Musicals Blog

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