LOS ANGELES (AP) — Director Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who through such classics as « Singin’ in the Rain » and « Funny Face »…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Director Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who through such classics as « Singin’ in the Rain » and « Funny Face » helped give us some of the most joyous sounds and images in movie history, has died. He was 94.
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.
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 « Anchors Aweigh, » Astaire’s gravity-defying spin across the ceiling in « Royal Wedding, » and, the all-time triumph, Kelly ecstatically splashing about as he performs the title number in « Singin’ in the Rain. »
A 2007 American Film Institute survey of the top 100 American movies ranked « Singin’ in the Rain, » 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.
Donen was asked in 2002 whether the filmmakers knew that « Singin’ in the Rain, » released in 1952 and also starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, would be revered decades later.
« You can’t get through a movie if you don’t think it’s good, » he told The Associated Press. « Certainly 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. »
Both the film and Donen were at first underrated. « Singin’ in the Rain » 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 « this cute little fella. » The crowd yelled and applauded as he crooned, « Heaven, I’m in heaven, » from Irving Berlin’s « Cheek to Cheek.
