Mar 23
John Kriza shot by George Platt Lynes
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John Kriza shot by George Platt Lynes
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Deep in My Heart
Stanley Donen’s DEEP IN MY HEART (1954, TCM) opens with an on-screen overture. As the camera pans over the orchestra playing a medley of Sigmund Romberg songs, one violinist seems to be scowling. He’s simply not having it. At the end, Jose Ferrer, as an aged Romberg, sits on the conductor’s podium with his wife, Doe Avedon, who, like the other principal women in the film never seems to age. As the orchestra plays “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” they seem particularly forlorn, and who can blame them. The last of MGM’s composer bios, the film features an almost unbearably bad script between often quite good musical numbers featuring an array of cameos by what one critic called everybody who was close to the phone on casting day.
The plot, which seems to have little do with Romberg’s actual life, tries to come up with conflicts: Romberg wants to write classically tinged music, but only tin-pan alley sells; he wants to write operettas, but his producer only wants show tunes; he loves a woman whose family thinks his work vulgar. That latter is a real trial to sit through, particularly since it makes us wait forever to get from one guest star to the next. Instead, you get not just a dreary meet cute but a disastrous tea party during which Romberg is forced to audition the Al Jolsen musical he’s writing by playing all the parts. It’s meant to be embarrassing to Romberg, but it’s also an embarrassment watching Ferrer indulge in such blatant hot dogging and, at one point, even attempt blackface. You may be tempted to yell, “People are watching this” at the screen.
But the good musical numbers are wonderful, choreographed by Eugene Loring, shot by George J. Folsey in dazzling technicolor and sumptuously designed by Edward Carfagno and maybe Cedric Gibbons. Surrounded by flowering trees, Jane Powell, in a huge white hoop skirt and picture hat, sings “Will You Remember (Sweetheart)” so well you can almost forgive them for making pop-singer Vic Damone attempt operetta. Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell (yes, Palmer Courtland) do an immensely sexual dance to “One Alone” that seems to be about a woman trying to get a man to dominate her and then dumping him because he won’t cuddle afterwards. The show tunes are just as well represented, with Rosemary Clooney dueting with then-husband Ferrer to “Mr. & Mrs.,” Gene Kelly and his brother Fred doing “I Love to Go Swimmin’ with Women” and Ann Miller tapping up a storm in “It” (keep an eye out for the vamp, comically played by a young Julie Newmar). Of course, that’s what these films were all about. The flimsy, historically inaccurate script (The Kellys play vaudeville stars who never existed) is just an excuse for the numbers. You can find most of them on YouTube and save yourself two hours and 12 minutes.
Loring House,  2456 Astral Dr, Los Angeles, California,
Built in 1958 for choreographer Eugene Loring,Â
Richard Neutra & Guesthouse built by Steven Ehrlich
(Design duo, Escher GuneWardena, extended the grounds with a glass-paned master suite and bath).
Performed by: Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn
Number: “Funny Face”
Choreographers: Fred Astaire and Eugene Loring
Style: Broadway
From: Funny Face (1957)
Eugene Loring and Antony Tudor in the world premiere of Loring’s The Great American Goof (ABT, January 11th 1940). This was the opening night of ABT’s first season.
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In anticipation of upcoming comments on composer Aaron Copland, here’s a picture of Eugene Loring, as he looked in the title role of Aaron Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid.” As a friend noted, “He looks like one of the Village People!”
Today would have been Audrey Hepburn's 85th birthday. Enjoy the cool, eccentric exuberance of this beatnik number from Funny Face! Choreography by Eugene Loring.
Cyd Charisse was born this day in 1922. And finally, my favorite routine by her. (That I know of) Flawless technique and pure sensuality, without showing an inch of skin. (And how about those backdancers, eh?)