the one he had known in his beginnings. He completely abandoned the cinema, and will only occasionally direct Love Letters , a telefilm in which the master’s hand is noticeable, a musical number for an episode of the Moonlight series , and the video clip ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, by Lionel Richie .