Someone Named Stanley Donen

8/15/2013

Yesterday, I mentioned how Alan Jay Lerner dismissively wrote about Stanley Donen in his autobiography as "Someone named Stanley Donen. Whether Lerner was right or wrong about what was done to the score he wrote with Frederick Lowe for the movie musical, The Little Prince, that starred Gene Wilder, that's for film scholars to decide. I just thought it was a wee dismissive of someone considered one of the great directors of film musicals, and who made a lot of non-musicals, as well.

As I noted, Stanley Donen co-directed Singin' in the Rain,On the Town and Damn Yankees!, and directed Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Funny Face, along with non-musicals Charade and Bedazzled. He also co-directed the musicals The Pajama Game and It's Always Fair Weather and directed the musical Royal Wedding and non-musicals Arabasque, Blame It on Rio, Movie Movie, and Saturn 3...among many others. (I should note that he directed three films written by Larry Gelbart.)

And for all this, he received the Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1997, the year of Titanic. I described this as him giving "one of the all-time great acceptance speeches. Really." I know that's hyperbole, but I can back it up.

(Would I leave you hanging like that?!)

So, here then, presented to him by Martin Scorsese, is Stanley Donen's acceptance speech. Which gets the crowd roaring. (Side note: when you see Gregory Peck in the audience, Donen directed him in Arabesque.) Tell me if this isn't, actually, one of the great acceptances. Most especially for Lifetime Achievement. And easily one of the most memorable. Hey, I tries nots to steers ya wrong!

5 Comments

Valerie Alexander link

8/15/2013 06:29:19 am

Wow! That made me so happy. What a legend.

Robert Elisberg

8/15/2013 06:55:53 am

When I say it's one of the most wonderful, most memorable Oscar acceptance speeches...much as that seems like hyperbole -- as you can see, it isn't hyperbole.

That said, though I'm glad it made you happy -- since you're the Happiness Maven, it's not a hard thing to have done...

Dan Wolf link

8/15/2013 08:40:14 am

Fantastic ... but Gregory Peck wasn't in Charade. That was Cary Grant. Greg was in Arabesque. We do see Michael Caine, who was in Blame it on Rio.
Post Script: In my view, "Two for the Road" is the best movie on marriage ever made.

8/15/2013 09:00:11 am

Dear Dan, Thanks for your note -- and thanks mostly for the correction. I've fixed it in the article. Yeah, I figured that there were others in the audience he'd directed, and should have glommed onto Michael Caine, but I just decided to go with Gregory Peck and leave it at that...

Douglass Abramson

8/15/2013 01:35:06 pm

Wow! In that clip I saw one dead marriage, several dead people and even more dead careers. I love that speech too. My first reaction when I saw it live was that he still danced pretty good for a man his age and that it was remarkable that he was willing and eager to perform on live TV. Astaire stopped dancing pretty much when he was in his sixties. Kelly would occasionally dance a little longer, but he was down to a little soft shoe by the time he stopped making public appearances.

I did have a thought about the perceived attitude behind Lerner's comments. Lerner started out when Broadway and the West End was king and everything else fell somewhere between second rate and embarrassing. (Popular music and drama. I'm leaving classical music, opera and their ilk out of my example) Lerner never made ends meet in Vaudeville, like Cohan or Tin Pan Alley, like Berlin or had Hollywood be a major source of income, like the Gershwins. His career was "purer". As far as he was concerned, The Little Prince was butchered by someone who could "only" work in Hollywood. If he was any good, why wasn't he working on Broadway? I think that its all a bunch of baloney, but it does fit with the comments and the attitudes of the East Coast arts community regarding any entertainments that weren't New York based. That snobbishness seems to have dried up over the years (I think), but it would have been in full bloom during Lerner's life and career.

Someone Named Stanley Donen

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories