Stanley Donen - Early Life and Stage Career

Early Life and Stage Career

Stanley Donen was born in Columbia, South Carolina to Mordecai Moses Donen, a dress-shop manager, and Helen (Cohen), the daughter of a jewelry salesman. His younger sister Carla Donen Davis was born in August 1937. Although born to Jewish parents, he became an atheist in his youth. Donen has described his childhood as lonely and unhappy due to being one of the few Jews in Columbia and he was occasionally bullied and called names by anti-semitic classmates at school. To help cope with his isolation, he spent much of his youth in the local movie theaters in Columbia and was especially fond of westerns, comedies and thrillers. The film that had the strongest impact on him at that time was the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Flying Down to Rio in 1933. Donen said that he "must have seen the picture thirty or forty times. I was transported into some sort of fantasy world where everything seemed to be happy, comfortable, easy and supported. A sense of well-being filled me." He also shot and screened home movies with an 8 mm camera and projector that his father bought for him.

Inspired by Astaire, Donen began to take dance lessons in Columbia and performed at the local Town Theater. His family would often travel to New York City during summer vacations where he frequently saw Broadway musicals and took further dance lessons. One of his early dance instructors in New York was Ned Wayburn, who had taught an eleven-year-old Fred Astaire in 1910. After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Donen attended the University of South Carolina for one summer semester, studying psychology. Encouraged and supported by his mother, he moved to New York City to pursue dancing on the stage in the fall of 1940. After two auditions he was cast as a chorus dancer in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, which was directed by the legendary George Abbott and starred Gene Kelly in his star making role. Abbott then asked Donen to appear in the chorus of his next Broadway show Best Foot Forward. He quickly became the show's assistant stage manager and Kelly asked him to be his assistant choreographer. Eventually Donen was fired from Best Foot Forward, but in 1942 he was the stage manager and assistant choreographer for Abbott's next show Beat the Band. In 1946, he briefly returned to Broadway to help choreographer a few dance numbers for the show Call Me Mister.