Customer Reviews

Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and his Movies

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Stylish, all-star (the author was able to track down primary sources, from Audrey Hepburn, to George Abbott, to the great Kay Thompson -- all before they died), and entertaining -- and beautifully researched. (Not sure what book the previous "reviewer" wrote about .) the chapter on "Singin' in the Rain" alone is worth the price of admission. And Richard Avedon offers some brilliant insights into the making of "Funny Face," and, perhaps, settles once and for the the differences between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

As the Publisher's Weekly review said, "the villain of the piece, for reasons not made clear, is Gene Kelly." There are continuous jibes at Kelly throughout the book, from the point of view of Donen (and anyone else who supports it) through the pen of Silverman -- that Gene Kelly was an egotistical, credit-seeking, no talent, nasty person. I can only imagine the personal and professional jealousy that drove Donen and Silverman to make these claims.

Full of contradictions, this book seethes with poorly
researched data, questionable "facts" and is, in a word or two, a Donen Diatribe.
Using repetitive jibes at such greats as Gene Kelly, both the writer and his subject utilize 3/4 of the tome blaming others, fault-finding and whining that Donen was not THE mentor, THE legend, THE venerated ONE.
How sad that a life or life's work is so pitiably sprinkled into one chapter of 28 presented, and that the author found himself compelled to throw in almost 40 unnecessary pages at the end to fill up the otherwise laborious vituperation.
I'm so glad I got a library copy instead of having purchased this waste of good time.

The Book Report: Really now, how mysterious is the subject treated in this book? It's a professional biography/filmography of the life of ace director/former wunderkind Stanley Donen, of "Singin' in the Rain", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Indiscreet" and "Charade" fame. Being a professional biography, don't expect his personal life to come under salacious scrutiny, or hear whimperings and moanings from ex-wives (five!) or sons (three). Darn it.

My Review: The author knows his subject. Personally. And it shows: The anecdotage of any Hollywood player can come across as a personal hagiography, and so the trend towards memoir ("I remember") by these folks. Donen clearly cooperated with the author, and clearly smoothed his path to the major players in the Donen life story. There is some sense of stuff not gone into that a less involved and more prurient biographer, one bent on delivering the sense of the man to the detriment of the sense of the player, would have pursued. In some ways that feels like a loss to me, but overall I really was not aware of the small smears of whitewash that might or might not have been applied to certain passages in Donen's remarkable career until I had sat down to cogitate for this review.

From unpromising beginnings in middle-class Columbia, South Carolina, Donen ran far away to glamourous exciting New York City at age 17. He was in every right place at every right time for the next 20 years and became a close work associate of Gene Kelly's, leading him to Hollywood and to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, THE place for a dancer/choreographer/aspiring director to break into the biggest time musicals anywhere ever. There he worked on a long series of projects for Arthur Freed, a legendary producer of MGM's top-flight musicals. It was a good association, though Freed seems never to have fully appreciated the talent and the drive of Donen. He wasn't above making use of the man, though, and it's to our lasting benefit as filmgoers that he did.

At the end of the rainbow for musicals, about 1958, Donen had already read the tea leaves and fled Hollywood for London. There he produced and directed some of his best and worst stuff: "Indiscreet" (mature love affair between equals) and "Charade" (delightful caper dramedy about secrets, lies, and how gorgeous Audrey Hepburn was), some of the best work ever, both starred Donen's friend Cary Grant and are even today delightful and watchable. "Arabesque" and "Staircase", Donen's remake of "Charade" without Grant or Audrey Hepburn, and his sole effort at directing a story about gay men, were the pits.

But the two films that, I venture to say, will be remembered by cineastes long long after you and I are dead, are the 1957 musical "Funny Face" starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, and "Two for the Road" starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. Both are *achingly* romantic. Both are gorgeously filmed, well acted, and far deeper than a casual glance at their stats will show. And both get a good long treatment in the book, the author and the director seeming to agree that here are monunments too large to ignore. The only other film so treated is "Singin' in the Rain," which has emerged as a major classic since the 1970s. And in every case, the stories told and the pitures painted are satisfying to the fan, and informative to the curious reader. In fact, that can be said of every part of the book.

I have to say that I'd've given the book a higher rating if it had gone into more personal detail...not prurient stuff, but more about Donen's off-set, off-screen life...than it does. I can understand the choice made by the author to focus on the *work*--probably required by the man written about, is my guess--but a **little** more than cursory mentions of marriages and divorces would not have come amiss.

The book has photos throughout the text, which I prefer to photo inserts, even though there is some sacrifice of quality. It seems worth it to me, I like seeing the photos near to the anecdotes they amplify. Recommended to film buffs, fanboys, and serious readers of movie-biz books. It's too light on fizz for the celeb-bio reader.