Following a period of neglect, Stanley Donen's reputation is on the rise. The director with the most elegant touch of all talks about Singin' in the Rain, Funny Face, Indiscreet, Charade, Two for the Road, and Bedazzled.
One of the first things I notice in Stanley Donen's living room is a signed photograph from one of his best friends sitting on a bureau. Staring up at me, with a rumpled hat and a rueful smile, is Billy Wilder. Scribbled on the photo is this legend: "To Stanley. How soon it goes. One year: The ten best films. Next year: The hundred neediest cases. Shit."
Billy shares the table top with Cary Grant and Gene Kelly, among others, and his sarcasm is a raffish gong amid a room that's a cool pastel symphony of pinks and pearls, a room that looks as if Cyd Charisse should be dancing through it on her way to the swimming pool, trailing yards of gossamer silk, Gershwin melodies urging her on. This is a man who, at 27, was co-directing, with Kelly, Singin' in the Rain--almost universally regarded as the tip-top peak of the American film musical. He's not just one of the two great Golden Age MGM musical directors, but a master as well of blithe trickery, urbane comedy, and lightly ironic modern morality plays: On the Town,_ Royal Wedding_, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face, The Pajama Game, Indiscreet, Damn Yankees, Charade, Arabesque, Two for the Road, Bedazzled, The Little Prince, Lucky Lady, and Movie Movie. In all his films, Donen's expertise is impeccable but casual, seamless but earthy. And a sly wink lies below each film's surface.
Like his friend Wilder, or Elia Kazan, or the late Orson Welles, or dozens of others in the past, violently ageist decade, Donen's been pretty much of a wasted resource over the last several years. Only one Donen movie has appeared recently--the sprightly, flawed, overly-zaftig sex comedy Blame It on Rio (a Larry Gelbart Americanization of Claude Berri's One Wild Moment). But Donen's low profile is not for any want of energy. He produced the Academy Awards in '86, which featured a "Follies"-like tribute, starring MGM musical stars; then, a year later, he directed a great musical production number with Sandahl Bergman and Bruce Willis on a particularly memorable "Moonlighting" episode. Currently, he's working on two feature scripts with Ronald (The Dresser) Harwood and Frederic (Two for the Road) Raphael. He's also far sharper on current events, modern fumbles and foibles and new movies than most buffs half his age. Among his current favorite moviemakers are contemporary Blake Edwards (especially for 10, Victor/Victoria and S.O.B.), and two from younger generations: Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen (he calls Woody "the great American filmmaker"). And, though he walked out of Batman after fifteen minutes, he cites Jack Nicholson as his favorite current actor.
So, Stanley Donen and I settle down in this witty-palatial room, all sea-shells and Hockneys and high, light ceilings, in the Bel-Air showplace that he shared for 10 years with ex-wife Yvette Mimieux. Our talk is occasionally interrupted by phone calls, from which I swear I can hear the ominous word, "bottom line." And Donen begins disarmingly to bare his life and opinions, just like a guy who never had to look back over his shoulder at anyone. Maybe he doesn't.
Michael Wilmington: What was it like growing up in Columbia, South Carolina?
Stanley Donen: I'm Jewish--which is peculiar in South Carolina. In New York, if you were born a Jew, you were in the majority--or at least you felt like you were. In South Carolina, you were a true ethnic minority.
MW: When did you start dancing?
SD: I started dancing when I saw Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio, at approximately nine years old. Fred Astaire influenced me, more than anything, to be in "show business." I never had a clue before that. My father worked for a chain and every summer he would be called back to the main office in New York, and I would go and study dancing there: mostly tap dancing. I was never a terrific dancer, so I started choreography early on. I never had a passion to perform.
MW: What was it like when you finally directed Astaire, your first idol?
SD: It was the most unexpected and thrilling thing that ever happened to me, because, at nine years old, I saw this guy who caused an explosion inside me, and now I was going to direct him. When you ask Baryshnikov or Jerome Robbins or George Balanchine who's the great dancer of the 20th century, they all say Fred Astaire. So, how did I feel? Thrilled!
MW: You worked together on seven films with Gene Kelly, in addition to three which you two co-directed. How did you meet him?
SD: I met him in 1940 on my first job, in "Pal Joey." He was the star. I was 16 years old, one of four male dancers behind him; Van Johnson was another. There were thousands of people, and I just came to an open call; I auditioned and got the job. I suspect I was hired because I had such a thick Southern accent that when John O'Hara, Dick Rodgers, Larry Hart, and George Abbott heard me, it made them laugh. That's what made me stand out.
Gene and I didn't particularly hit it off on that show. The next show I was in, "Best Foot Forward," was also directed by Abbott; he made me the assistant to the choreographer--who only lasted a week. And so Abbott asked Gene--who was still in "Pal Joey"--if he would choreograph "Best Foot Forward." Gene came over and said: "Well, gee, Stanley, you could be my assistant." That's how we really got to know each other.
Then he went to Hollywood-- and I went into a third Abbott show, "Beat the Band." The war was on; I decided to come to Hollywood to see if I could get a job in the movies. Just like Singin' in the Rain: guy shows up with a suitcase, looks up at the signs.
Gene telephoned me one day and said: "I've just agreed to be in a film called Cover Girl at Columbia. Would you like to come be my assistant?" So, I went to Columbia--and I got to direct Gene's big number, the "Alter Ego Ballet," where he dances with another image of himself. The director, Charles Vidor, said "It can't be done," but it was my idea and I knew you could do it if the dancing was worked out to the split second, to pre-recorded tracks. Of course, you needed somebody like Gene, who could hit marks like that: he had to hit exact marks on the same beat, with the camera in exactly the same place. First we shot one take, then Gene switched places and we shot another, and when the film was joined he appeared to be partners with his own alter-ego. If you look at it now, it's not like a computer. But it's close enough.
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.
MW: What about Audrey Hepburn? You made three of her best films: Funny Face, Charade, and Two for the Road.
SD: She's wonderful. Frederic Raphael and I worked out a little outline of Two for the Road based on his notion of a married couple meeting each other, at various ages, in the vacation spots they always visit. And we went to see Audrey in Switzerland and she read it and said, "I don't think it'll work." She had just had a flop with Paris When It Sizzles; it had this tricky film-within-film construction and she was leery about doing something experimental again. But we said: "We're going to write it anyway." So, when we did finish it, we brought it back--and she thought it was great and we made it.
MW: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore?
SD: I saw Peter and Dudley on a weekly TV show on the BBC-- and they were so funny and so good. I rang them up and said: "You don't know me from a hole in the head, but I'd like to make a movie with you." They had a script ready--a "Faust" story, which wasn't very good to begin with--but we eventually turned it into Bedazzled. We didn't keep much from the original: just the basic idea... and the bouncing nuns on the trampolines! You know, the devil's last speech in Bedazzled: How he's going to make the world so disgusting, with freeways and exhaust fumes and Frosti-Freeze and plastic bars... That's twenty years ago--and it's not too far off the mark.
MW: Judy Holliday?
SD: She was probably the brightest person I've ever known. Just amazing intelligence; she soaked up everything like a sponge. She was my girlfriend for a while; we had a brief liaison around the time she was playing in Shore Leave [which Donen later directed as Kiss Them for Me, with Jayne Mansfield in Holliday's part]. She loved jazz; that's why she called herself "Holliday"--she was crazy about Billie Holiday.
MW: Alan Jay Lerner?
SD: Alan Lerner and I didn't get along at all; not even on Royal Wedding. He had the feeling I had to make the picture the way he saw it. It's as simple as that. He thought I had to please him. And I didn't think that way; we had two basically different points of view about how to make a movie. On The Little Prince, I wanted a more up-tempo score, less Viennese schmaltz and I wanted Saint-Exupery's ending. And Lerner didn't. He was really the only writer I couldn't get along with.
MW: You made two films with Astaire. What was the relationship between Astaire and Kelly?
SD: Kelly was the new boy on the street, but I don't think Fred had any envy about it. I think he was quite happy to have somebody around. And there was no reason for Gene to be envious: Fred Astaire was already a star when Gene was still in school.
MW: If Astaire and Kelly were the two king performers of that whole period, you and Vincente Minnelli were the two top directors.
SD: Fortunately or unfortunately, my take on musicals is a bit different from Vincente's. I'm a very earthy fellow and his musicals have a certain off-the-ground quality. They're very light and dreamy. And the stuff I do--Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Singin' in the Rain--is more down there, in the dirt.
MW: Speaking of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, is it true that it was the biggest hit of your career?
SD: Yes, it was a huge hit, the biggest financial hit I've ever been connected with. And the studio was dead against it; I'll never forget it. I said I wanted all the brothers to be dancers. And they said: "What: Dancers? You're gonna have a bunch of fags up on the screen, for backwoodsmen? You'll ruin this picture!" "No, I won't; they'll be very virile. You don't know what dancing is, if that's the way you think." Tremendous struggle. And that's what made that picture, in my opinion. The dancers and the energy. I desperately wanted to shoot the picture in the mountains, but I just couldn't win that battle. I must say, in the studio's defense, what I wanted to do was extremely expensive. Now it's hard for me to look at the picture. It's so phony looking.
MW: When you look back on the MGM period, do you appreciate being part of it all?
SD: I appreciated being a part of all those wonderful talents. In a funny way, there was this part of it which in retrospect, I realize was not unlike--and I'm not suggesting we were artists of equal stature--but it was not unlike the Impressionist period when the artists were feeding off each other, meeting in cafes, talking to each other, looking at each other's pictures. We had that. And that was wonderful.
MW: What was it like to socialize in Hollywood then?
SD: A lot of fun. I'll tell you a story. One night there was a huge party at Gene Kelly's house. The doorbell rang, and it turned out that a man had come along earlier trying to sell Gene pressure cooking pots--which were a brand new idea at the time--and the man had said to Gene, "Let me come back and describe how this cooking works to any number of dinner guests you like. You provide the food, I'll bring the pots, give the speech, cook the dinner, and then you can all eat it." So Gene had taken the man up on this offer and--this is what Gene's sense of humor was like--he then invited over this incredible group of people. Judy Garland, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, John Garfield, Roger Edens, Arthur Freed. Even Greta Garbo was there.
Well, the man walked in with his chart, his easel, two or three suitcases full of pots, and when he saw this cast of characters that he was going to have to do his speech in front of, he very nearly had a coronary in front of us all. But he pulled himself together, and though we could hardly keep from laughing, no one embarrassed him as we listened to this extremely boring, boring presentation of pressure cooking pots. Then he invited us all into the kitchen to watch him cook the dinner. It took forever, standing around the kitchen as this man told us how the food cooked in its own juices, you didn't need to add spices, it was all terribly healthful. Eventually, we all sat down and ate what he'd cooked, and it was terrible, just terrible. But the punchline to the story is, Greta Garbo--who was a health nut--bought the entire line of pots, and the poor man made the biggest sale of his life! So the story has a happy ending.
Funny things always happen at parties now, too. Eight or ten years ago I was invited up to San Francisco for a museum's evening honoring Richard Avedon, the photographer. They were going to show scenes from a movie he and I had worked on called Funny Face, so he called me and said, "You don't even have to stay overnight. I'll have a car greet you. The drinks are going to be served at Francis Coppola's house. You'll be there ahead of us because of the airline schedule; Francis says you can go use his bedroom, and when we're all ready for the party, you'll just come downstairs." I thought, I'll be clever, I won't even bring a suitcase. The car met me, they let me into Francis's house, they sent me up to his incredible Victorian bedroom, there I found a collection of rare and exotic cinema books the likes of which I've never seen. I took off my jacket and started reading, and eventually I had to pee. In the bathroom there was this enormous Victorian chair, which Francis had converted into some kind of strange toilet, up on a platform, too high to stand up there and pee.
So I climbed up, dropped my pants, and continued to read. Well, when I got up, I saw that I had peed through the chair all over the back of my pants. I didn't know what in the world to do. First thing, I put the pants in the basin, washed the spot and made it clean. But now I had this huge water spot on the back of my pants, and I thought, I can't go down to the cocktail party like that! I noticed that Francis had a very old-fashioned gas heater in the bedroom; I lit the heater, laid my pants down, and thought, "I've been saved." Then I noticed this little singeing odor. I jumped up, yanked my pants off the heater, and though I kept them from burning through, they were now yellowed. So I put them on, put on my jacket too, and noticed that if I stood leaning over backwards all the time, the tail of my coat would just about cover the yellowed burn mark. So for the entire evening, I had to walk around Francis Coppola's house with my stomach stuck out to here, leaning backwards, to conceal my humiliation!
MW: Are you bothered when people pigeonhole you as a great MGM musical director--and slight your later achievements, like Indiscreet, Charade, Bedazzled, Two for the Road or Movie Movie?
SD: Well, each film is so different. You can't look at Bedazzled and say, "It's the same guy that made Indiscreet." People always say to me, "You have such a clearly defined sense of style," and when I hear it, I get crazed, because what I hear--and I know they mean it as a compliment--is that I have such a narrow vision that I can't get out of it.
When you think of the great artists... Take Billy Wilder, as a good example, as a film director. He's made films in the broadest possible spectrum: from melodrama to farce to drama to romance... They stretch across all kinds of barriers. I can't think of anybody who's shown so much scope.
I got pissed off when I did Charade, and everybody said, "It's a copy of Hitchcock." And I said, "Why in the world would you think that? Why does he own that genre?" I got angry. You see, it took me so long, it was such a struggle, to move myself out of musicals--because I had had a success, nobody wanted to allow me to direct a non-musical picture. It was so hard. And the only way I could get it going was to become a producer myself.
MW: Let's talk about the reports of bitter tights over the ending of Lucky Lady. What really happened?
SD: It was very simple. When the picture was written, it had a bittersweet ending to it--with the two male leads killed and Liza Minnelli singing a song on a boat ten years later. It sounded wonderful on paper, and I shot it. But it wasn't wonderful on screen; it was like the picture suddenly went into another key-change. In my opinion, the picture didn't work. We tried all kinds of other endings--which we wrote and shot. I shot one in Rome, a farcical ending, with the three--Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman--in bed. That didn't work. Then I had another ending, that I put together with existing film; that didn't work. So I ended it the way I ended it, which was the best I could do.
MW: You weren't under pressure from the studio?
SD: I was only under pressure from Liza Minnelli, who had never seen the picture, except in parts. She wanted her big song; she wanted that ending. So Fox had this meeting of all the press for Lucky Lady, and Liza came in to me beforehand--Alan Ladd, Jr. was there too--and said: "Listen. If you don't put back the first ending, where I sing that song, I am going to tell the press that the picture's been destroyed... tomorrow." Tomorrow! This is 24 hours. I said, "Liza, you can't be serious." She said, "I'm absolutely serious." I said, "In other words, you're blackmailing me into putting back the original ending?" She said, "That's right." I said, "Well, I don't blackmail. You'll have to do what you want." There was no way I was going to change it. I was intractable on that. It's not up to her to decide, that's not the way it works. A picture's made through one person's point of view. It can't be a group that makes a movie.
She left. Laddie said, "God, maybe you better change it. She's gonna do it." I said, "Well, if she does it, she does it." And she did it. There were a thousand people in the hall. She got up--with Burt Reynolds at her elbow, who had never seen the picture in any form--and she said, "Stanley ruined the movie." In front of thousands of reporters, while I listened to it on closed circuit radio. Two years later, she wrote me a letter, apologizing. A little late. A private apology for a public denunciation just doesn't cover it.
MW: How do you feel about movie-making in the '80s? Today's scripts are generally so bad...
SD: Well, that's because they're not written by writers. They're not written, by and large.
In my opinion, we can't entirely blame the economic people. What gets made is what made money last time. And it's the public that pushes these things in these directions. We can fight the trend, like Woody Allen does; the executives could try to educate the public into better things, like some of them did in the old days--but, in fact, the people in charge of the money like what the public likes. So writing just doesn't come into the equation.
When you've got a committee to make a movie, you're lost. Absolutely lost. A picture can really only be seen through one person's eyes. They may stink, or they may be great, but it's the unique qualities that make art; it's not the collective qualities. It's the differences that make it terrific. And the more narrow you can be in the rules that you impose on each picture, the more inventive it will appear to be.
Why I think it's a thrilling adventure to make movies is that I can somehow satisfy myself, make it worthwhile for the audience, and still get the money to make the picture--and keep going in this terribly complicated economic-social system. And that's the greatest challenge to all of my abilities: my intellect, my talent, my judgment. All of it is called upon. If I can beat those terrible complications, and still come out with a picture...
Look, all I can do is eat and sleep; I need a sandwich and a bed. And that's what I like. I like making movies. That's my life. I am a fellow who makes movies. If you said to me, "What are you?" I'd say, "I am a film director." That's who I am. And that's the great challenge.
MW: It's interesting when you think that Astaire, from the Midwest, became the worldwide epitome of savoir faire, and Kelly from Pittsburgh the worldwide symbol of athletic grace and joy. And you...
SD: But origins are meaningless. I'm this little Jew from South Carolina, you know. That's...
MW: That's Hollywood.
SD: That's life. We are what we are. We are what we enjoy and what we appreciate. And that's what we become.
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Michael Wilmington is the co-author of John Ford and a film critic for The Los Angeles Times.