Stanley Donen: State of Grace

MW: Besides that one, which are your three or four personal favorites?

SD: Obviously, I like to see Gene do "Singin' in the Rain." Obviously, I like to see Donald O'Connor do "Make 'Em Laugh." I like the challenge number at the barn-raising in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

MW: What happened with you and Kelly after Cover Girl?

SD: I stayed on at Columbia; he went back to MGM. He borrowed me back to work with him on Anchors Aweigh. I did the cartoon sequence [the dance between Kelly and Jerry the Mouse]. That was my baby; a year of my life: that one little sequence. Between Cover Girl and On the Town I must have directed 30-40 sequences in movies; actually directed them.

MW: Were there any directors or movies that really influenced you?

SD: The funniest thing is not who influenced me positively, but who influenced me negatively. I had such an aversion to what Busby Berkeley did; in my early formative years, I thought it was terrible. Now, I think it's wonderful. But then, I wanted to do anything but what Busby Berkeley did. I wanted it to be more personal...I liked the Rene Clair musicals: A Nous la Liberte and Le Million. And the Lubitsch musicals.

MW: Talking about the Lubitsch movies, they prove how much sexier double entendres and allusions can be...

SD: That's right. It's much sexier to see a girl with a little bit of clothing on, than to see her stark naked, 'cause you're desperate to get it off of her. She's much more seductive, if the erogenous zones are covered, just barely. To me it is, anyway. And the same thing is true of a movie. It's more fun if you don't see them sweating when they're fucking. As Oscar Wilde once said about fucking--it's the greatest remark he ever made (because he actually, theoretically slept with a woman once)...

MW: Just as an experiment?

SD: I guess so. And they said to him: "Well, how was it?" He said: "The position is grotesque. The pleasure is momentary. And the cost is enormous."

MW: I would imagine, with someone of Oscar Wilde's girth...

SD: ...Any position would be grotesque!

MW: Well, to get back to the great Golden Age of MGM musicals...

SD: In retrospect, it's different than what it was like at the time. We sort of felt like our pictures were better than the other musicals. I can't deny that; we thought at the time--and when I say 'we,' I mean Gene and me and Vincente Minnelli and Roger Edens and Arthur Freed and Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Alan Jay Lerner and the people that were doing those pictures--we thought they were better, we thought we were doin' okay. We thought we were doing good work. But we didn't think we were doing incredible work. When you look back on it, you say, 'Gee, those were the wonderful days, and we were all doing what we liked to do.' But it didn't go that long. From my point of view it only went ten years, from '47 to '57.

MW: Let's talk about the first film you co-directed, On the Town, where you went out into the New York streets...

SD: Yes, but not enough. It was clear to Gene and me that we should make the movie in New York. In fact, the studio wouldn't hear of it. There were all these laws, rules of thumb: You cannot make a musical outside of the walls of Hollywood. And we said, "But this picture is about three sailors in New York for 24 hours; it's gotta be New York." And so, because of Arthur Freed, they allowed us to go back for, like, two weeks.

The picture's okay--I don't mean to knock it--but it could have been superb. It doesn't have enough dancing in it. And they traded in a great score-- Leonard Bernstein's--for a mediocre score. The picture's good and it's a slight breakaway from the normal MGM musical, but it could have been West Side Story. It could have been sensational.It's Always Fair Weather doesn't have enough dancing either. But it does have one tremendous sequence: Gene on roller skates. Incredible. Incredible!

MW: What about Singin' in the Rain?

SD: Now, that's pretty good. But, if you look at the reviews at the time... Take Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. He didn't knock it. He just said, "It's good; it's like all the MGM musicals." We suffered greatly because we came out as the Kelly musical after An American in Paris. And, by a fluke, which MGM didn't expect, Singin' in the Rain had just opened when American in Paris won eight Oscars. The studio said, "My God! We've got a picture with eight Oscars! Take Singin' in the Rain out of the theaters; put American back in." Which they did--and when that was played out, they reopened Singin' in the Rain. The steam was out of it.

And, for the critics, American in Paris was art. It was about art. Singin' in the Rain was thought of as "meat and potatoes." Hollywood standard fare.

MW: But it's about Hollywood--and art, too.

SD: Of course. It really is about Hollywood... You see, the four people involved in making that movie--Gene and me and Comden and Green--all of us are movie nuts. Actually just crazed over movies. And so that was right up our alley, that movie.

What we did was look at a lot of movies that were about making movies--one of them being Blonde Bombshell with Jean Harlow--and then Betty and Adolph said: "Well, let's see if we can write a plot." So, they went off and wrote it.

MW: Is it true that in the scene where Debbie Reynolds seems to be dubbing Jean Hagen (as untalented star Lina Lamont)...

SD: Yeah, in the looping scene, Jean Hagen did Debbie Reynolds doing Jean Hagen. Debbie has a very funny little accent, more so then: some Texas-y funny sound to her pronunciation. So Jean Hagen dubbed her, just in that one sequence.

MW: Could you talk about personalities for a while? Judy Garland?

SD: I think she was, without any doubt, the single greatest female musical star we had in those days.

MW: Was her decline inevitable?

SD: I suppose it was inevitable. The sort of general myth about how abused Judy was by MGM, or Louis B. Mayer specifically, is completely... upside-down. MGM did everything to save that girl: to protect her, to see that she had the best doctors, to not overwork her, to lend her money, to keep her afloat, to protect her from herself. And it was not to be. That's the real truth. Louis B. Mayer, specifically, adored Judy Garland. Now, she didn't see it like that. If Judy were sitting here, she'd tell you the opposite. But that's not so.

Judy was always the provider, for her whole family, so she always felt no one really liked her, for herself. She felt unloved, she was frightened and she was an addictive personality. And she got addicted to some of those pills 'cause doctors didn't know then they were addictive and destructive. In those days-- we're talking '40s and early '50s--doctors used to give out benzedrine and dexedrine to anybody. Amphetamines, highly dangerous substances... Any doctor. "You need some more bennies? Take 'em!"

MW: You made four films with Cary Grant. What was he like?

SD: Cary is a major reason I was able to break out of musicals. He wanted me for Kiss Them for Me, then he said "yes" to Indiscreet. And Ingrid Bergman agreed to do Indiscreet without reading the script, because she knew Cary was in it. People like Cary-- they're bigger than life, they create themselves. Cary obviously appreciated what were known as the Shaftesbury Avenue comedies of that day: Frederic Lonsdale, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, that same world that Rex Harrison came out of... But Cary created himself; that's my point. Those people--like Ingrid-- made themselves. They didn't just grow and blossom into a flower by somebody pouring water on them. That's an accomplishment of enormous proportions.

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