Stanley Donen, director of Singin & # 39; in the Rain, dies at age 94

The filmmaker Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who, through clbadics such as Sing in the rain and Funny head helped to give us some of the most joyful sounds and pictures in the film's history, died. He was 94 years old.

Donen, who has often teamed with Gene Kelly but also worked with Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire, died Thursday in New York from heart failure, confirmed his sons Joshua and Mark Donen.

The 1940s and 50s were the era of choice for Hollywood musicals, and no filmmaker contributed so much to magic as Donen, one of the last survivors of that era, and a man who wanted to extend the boundaries of singing and surreal dance.

He was part of the unit behind scenes as unforgettable as Kelly dancing with an animated Jerry mouse Anweigh anchors, The rotation defying the gravity of Astaire across the ceiling of Royal WeddingAnd, the triumph of all time, Kelly splashing with joy as he executes the number of the title in Sing in the rain.

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Steven Spielberg reminded Donen as a "friend and a young mentor" for whom life and film were inseparable.

"His generosity in devoting so many weekends in the late sixties to filming students like me to learn storytelling, placing lenses and directing actors is a moment I will never forget" said Spielberg Saturday.

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said, "Before Stanley Donen's actors sang, they danced, he made the camera dance and sang the colors."

A poll conducted in 2007 by the American Film Institute on the top 100 American films Sing in the rainWith her inventive rendering of the Hollywood transition from silent images to talking images in the 1920s to Kelly's famous dance in the rain at number 5.

Donen was asked in 2002 whether filmmakers knew that Sing in the rain, Published in 1952 and performed by Debbie Reynolds and Donald O. Connor, will be revered decades later.

"You can not get through a movie if you do not think it's good," he told The Associated Press. "We thought it was good, more than that, I do not know, you do not think about it, you just think about how you can do it."

The film and Donen were first underestimated. Sing in the rain was initially considered a quality entertainment rather than an art and was not even nominated for the best image or achievement of an Academy Award. Donen, eclipsed by Kelly early in his career, has never received an Oscar nomination and waited until 1998 for an honorary award, presented by Martin Scorsese.

He was more than ready. Donen danced plays cheek with his Oscar statuette, which he nicknamed "this cute little guy". The crowd shouted and applauded as he hummed, "Heaven, I'm in paradise," Irving Berlin said. Cheek to cheek.

In his thank you speech, he explained his formula for a great musical. Use songwriters like Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and performers such as Kelly, Astaire or Sinatra. "And when the shoot starts," he added, "you show up and you stay away."

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Donen would remember the movies, especially those with Astaire and Ginger Rogers, as a necessary escape from the tensions badociated with one of the few Jews in his community. He took tap lessons during his teenage years and began his career in the show as a performer. He danced in the original Broadway production Joey Pal at the age of 16. The lead role was played by Kelly and the series' success has propelled it into the movies.

Donen had his first break in Hollywood when Kelly found him a job helping with the choreography of Kelly's 1944 film Cover girl. In the following years, he worked on choreography for films such as The bandit embrace, Featuring Sinatra, and Take me to the ball game, Featuring Sinatra and Kelly, who teamed with Donen on the choreography.

Sing in the rain was one of three films credited to Kelly and Donen as co-directors; the others were On the city, The Kelly-Sinatra musical comedy of 1949 on sailors on leave in New York, and the darkest It's always nice weatherIn which three soldier friends meet a decade later.

The co-director credits, rare in the films, was born from a tense relationship between Donen and the star, who had played such an important role in the advancement of Donen's career. Donen would later speak with bitterness of Kelly, who died in 1996, as cold and condescending and not fully recognizing his contributions. They separated for good after It's always nice weather, Which was released in 1955.

"It could be difficult with me and everyone," said the director The New York Times in 1996. "It was always a complicated collaboration."

Other Donen films included Seven brides for seven brothers (1954), with his exceptional sports choreography; Yankees Damn (1958), the remake of Broadway smash on the temptation of a baseball fan; and Funny head, In which Astaire has partnered with Audrey Hepburn to play a fashion photographer and his unlikely muse.

The character of Astaire in Funny head was modeled on Richard Avedon, and the famous photographer served as a consultant to Donen.

"Nothing is more fun than finding someone who stimulates you and who can be stimulated by you," Donen said in John Kobal's book, Gotta Sing. Gotta Dance: an illustrated history of musicals.

"The result, instead of adding two and two, multiplies, and you end up doing much better things, you are both carried to the top of the excitement."

Donen has worked in various genres. Indiscreet (1958) was a light joke starring Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and Two for the road (1967), with Hepburn and Albert Finney, was an exceptionally bitter and tense marital comedy, far removed from the carefree spirit of his musicals. (Donen himself was married five times and had in his New York apartment an embroidered pillow bearing the inscription "EAT DRINK AND RE-MARRY".

A film by Donen, the chic mystery Charade (1963) reminded viewers of a Hitchbad thriller.

Charade featured Hepburn as a precocious socialite whose husband was murdered and Grant, who appeared in four Hitchbad films, as a mysterious man who might or might not help him.

Donen strongly denied Hitchbad's influence, adding that the master of suspense "does not have the genre".

Donen had three sons; the eldest, Peter, died in 2003 from a 50-year-old heart attack. His first wife, the dancer Jeanne Coyne, later married Kelly. Yvette Mimieux was his fourth wife. Over the past two decades, her partner was filmmaker-comedian Elaine May.

None of his latest films has reached the heights of his most famous work. The nadir may have been 1984 Blame It on Rio, a comedy about a man (Michael Caine) who has an affair with the girl of his friend. Roger Ebert slammed the film as "clearly intended to appeal to the prurient interests of elderly and dirty men of all ages".

Other credits include a musical segment for the 1980s television comedy Moonlight and a stage production of The Red Shoes. In 1999, he directed the TV movie ABC Letters of love, With Steven Weber and Laura Linney.

"There are limits to television," Donen told The Associated Press in 1999. "And that's what was fun: trying to find a way to be surprising in the limits I'm always looking for boundaries, because then you have to be inventive. "