Stanley Donen remembering Gene Kelly, TCM Classic Film Festival

Stanley Donen with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly had persuaded Charles Walters, who has been signed by MGM as dance director of the film version of "Best Foot Forward", to find something in it for Stanley Donen. "I was nothing at the time," Donen said. "A shlepper. A real zero." Stanley Donen was virtually adopted by the Kellys.

Phil Silvers, Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly in "Cover Girl" (1944) directed by Charles Vidor

COVER GIRL (1944) Dir. Charles Vidor is featured in the TCM Film Festival Schedule - Friday, April 13 9:30AM Chinese Multiplex 4

If this Technicolor confection stands among Columbia Pictures' best musicals, a major share of the credit goes to the talent producer Arthur Schwartz, costume designer Travis Banton, songwriters Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, and choreographers Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen.

Banton was a natural for the story of a chorus girl (Rita Hayworth) who finds stardom as a supermodel, creating contemporary gowns that perfectly captured the star's allure.

Kern and Gershwin, who had never worked together before, created one of the best scores ever for a musical, including the jazzy "Put Me to the Test" and the dreamy, romantic "Long Ago and Far Away." For Kelly and Donen, the film pointed to the musicals they would later create at MGM. In particular, the "Alter Ego" routine, which Kelly developed with Donen, used trick photography so he could dance with himself as an expression of his character's inner conflicts. This Columbia picture convinced MGM to finally let Kelly stage his own numbers. In Attendance: Patricia Ward Kelly

Patricia Ward Kelly is the widow of Gene Kelly. She has worked as a writer at a film production company, as a contributing scholar for the authoritative Northwestern/Newberry Writings of Herman Melville, and as a freelance journalist.

She and Gene Kelly met at the Smithsonian in 1985, when he was the host/narrator for a television special for which she was a writer. Soon after, he invited her to California to write his memoirs and they were together until his death in 1996. Currently, she serves as Trustee of The Gene Kelly Image Trust and Creative Director of Gene Kelly: The Legacy, a corporation established to commemorate Kelly's centenary worldwide. She lives in Los Angeles and is completing the book about her late husband. Source: www.tcm.com

Liza Minnelli and Patricia Ward Kelly at TCM Classic Film Festival Opening Night for 40th Anniversary of "Cabaret" at Graumann's Chinese.

Patricia shared exciting news, “Gene’s hundred birthday would be August 23rd, 2012, and so we’re going to roll out a big celebration. He doesn’t need a birthday party, but we thought it was a way to show how relevant he continues to be and see how he continues to inspire young people. It’s going to be a global dance experience, and…we’ll have a big exhibition….We’re going to post everything on the website in just a little bit...We want everyone in the world to participate so all the fans can be part of the celebration.” Source: www.examiner.com

Gene Kelly in the "Broadway Ballet" number in "Singin' in the Rain" recreating his early vaudeville experiences in New York

Previous to "Pal Joey" in Broadway, Gene Kelly's big break had come starring as Harry the Hoofer in William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life". The play ran for 22 weeks and won the Drama Critic's Award that year.

Fred Kelly and Gene Kelly

When the show began to tour, Fred Kelly replaced Gene as the lead on the road and won a Donaldson Award for his performance.

William Saroyan on Gene Kelly: "The tapping of his feet was not unlike a drum roll at a funeral; an end that was both a loss and a welcome beginning of something else - almost anything else. Gene Kelly is a great man of the theatre."

Gene Kelly and Leila Ernst in "Pal Joey" (1941)

“I was a very young man, as he was. I came to New York to get into showbusiness and I auditioned for Pal Joey. Gene was Pal Joey and I was a dancer. He was a big success in the show. George Abbott asked Gene to be choreographer of Best Foot Forward and I was in that show. Gene came in and said would I be his assistant. I was 16 or 17 at the time. So from that moment on, the relationship grew slightly. We worked together quite well.” -Stanley Donen

Asked what was Gene’s genius, what was his talent: “The big part of it was what he called himself, a song and dance man, and there was only one other, Fred Astaire.

Gene had his own manner and charm, and he was good at singing and dancing and he had this wonderful Irish-American brash quality which was so winning and so full of energy that it was an irresistible charm. He had a desire to change what musical films had done, to explore other avenues.”

Asked what was the nature of their relationship: “It started when he was a star and I was a dancer."

By the time we did "Singin’ in The Rain" we were co-directors. He was an actor and I was a director really. He was in front of the camera and I was behind so it did complement each other. But we had our differences of course. No collaboration would be worth its salt without differences of opinion. The clashes have to be done in private because if done in front of others they’re very disturbing, but new things came because of it.”

Gene Kelly with wife Jeanne Coyne and child.

In 1948, Jeannie Coyne had married Stanley Donen. They were divorced the following year, but continued to work together. "Jeannie's marriage to Stanley", Gene said to Clive Hirschchorn, "was doomed from the start. Because every time Stanley looked at Jeannie, he saw Betsy, whom he loved; and every time Jeannie looked at Stanley, I guess she saw me. One way and another it was all pretty incestuous."

Gene Kelly and Jeannie Coyne married on 6 August 1960, in the County Court House, at Tonopah, Nevada. They had planned to marry in secrecy because Gene felt that by underplaying the marriage he was protecting his daughter Kerry, whom he did not want involved with reporters.

During three months in Paris, Gene and Jeannie stayed in an expensive apartment on the Avenue Foch. One of his nightly rituals in Paris was walking to the Invalides and into a nearby bar for a beer and a few games of pinball. "I usually won", Gene said, "because I used to cheat outrageously. Well, one night Jeannie and I were playing, and a stranger came over to watch us. All of a sudden, he turned on Jeannie and started to call her the foulest names in the French language - of which the nicest I think was 'whore.' So naturally, I slugged him. He fell, and when he staggered up, the bartender came over and broke it up and threw the guy out, because he'd heard the names he was calling Jeannie."

The ‘rain dance’ was shown, and Donen was asked if it brought back memories: “Indeed it does, it’s a great loss, not to have him around any more.”

Gene Kelly serenading Debbie Reynolds with 'You are my lucky star' number in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

Did Gene appreciate his talent? “I think so, he was aware that he had a very special gift and that he wanted to show it in the best possible way. He drove himself very hard. He was very nervous about his singing voice though, and would get hoarse from nerves when he had to record.”

Marie McDonald and Gene Kelly in "Living in a Big Way" (1947)

Stanley and Gene worked together on Cover Girl, Anchors Aweigh, Living In A Big Way, Deep In My Heart, Take Me Out To The Ball Game (also jointly writing the story and getting $25000 for it), On The Town, Singin’ In The Rain, and It’s Always Fair Weather.

How do you remember Gene Kelly? “Like in that moment in Singin’ In The Rain. When one is down and wants to be cheered up, watch Gene Kelly.” -Stanley Donen, interviewed by Charlie Rose on the day of Gene Kelly’s death, 2nd February 1996.


The 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival will cover a wide range of programming themes, including “Style in the Movies.”

THE FILMS OF STANLEY DONEN: Charade (1963), Funny Face (1957), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Two for the Road (1967)

ESSENTIALS: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Annie Hall (1977), Auntie Mame (1958), Black Narcissus (1947), Cabaret (1972), Casablanca (1942), Dr. No (1962), Duck Soup (1933), Elmer Gantry (1960), Grand Illusion (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), High Society (1956), The Longest Day (1962), Moonstruck (1987), The Pink Panther (1963), Rio Bravo (1959), Sabrina (1954), The Searchers (1956), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Snow White and Seven Dwarfs (1937), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), To Catch a Thief (1955), Vertigo (1958), Wings (1927), The Women (1939), Young Frankenstein (1974)

THE LEGENDARY COSTUMES OF TRAVIS BANTON: Cleopatra (1934), Cover Girl (1944), I'm No Angel (1933), Letter from and Unknown Woman (1948), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Scarlet Empress (1934)

NOIR STYLE: Criss Cross (1949), Cry Danger (1951), Gun Crazy (1950), Night and the City (1950), Raw Deal (1948)

BUILT BY DESIGN - ARCHITECTURE IN FILM: Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Fountainhead (1949), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), My Architect: A Son's Journey (2003), Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Source: www.tcm.com

Director Stephen Gyllenhaal endorses the Trinity Film Festival

Director Stephen Gyllenhaal Endorses Trinity Film Festival. On May 5, the college’s Cinestudio Theater will host the Trinity Film Festival, a contest that was open to undergraduates across the country. The festival’s website says its goal is “to bring together student filmmakers from the northeast and all over the country” and to give these students a means of showing their work.

Among the festival’s endorsers is writer/director Stephen Gyllenhaal, father of actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal. The elder Gyllenhaal graduated from Trinity in 1972.

Happy 88th birthday, Stanley Donen!

Stanley Donen is probably best known for his codirection of the 1952 classic musical Singin' in the Rain and for Funny Face - the acclaimed Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn film. Remarkably, the native of Columbia, South Carolina, got his start in Broadway musical choruses at the age of sixteen and was in Hollywood as an assistant choreographer at the tender age of nineteen.

After a couple of years, Donen advanced to lead choreography with the assistance of rising star Gene Kelly, with whom he had worked on the stage, and finally to sharing directing credit with Kelly on the 1949 musical ON THE TOWN. It became a landmark for its scenes actually shot on the streets of New York City.

Michael Kidd, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen on the set of It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

The relationship of Donen and Kelly was at times a close yet ultimately troubled one. A close study of the films each directed alone shows that Donen is the superior director. He went on to helm other well-regarded musicals such as SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, the comedy TWO FOR THE ROAD and the sophisticated adventures CHARADE and ARABESQUE.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963)

“Audrey makes my soul fly. She opens me up to beautiful feelings.” —Director Stanley Donen on actress Audrey Hepburn

Like Orson Welles, Donen was an exasperatingly precocious boy wonder. He was dancing in the chorus of Pal Joey on Broadway at age 16. At 20, he was a renowned Hollywood choreographer, pepping up musical numbers in dozens of films with his innovative dances and imaginative camera technique. By 28, he had already directed his fourth film, Singin' in the Rain. Along with his frequent collaborator Gene Kelly, he is credited by many critics with having made movie musicals more realistic and integrated.

Stanley Donen with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly on the set of On the Town (1949)

In films like On the Town, he essentially invented the idea of the location musical, doing away as much as possible with stagy sets and painted backdrops and then literally taking the action into the streets. Sadly, Donen's later career included a number of flops, which ensured that the intervals between movies grew longer and longer until, again like Orson Welles, he'd become an unemployable legend. Silverman (Public Spectacles, 1981, etc.) is an inspired chronicler who speeds along with a well-choreographed mixture of fact, anecdote, and analysis. Source: www.kirkusreviews.com

Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly in An American in Paris (1951) directed by Vincente Minnelli

In many ways, Paris is one of the ultimate fantasy cities, a real place that continues to be endlessly imagined—filmed, painted, written about, idolized and longed for, by those who don’t know it and those who do.

“What if we were like Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, and danced along the Seine,” remarks Audrey Hepburn as Regina in Charade, walking with Cary Grant along the river and musing over a Paris from the movies before her time, imagining still, despite the fact of already being in the real place she has dreamed of. Source: www.heroyalmajesty.ca

Stanley Donen with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman filming "Indiscreet" (1958)

Stanley Donen was born April 13, 1924, into loving and, as he described them, "completely middle-class" circumstances. "I was born in Columbia, South Carolina," he said, as if by identifying the location he was delivering volumes about the nature of his upbringing. "My family and I were Southerners," said Donen, "really, really Southern, and really, really American. My mother was born in Columbia, South Carolina. My father was born in Augusta, Georgia, which is just over the border. Yet the family was Southern and American with a distinction. The Donens were Jewish.

Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in "Funny Face" (1957) directed by Stanley Donen

Donen came home from the movie theater one day and seeking entree of his own into Astaire's rarefied universe, announced: 'I want to be a tap dancer. The only thing I want to be is a tap dancer.' My parents thought I was crazy, but they said okay. After all, it wasn't very common for a Jewish boy to become a tap dancer." Stanley Donen took dance lessons in his home town of Columbia, South Carolina for a few years. He graduated from high school when he was sixteen. Rather than going to college, he went to New York City to break into the entertainment business. He quickly managed to get a job dancing in the Broadway musical Pal Joey (starring Gene Kelly).

"There are feelings about New York that I have in my system and can't get rid of," he said. "New York used to represent the absolute best, and the movies were always aspiring to reach up to the quality of Hecht and MacArthur, and Kaufman and Hart, and everything New York had to offer. Being on Broadway, living the life I always wanted, working in this show, which turned out to be this great watershed musical, although none of us really knew that while we were in it - all that added up to what was the best time I had in my life, ever."

Carla rationalized that her brother's uncharacteristic decision to "come home" to be married, under rabbinical supervision, was born of his desire to see that this marriage lasted. "Stanley worshipped Yvette," Carla Davis said in 1994. "He still does. She was a very unique individual. She could not always act on-screen, but she could everywhere else. She was very smart, she knew about art and business... She affected Stanley as no one else ever did or ever will. My brother was madly in love with her." With sisterly affection, Carla Davis added, "Stanley's only problem is, he keeps thinking that romances will turn out just like they do in the movies."

Frank Sinatra, Stanley Donen, Jules Munshin, Gene Kelly - Behind the scenes of Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949)

While Take Me Out to the Ball Game was in its final preproduction phase, Stanley Donen got married. The date was April 14, 1948, and the bride was Jeanne Coyne, a former New York dancer. "All of Stanley's wives have been beautiful," said his sister, Carla, in 1994, by which time she was able to have formed an opinion about five different sisters-in-law, "but I think Jeannie was really the loveliest. There was something wholesome about her." As to what that "something" could have been, Carla Davis said, "she was a bit older than Stanley, and very Catholic."

Jeanne Coyne, Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, Carol Haney, and Donald O’Connor on the set of Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

As for the several other marriages of Donen: to the former Marion Marshall (1952-1959), to Adelle Beatty (1960-1971), to Yvette Mimieux (1972-1982), and to Pamari (Pam) Brden (1990-1994), the writer Peter Stone observed, "Stanley doesn't like being alone." An embroidered pillow on the sofa in Donen's living room reads: "Eat, drink, and re-marry."

On May 20, 1952, [Stanley] Donen married for a second time; his bride was the Fox starlet Marion Marshall. He was twenty-eight; she was six years younger. The Donens wed at the home of Marshall's agent, Jules Goldstone, who had also represented Elizabeth Taylor. Marshall had been the companion of the director Howard Hawks, whose wife, the model Nancy "Slim" Hawks, had left Hawks for the agent-producer Leland Hayward, who had been Gene Kelly's agent. Hayward divorced his previous wife, the actress Margaret Sullavan, to marry "Slim." Marion Marshall gave up her career when she married Donen, and they had two sons, Peter, born in 1953, and Joshua, born in 1955.

About the time that Stanley Donen dated actress Elizabeth Taylor: "Elizabeth's mother, Sara, did everything in her power to call it off," Donen said of the romance.

"Her mother hated me in the worst way and did all sorts of nasty things to break us up, including calling Lous B. Mayer, Eddie Mannix, and several other people at the studio." Donen described Sara Taylor as "this very dominating woman, a terrible person. Elizabeth inherited her face and her looks from her father, Francis, but he was a very beaten husband. Sara, I think, at that time certainly was anti-Semitic, despite the fact that Elizabeth subsequently became a Jew."



Some fans of film, even fans of Donen and especially of Bedazzled, have wondered, rather cheekly, how the same person who made Singin' in the Rain could have gone on and made so offbeat a movie as Bedazzled. Both films grew out of his attitude and training. Singin' in the Rain, with its M-G-M gloss, was the product of his studio lessons under fire; Bedazzled, with its theological patina, is a throwback to his earlier education, the aborted Hebrew lessons and the theatrical and literary tradition Donen witnesed when he attended Broadway shows with his parents.

John Raitt and Doris Day in The Pajama Game (1957)

"Some movies, like Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, they're fun, but I don't feel I contributed a lot to them, because they were what they were. They came to me fully formed. And some movies I felt I had a great deal to do with 'creating,' much as I hate the word. 'Making,' I suppose, is a better word." -From: "Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies" by Stephen M. Silverman (1996)

Martin Scorsese presenting an honorary Oscar to Stanley Donen in appreciation for a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit and visual innovation - 70th Annual Academys in 1997.