Dancing on the Ceiling

January 29, 1996
Readers won't learn much about film director Stanley Donen's private life here (former Broadway chorus boy, Jewish, born in South Carolina, five wives, a discreet love affair with Elizabeth Taylor) or his film technique (``blithe, seamless, effortless looking'' pretty much sums that up), but the book is a rich chronological catalogue of entertaining anecdotes about the movies themselves and the people who made them. The main reason to pick it up is Singin' in the Rain (1952), and Silverman (David Lean) makes the most of it, with many of the principals heard from: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Donen himself. Silverman calls the movie ``perfect,'' while Two for the Road (1967), with Audrey Hepburn, is Donen's ``best work.'' Other films include Royal Wedding (in which Fred Astaire indeed dances on the ceiling), Funny Face, Pajama Game, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Charade. Among the names dropped--or heard from--are Cary Grant, Billy Wilder, Busby Berkeley, Frederic Raphael and Kay Thompson. The villain of the piece, for reasons not made clear, is Gene Kelly, and there are just enough hints to make one suspect that Donen, not yet 20 when he began directing, may well be a good deal more interesting than he appears here. Filmography; photos.

February 1, 1996
Stanley Donen is best known for his innovative musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, such as On the Town, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Singin' in the Rain, and Funny Face. (The book's title comes from a sequence in Royal Wedding in which a jubilant Fred Astaire appears to dance on the walls and ceiling.) Donen's touch wasn't as assured when he turned to directing comedies and dramas, although his 1967 Audrey Hepburn-Albert Finney film, Two for the Road, enjoys a cult following. This study follows Donen's career from his beginnings as a cinematographer, through his days as a boy wonder of Arthur Freed's legendary MGM musical unit, to his later period of independent filmmaking in Europe. Silverman (The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century Fox, LJ 12/88) examines Donen's working relationships with Astaire, Hepburn, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, George Abbott, and Gene Kelly (portrayed here as a credit-grabbing egotist). Donen and many others cooperated with the author and give a good picture of a lost Hollywood. Despite its tendency to digress, the book makes a contribution to movie history. Recommended for large film collections.-Stephen Rees, Bucks Cty. Free Lib., Levittown, Pa.

February 1, 1996
Silverman is a clumsy writer, and, oddly for someone writing about a movie director, he is no film critic (he quotes other writers the few times he feels aesthetic commentary is needed). His survey of the career of the best movie musical director ever (who also made some terrific nonmusicals--"Charade" and "Two for the Road," for instance) makes pleasant reading, anyway. Silverman lent his ear to his subject, so the meat of the book is Donen's production anecdotes, augmented by the parallel recollections of particular movies' creative collaborators. The stuffing, so to speak, is the many capsule biographies Silverman plunks down in the middle of things whenever some other star's trajectory intersects Donen's. Meat and stuffing together make a mildly satisfying "lite" meal. ((Reviewed Feb. 1, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)