‘The Deanna Durbin Unit’ (photo: Robert Cummings, Deanna Durbin, and Charles Laughton in It Started with Eve) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Movies Save Universal."] Deanna Durbin and Henry Koster, who has been credited with helping to mold Durbin’s screen persona, collaborated on five movies. Besides Three Smart Girls, there was the inevitable sequel, Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), in addition to One Hundred Men and a Girl, after which Durbin’s salary was reportedly doubled to $3,000 per week, plus a $10,000 bonus per film; the Cinderella-like First Love (1939), in which, following worldwide publicity, Durbin gets kissed on screen for the first time (Robert Stack was the kisser); Spring Parade (1940), with a Viennese setting and Robert Cummings as her leading man; and It Started with Eve (1941), a light, well-received romantic comedy co-starring Cummings and Charles Laughton. (Universal would also release the 1964 remake, I’d Rather Be Rich, starring Sandra Dee in the Robert Cummings role, Robert Goulet in the Deanna Durbin part,...
- 5/5/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
We've heard lots about Natalie Portman's travails as a fictional prima ballerina in Darren Aronofsky's film, but she's just the latest in a long line of doomed cinematic dancers
Warning: contains spoilers
Yesterday's G2 interviews on Darren Aronofsky's ballet film Black Swan made me think about how feature films have incorporated ballet into their stories. Most people will think immediately of musicals, which have a readymade slot in their song-and-dance numbers, or of wish-fulfilment fantasies: Fame, Flashdance, Center Stage, Save the Last Dance and the like. From that standpoint, Black Swan looks like an exception. But look beyond these films and two other genres come to the fore: melodrama and horror.
Over decades and across continents, ballet dancers in feature films have consistently been associated with hysteria, madness, torture, the supernatural and death. Former New Yorker critic Arlene Croce dubbed this a "tradition of morbidity", and certain...
Warning: contains spoilers
Yesterday's G2 interviews on Darren Aronofsky's ballet film Black Swan made me think about how feature films have incorporated ballet into their stories. Most people will think immediately of musicals, which have a readymade slot in their song-and-dance numbers, or of wish-fulfilment fantasies: Fame, Flashdance, Center Stage, Save the Last Dance and the like. From that standpoint, Black Swan looks like an exception. But look beyond these films and two other genres come to the fore: melodrama and horror.
Over decades and across continents, ballet dancers in feature films have consistently been associated with hysteria, madness, torture, the supernatural and death. Former New Yorker critic Arlene Croce dubbed this a "tradition of morbidity", and certain...
- 1/7/2011
- by Sanjoy Roy
- The Guardian - Film News
Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.
Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
It was her uncredited turn opposite Astaire in "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1946 that won her a seven-year contract with MGM. Her moves with Astaire in Vincent Minnelli's "Band Wagon" were often described as "heavenly."
One of the greatest female dancers in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, she starred in such big-screen extravaganzas as "Brigadoon" (1954) and as a young Vicki Carr in "The Silencers" (1966). While she strutted her considerable stuff on the screen, her singing was invariably dubbed.
Though she didn't often spend much time on the screen, her scenes made dramatic impact. Outfitted in the most splendid costumes, she wowed...
Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
It was her uncredited turn opposite Astaire in "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1946 that won her a seven-year contract with MGM. Her moves with Astaire in Vincent Minnelli's "Band Wagon" were often described as "heavenly."
One of the greatest female dancers in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, she starred in such big-screen extravaganzas as "Brigadoon" (1954) and as a young Vicki Carr in "The Silencers" (1966). While she strutted her considerable stuff on the screen, her singing was invariably dubbed.
Though she didn't often spend much time on the screen, her scenes made dramatic impact. Outfitted in the most splendid costumes, she wowed...
- 6/17/2008
- by By Duane Byrge
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.
Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
It was her uncredited turn opposite Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies in 1946 that won her a seven-year contract with MGM. Her moves with Astaire in Vincent Minnelli's Band Wagon were often described as "heavenly."
One of the greatest female dancers in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, she starred in such big-screen extravaganzas as Brigadoon (1954) and as a young Vicki Carr in The Silencers (1966). While she strutted her considerable stuff on the screen, her singing was invariably dubbed.
Though she didn't often spend much time on the screen, her scenes made dramatic impact. Outfitted in the most splendid costumes, she wowed audiences with her dance moves in such 1940s entertainments as The Harvey Girls, Three Wise Fools, Till the Clouds Roll By, Fiesta, The Unfinished Dance, Words and Music and The Kissing Bandit. Her final dancing turns were in the '50s in such films as Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, Invitation to the Dance and Silk Stockings, a musical remake of Ninotchka that reteamed her with Astaire.
Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
It was her uncredited turn opposite Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies in 1946 that won her a seven-year contract with MGM. Her moves with Astaire in Vincent Minnelli's Band Wagon were often described as "heavenly."
One of the greatest female dancers in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, she starred in such big-screen extravaganzas as Brigadoon (1954) and as a young Vicki Carr in The Silencers (1966). While she strutted her considerable stuff on the screen, her singing was invariably dubbed.
Though she didn't often spend much time on the screen, her scenes made dramatic impact. Outfitted in the most splendid costumes, she wowed audiences with her dance moves in such 1940s entertainments as The Harvey Girls, Three Wise Fools, Till the Clouds Roll By, Fiesta, The Unfinished Dance, Words and Music and The Kissing Bandit. Her final dancing turns were in the '50s in such films as Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, Invitation to the Dance and Silk Stockings, a musical remake of Ninotchka that reteamed her with Astaire.
- 6/17/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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