Brigadoon - Lerner and Loewe
by Claire J Rottenberg
Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner wrote several
musicals, but they are best known for their highly
successful play, "My Fair Lady." Lerner and Loewe are
the only composing team that wrote the scores for two
movie musicals that won the Academy Award for Best
Picture - "Gigi"
in 1958 and "My Fair Lady"
in 1964.
Long before their Academy Award winning musicals,
Lerner and Loewe created "Brigadoon," a musical about
a mystical village in Scotland. "Brigadoon" was first
produced on Broadway in 1947. This first production
ran for 581 performances and won a Tony award for its
choreographer, Agnes de Mille.
In 1954, a movie version of "Brigadoon" was made,
starring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. Brigadoon was
shorter than later movies that were based on Broadway
plays, and it seemed to be filmed more along the
lines of earlier musicals written specifically for
the movies rather than as a re-creation of a Broadway
play.
"Brigadoon" has some beautiful songs, including
"Heather On The Hill" and "Almost Like Being In
Love." Although I haven't seen the play of
"Brigadoon," I know that some songs from the original
play were eliminated and, most likely, more dancing
was added to adjust to Gene Kelly's main talent.
Unlike most of his other movies, "Brigadoon" was not
developed specifically as a project for Gene Kelly
and, therefore, there are no special dance sequences,
such as those in "An American in
Paris"
or "Singin' in the
Rain."
However, the dancing to "It's Almost Like Being in
Love" is very typical Gene Kelly choreography.
"Brigadoon' was the last major film that used Gene
Kelly as choreographer and star.
Learn more about the movie version of
Brigadoon.
Read my earlier posts on
Gigi and
My Fair Lady