Musicals—13

Two months ago, we began looking at 50s musicals by looking at An American in Paris, and this week we’ll end our look at 50s musicals with another film that spent the greatest portion of its time in Paris as well—Funny Face [1957] by Leonard Gershe. And like My Fair Lady that will be a huge hit in the 60s, it tells a Pygmalion-esque story.

Take a look at a clip from early in the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ_QkwexvYc and note what’s going on. The fancy uptown fashion people come down to a downtown grungy Greenwich Village bookstore to use it as a backdrop to a fashion shoot where they want to make their ditzy model seem intellectual. The young woman minding the store, Jo Stockton, objects but they just work around her to rearrange the bookstore to suit their needs. They leave the store in chaos and photographer Dick Avery [based on the real-life Richard Avedon] comes back to help Jo clean the place up. In the course of his time there, he takes a picture of her… says she has a lovely face, and she says her face is funny. Later, in his studio, he develops that picture and realizes she has potential as a model. She has absolutely zero interest in being a model, she’s into philosophy and, in particular, the philosophy of a Frenchman, Professor Flostre. But when Avery tells her that the fashion shoot they want her for is in Paris, she’s persuaded to go along with this insanity of the fashion world in order to realize her dream of meeting Flostre.

In Paris, she does indeed become the talk of the town as its newest model sensation—here’s the scene where that’s revealed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPElaYUCTmA and, voila, the Pygmalion sort of transformation, orchestrated by Dick Avery.

And then, of course, the inevitable love story follows. But unlike the Pygmalion story, the master doesn’t fall for his model, the model falls for her creator first.

I could list clip after clip of this film for you to watch, but you should just watch the film. It’s fully of predictable but fun songs and situations—and it’s full of Paris. The film doesn’t make AFI’s list of the top 25 musicals, but I think it should. In my mind, it’s a classic.

But how did it get to be that way? Because it had a rough beginning. Four of the songs come from a failed Gershwin Broadway musical from the 30s and the plot was roughed out by writer Gershe who based it on the story of a friend of his, photographer Richard Avedon, who did indeed transform a model into a sensation, then fall in love and marry her.

The Pygmalion story is a universal archetype, it’s used here and it will be used again. It’s about transformation and wouldn’t always have to be a love story. What, for example, would a film be like where the creator of a model or an actress or a race car driver or whatever grew to hate—not love—their creation? Would you have a revenge musical? A musical comedy where the creator tries to undermine his creation? Think about the possibilities.

The Pygmalion story for today—what would that be, and could you use it as the basis for a musical? That’s the thing about archetypes, they’re there for a reason and they’re open to constantly be revised and updated—so why not give it a try and see what kind of musical you could come up with?

And next week, on to the 60s!

Copyright © Diane Lake

20Oct19

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