SD

Let's say goodbye to Stanely Donen--one of the last connections to the great movie musicals of the past. (I've written about Donen before, though not at length.)

He was a Broadway chorus dancer as a teen in the 1940s when he got to know star Gene Kelly, and worked as his assistant choreographer.  Kelly went to Hollywood and Donen followed.  There he worked on hit musicals such as Anchors Aweigh.  Donen and Kelly co-directed some of the most significant movie musicals ever, such as On The Town and Singin' In The Rain.  It's hard to know who did what, but someone had to make sure it looked good while Kelly was busy acting on screen.

Donen also went out on his own and directed films such as Royal Wedding, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Funny Face (two of which starred Fred Astaire, the dancer who inspired him when he was a kid).  But he went beyond musicals--a good thing, too, as the grand MGM musical was going out of fashion.  In fact, arguably the last in this tradition was Donen and Kelly's It's Always Fair Weather.

He would go on to work with Cary Grant--the Fred Astaire of non-dancers--in films such as Indiscreet (with Ingrid Bergman) and Charade (with Audrey Hepburn).  The latter, a mystery set in Paris, turned out to be one of the most influential films of the 1960s.  A whole bunch of movies followed with one-word titles set in foreign locales that mixed comedy, mystery and romance--including Donen's Arabesque, starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren.

But Donen kept changing, making the sophisticated romance Two For The Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, and the small, irreverent comedy Bedazzled with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

He kept working in the 70s and 80s, though his films didn't have quite the same impact (though I'm a fan of the generally forgotten 1978 film Movie Movie).  He also made a bit of a splash doing a highly publicized musical number in an episode of TV's Moonlighting.  And he directed the Lionel Richie video "Dancing On The Ceiling," which repeated (poorly) the trick camerawork that had Fred Astaire dancing upside-down way back in Donen's first solo musical job, Royal Wedding.

He moved on from musicals, but they're what he'll be remembered for.  There were a lot of major directors working at MGM in the 40s and 50s on musicals--Gene Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, George Sidney, Charles Walters--and Donen is as important as any of them.