{"id":203676,"date":"2019-02-24T05:07:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T10:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=203676"},"modified":"2019-02-24T05:08:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T10:08:14","slug":"stanley-donen-director-of-singin-in-the-rain-dies-at-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/02\/24\/stanley-donen-director-of-singin-in-the-rain-dies-at-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Donen, director of ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ dies at 94"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donen, who often teamed with Gene Kelly but also worked with Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire, died Thursday in New York from heart failure, his sons Joshua and Mark Donen confirmed Saturday. (File Photo By Adam Schartoff – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2013 Filmmaker Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who through such classics as \u201cSingin’ in the Rain\u201d and \u201cFunny Face\u201d helped give us some of the most joyous sounds and images in movie history, has died. He was 94.<\/p>\n

Donen, who often teamed with Gene Kelly but also worked with Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire, died Thursday in New York from heart failure, his sons Joshua and Mark Donen confirmed Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 1940s and ’50s were the prime era for Hollywood musicals and no filmmaker contributed more to the magic than Donen, among the last survivors from that era and one willing to extend the limits of song and dance into the surreal. He was part of the unit behind such unforgettable scenes as Kelly dancing with an animated Jerry the mouse in \u201cAnchors Aweigh,\u201d Astaire’s gravity-defying spin across the ceiling in \u201cRoyal Wedding,\u201d and, the all-time triumph, Kelly ecstatically splashing about as he performs the title number in \u201cSingin’ in the Rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steven Spielberg recalled Donen as a \u201cfriend and early mentor\u201d for whom life and film were inseparable.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis generosity in giving over so many of his weekends in the late 60’s to film students like me to learn about telling stories and placing lenses and directing actors is a time I will never forget,\u201d Spielberg said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said, \u201cBefore Stanley Donen actors sang, actors danced. He made the camera dance and the colours sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2007 American Film Institute survey of the top 100 American movies ranked \u201cSingin’ in the Rain,\u201d with its inventive take on Hollywood’s transition from silent to talking pictures in the 1920s and Kelly’s famous dance in a downpour, at No. 5.<\/p>\n

Donen was asked in 2002 whether the filmmakers knew that \u201cSingin’ in the Rain,\u201d released in 1952 and also starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, would be revered decades later.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can’t get through a movie if you don’t think it’s good,\u201d he told The Associated Press. \u201cCertainly we thought it was good. More than that? I don’t know. You don’t think about that. You just think about how you can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the film and Donen were at first underrated. \u201cSingin’ in the Rain\u201d was initially seen as high entertainment rather than art and was not even nominated for a best picture or directing Academy Award. Donen, overshadowed by Kelly early in his career, never received a competitive Oscar nomination and waited until 1998 for an honorary award, presented to him by Martin Scorsese. He was more than ready. Donen danced cheek-to-cheek with his Oscar statuette, which he called \u201cthis cute little fella.\u201d The crowd yelled and applauded as he crooned, \u201cHeaven, I’m in heaven,\u201d from Irving Berlin’s \u201cCheek to Cheek.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his acceptance speech, he explained his formula for a great musical. Bring in songwriters like Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and performers like Kelly or Astaire or Sinatra. \u201cAnd when filming starts,\u201d he added, \u201cyou show up and you stay the hell out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Donen would remember movies \u2013 especially those with Astaire and Ginger Rogers\u2013 as a needed escape from the tensions of being one of the few Jews in his community. He took tap dancing lessons in his teens and began his show business career as a performer, dancing in the original Broadway production of \u201cPal Joey\u201d at age 16. The title role was played by Kelly, and the show’s success propelled Kelly into the movies.<\/p>\n

Donen received his first Hollywood break when Kelly got him a job helping choreograph the 1944 Kelly film \u201cCover Girl.\u201d Over the next few years, he worked on choreography for such films as \u201cThe Kissing Bandit,\u201d starring Sinatra, and \u201cTake Me Out to the Ballgame,\u201d starring Sinatra and Kelly, who teamed with Donen on choreography.<\/p>\n

\u201cSingin’ in the Rain\u201d was one of three films credited to Kelly and Donen as co-directors; the others were \u201cOn the Town,\u201d the 1949 Kelly-Sinatra musical about sailors on leave in New York City, and the darker \u201cIt’s Always Fair Weather,\u201d in which three soldier friends reunite a decade later.<\/p>\n

The co-director credits \u2013 rare in films \u2013 came out of a tense relationship between Donen and the star, who had played such an important role in advancing Donen’s career. Donen would later speak resentfully of Kelly, who died in 1996, as being cold and condescending and not fully appreciative of his contributions. They parted for good after \u201cIt’s Always Fair Weather,\u201d which came out in 1955.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could be difficult with me and everyone else,\u201d the director told The New York Times in 1996. \u201cIt was always a complicated collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Donen films included \u201cSeven Brides for Seven Brothers\u201d (1954), with its superlative athletic choreography; \u201cDamn Yankees\u201d (1958), the remake of the Broadway smash about a baseball fan’s temptation; and \u201cFunny Face,\u201d in which Astaire teamed up with Audrey Hepburn to play a fashion photographer and his unlikely muse.<\/p>\n

Astaire’s character in \u201cFunny Face\u201d was modeled on Richard Avedon, and the famed photographer served as a consultant to Donen.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is more fun than finding someone who stimulates you, and who can be stimulated by you,\u201d Donen said in John Kobal’s book \u201cGotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals.\u201d \u201cThe result, rather than just adding up to two and two, multiplies itself, and you find yourself doing much better things \u2013 you are both carried away on the crest of excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donen worked in various genres. \u201cIndiscreet\u201d (1958) was a light farce starring Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and \u201cTwo for the Road\u201d (1967), with Hepburn and Albert Finney, was an unusually acerbic and tense marital comedy for its time, far removed from the carefree spirit of his musicals. (Donen himself was married five times and had an embroidered pillow in his New York apartment reading \u201cEAT DRINK AND RE-MARRY\u201d.)<\/p>\n

One Donen film, the chic mystery \u201cCharade\u201d (1963), reminded viewers of a Hitchcock thriller. \u201cCharade\u201d starred Hepburn as a precocious socialite whose husband has been murdered, and Grant \u2013 who appeared in four Hitchcock films \u2013 as a mysterious man who may or may not be helping her.<\/p>\n

Donen steadfastly denied any Hitchcock influence, while adding that the master of suspense \u201cdoesn’t own the genre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donen had three sons; the oldest, Peter, died in 2003 of a heart attack at age 50. His first wife, dancer Jeanne Coyne, later married Kelly. His fourth wife was the screen star Yvette Mimieux. Over the past two decades, his companion was the filmmaker-comedian Elaine May.<\/p>\n

None of his more recent films approached the heights of his most famous work. The nadir may have been 1984’s \u201cBlame It on Rio,\u201d a comedy about a man (Michael Caine) who has an affair with his friend’s young daughter. Roger Ebert slammed the film as \u201cclearly intended to appeal to the prurient interests of dirty old men of all ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other credits include a musical segment for the 1980s TV comedy \u201cMoonlighting\u201d and a stage production of \u201cThe Red Shoes.\u201d In 1999, he directed the ABC television movie \u201cLove Letters,\u201d which starred Steven Weber and Laura Linney.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are limits to TV,\u201d Donen told The Associated Press in 1999. \u201cAnd that’s what was fun: to try to find a way to be surprising within limits. I’m always looking for limits, because then you have to be inventive.\u201d<\/p>\n

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