'An American in Paris' and 'Funny Face' - Two Influential Three-Act Musicals

American in Paris featured a Black and White Ball as a turning point in its final act, which became a popular theme for balls and fundraisers. The San Francisco Symphony held its first Black and White Ball in 1956, which continues as the premier annual ball today. In New York, after the 1958 release of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn, Capote held his own famed Black and White bash at The Plaza, which was chronicled in Deborah Davis's 2006 volume Party of the Century.

And Funny Face influenced America's most influential First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Four years after the film's release, Jackie's first official trip to Paris embodied the apotheosis that Audrey Hepburn underwent in Funny Face after her earlier persona is vividly remade. Dressed in a luscious red Givenchy gown, Hepburn emerges into an all white scene at the Louvre from behind Winged Victory; her arms raise the gown material around her like exotic butterfly wings.

Like Audrey's character, Jackie had also been a bookish intellectual at the Sorbonne in Paris prior to her 1952 Newport wedding to then Senator Jack Kennedy. Like Audrey Hepburn, Jackie was also born in 1929 and 5'7 ½" tall and slim, multi-lingual, artistic and athletic, soft spoken, and also a client of Audrey Hepburn's life-long friend and collaborator, couturier Hubert d'Givenchy. Jackie refined many of their ideas, and her own, under the tutelage of her mentor and friend, Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, who later ran MOMA's Costume Institute at Jackie's behest. Vreeland was portrayed in Funny Face as the character Maggie Preston, editor of Quality Magazine, played by Kay Thompson who was best known as the author of the Eloise series about a girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel. While a college student, Jackie Kennedy won Vogue's Prix d'Paris competition for organizing an entire magazine edition. In her submittal she imagined herself as "art director of the world." Which in a manner she became as Camelot's Queen.

Jackie was beloved in France, the world's capital for style. Two million French citizens crowded the streets waving American flags, screaming, "Viva Jacqui!" during the Kennedy's official 1961 State visit there. The usually reserved President de Gaulle, the French press, and public were especially rhapsodic over Jackie's televised interviews given in flawless French. Funny Face expressed what Jackie was by nature. And, Jackie's favored ceremonial color, white, chosen for her ethereal Inaugural gown, closed both American in Paris and Funny Face with the female leads dressed in white tulle gowns waltzing off in the arms of their prince, with Hepburn wearing the chicest wedding dress ever designed.

Art, Music, Dancing, Awards:

American in Paris and Funny Face both utilized eye-popping cinematography, vivid set and art design and featured Gershwin songbooks. The male and female leads in each film began their careers first in dancing, rather than singing or acting. At 39-years old, Gene Kelly, requested 19-year old dancer Leslie Caron for her debut film as his love interest in American in Paris. And 57-year old Fred Astaire partnered with then 27-year old Audrey Hepburn as her condition for accepting the role. Audrey had studied dance throughout childhood, holding fervently to dreams of a ballet career. After WWII when she and her mother fled Holland for London, it was a small dancing role there that won her a screen test for Willy Wilder's Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck. Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for Roman Holiday in 1953, four years before she filmed Funny Face, and the same year she won a Tony for the title role of Gigi on Broadway, also after being spied by accident; this time crossing a hotel lobby in the south of France. Author, Collette, honed-in on Hepburn and cried out, "There's my Gigi! As Willy Wilder said about Audrey Hepburn, "God kissed her on the cheek and there she was."

Funny Face won an Oscar for Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costumes by Givenchy, and Original Screenplay by Alan Lerner (who often teamed with long-term collaborator Frederick Lowe to write hits like Gigi, My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, and Camelot, which of course became synonymous with the Kennedy Administration.) Plus a Director's Guild Award for outstanding directorial achievement by Stanley Donen, also a choreographer (and who later directed Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain, and Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant together in Charade, about which Donen said there was never a more enchanting couple in film history.) Funny Face also won a Palme D'Or at Cannes. And a Laurel Award from the Writer's Guild of America for Best Written American Musical.

American in Paris was nominated for eight Oscars and received six, including Academy Awards and Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Director; a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Gene Kelly. In addition, Kelly received his only Oscar, as an honorary award that year for "versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography." The film also received Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Musical Score, Best Writing, Scoring and Screenplay, and Best Editing,

American in Paris' 18-minute phantasmagoria at the end cost half-a-million to produce, making it one of the longest and most expensive dance pieces in film history. Producer Arthur Freed was MGM's famed czar of musicals and lured then Broadway genius Vincent Minnelli to direct some of the greatest films of the 20th Century, including American in Paris where so many scenes echo with Minnelli's stagecraft, as do others like his Meet Me in St. Louis, Kismet, Brigadoon, and Gigi.

The tonal differences in the two films is that Funny Face is the wittier, more sophisticated film, with a more absorbing plot that holds up with repeated viewings. Astaire and Hepburn were much more elegant, deft and subtle. Gene Kelly himself said that Astaire was the more aristocratic dancer and that his own dancing reflected his background in athletics and gymnastics, plus his everyman Pal Joey persona . He termed Astaire the Cary Grant of dance, to his Marlon Brando. Kelly aimed for a distinct American look. Astaire, and Hepburn were European at heart. Ironically, Leslie Caron, while being French herself, very much echoes Kelly's exuberantly American style.

The costumes in Funny Face were hands down superior. Audrey Hepburn's iconic image remains undated fifty years later. In fact, director Stanley Donen said that Audrey Hepburn was much more about fashion than acting or dancing. One of Audrey's rare disagreements with any director occurred when Donen insisted she wear white socks along with the skin tight black slacks and sweater in her solo dance number in the Paris beatnik club. She was reduced to tears from fear the white socks would "break the line." Hepburn spoke of the importance of the silhouette and that clothes should be a sleeked down vase that contains the flower. The idea of the white socks she thought was ruinous, though later, she admitted it had worked.

At MGM Arthur Freed acquired the American in Paris title from Ira Gershwin. It was from one of three of George Gershwin's symphonies, (the other two were Porgy and Bess, and Rhapsody in Blue) and became the title song. Tragically, the prolific musical genius George died much too young in 1937 at age 38 following surgery for a brain tumor to see one of his symphonies made into a major film.

Funny Face's Marketing Snafu

Hepburn had just completed King Vidor's War and Peace (1956) and wanted something light like Roman Holiday (1953) or Sabrina (1954.) She was in Paris when she first received the Funny Face script. Her first husband, Mel Ferrer said that she generally took three days to decide, but read and accepted Donen's project, which was originally named Wedding Day, in just two hours. Her mother said Funny Face was "Audrey, all the way through," while Musical Film Magazine called Funny Face the most "directorially ravishing of all American films," and Rex Reed said it was the "Best fashion show ever recorded on film." But the marketing posters fail to project any of that.

American in Paris had superior film posters. Funny Face posters failed in two ways. First, they were varied and therefore never cemented one single strong 'brand' in the public's mind that conveyed the memorable story in a glance. Second, it was a marvelously colorful film yet most of the poster images were muddied. It was Audrey Hepburn's first American film not to gross in the top ten of films in the year of its release. For many film fans her titles: Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, conjure distinct images, while Funny Face does not.

For me, An American in Paris relies on flamboyance, and seems larger because of its theatricality, though Funny Face is only ten minutes shorter and beautifully cohesive. And while the budgets for both films were similar, many scenes in American in Paris were shot on stage sets. Funny Face, filmed mostly on location, sustains an authenticity that makes watching it a pleasure, again and again.

I cannot watch the metamorphosis of Hepburn's character without recalling that this was the little girl in Nazi occupied Holland who saw her family broken apart, her lovely home ruined, her uncles taken out and shot, who was starved and existed on flower bulbs. She'd been grabbed by a machine-gun toting guard and put on line for a bus bound to a work camp, and fortunately broke away. As a child she aided the WWII Dutch resistance, grew to become a great humanitarian, an Ambassador for UNICEF, and my favorite actress.

A fighter strips down to the barest essentials, the essence. Audrey Hepburn's childhood was a fight to survive the horrors of war. As Hubert d' Givenchy said, she became a "very precise person," and this shows in her acting that always conveys the essence.

For me, Funny Face personifies charm, magic, beauty and the idea that when we open our eyes to eternal things everything changes.

I find ultimate value in what takes me to the lovely places. Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. One of my all-time favorite films. And that's a wrap.

© 2008 -Suzanne de Cornelia. All worldwide rights apply. This article may be reprinted on websites as long as the entire article, including website link and resource box below are included and unchanged. Suzanne de Cornelia is a freelance writer, and author of "French Heart." Contact Suzanne on Facebook, or Twitter @SuzanneDeC. And click-on her site now for a blogroll of free and fascinating resources: http://suzannedecornelia.com

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