Stanley Donen

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Stanley Donen (DON-?n, 1924-1924) was an American film producer and choreographer whose most well-known films were On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), both of which stars Gene Kelly who co-directed.

His other films include Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Indiscreet (1958), and Charade (1963).

He began his career on Broadway as a chorusman for director George Abbott, where he befriended Kelly.

Before joining Kelly, he was in Hollywood and worked as a choreographer.

Donen began working as a contract manager for MGM under producer Arthur Freed, who created critically well-received box-office hits after On the Town.

Donen and Kelly co-directed the musical Singin' in the Rain, which has appeared on lists of the best films ever made.

Personal life

Donen married and divorced five times and had three children. Jeanne Coyne, a dancer, choreographer, and actress, was his first wife. Marion Marshall, 97, married actress Robert Wagner in May 1951, and died on April 14, 1948. Donen and Marshall had two sons together: Peter Donen (1953–2003) and Joshua Donen (1955), both of whom were born in 1955. Cary Grant's character in the 1963 film Charade was based on the boys' first names put together, as shown by the boys' names. Donen and Marshall were married from 1952 to 1959. After Marshall married Wagner and Donen, they had a lengthy custody contest over their sons. Adelle, Countess Beatty, Donen's third wife. She had previously been the second wife of Earl Beatty's second wife. They married in 1960, had one son (Mark Donen, 1962), and lived in London together. 275–276 They married in 1969 and divorced in 1971. Yvette Mimieux, an American actress, was the fourth wife of Donen. They were married from 1972 to 1985, but after their separation, they became close friends. Pamela Braden, 36 years his junior, was Donen's fifth wife. Donen suggested to her four days after she had met her. They were married from 1990 to 1994: 335.

Donen dated actress Judy Holliday while on Broadway in the early 1940s. 262 Elizabeth Taylor was also dated for a year between his first and second marriages. 137–139 In his final years Donen's longtime companion Elaine May, who lived from 1999 to his death and claimed to have proposed marriage to "about 172 times," he wrote about.

Peter Donen's eldest son, Peter Donen, appeared in films including Superman III, Spaceballs, The Bourne Identity, and The Truth About Charlie. He also created the Blame It on Rio's title credits. In 2003, he died of a heart attack at the age of 50. Joshua Donen's second cousin, as well as The Quick and the Dead, and Gone Girl, was a film director who worked on such films as The Quick and the Dead. On Blame It on Rio, Mark Donen, Stanley's third son, worked as a production assistant.

Mordecai, Donen's father, died in 1959 in Beaufort, South Carolina. 323–324 Helen Donen died in 1989 in South Carolina at the age of 84, and Donen delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

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Donen, the last living notable film director of Hollywood's Golden Age, after the deaths of Billy Wilder, George Sidney, Elia Kazan, Robert Wise, and Jules Dassin in the 2000s. He appeared at film festivals and retrospectives occasionally and continued to develop film project ideas in his last years. Stanley Donen: You Just Do It. He was the star of the 2010 documentary Stanley Donen: You Just Do It.

Donen was confirmed in December 2013 as part of a new film co-written with Elaine May and Mike Nichols, which would be produced by Mike Nichols. Also included in the table reading of the script for prospective buyers were actors Christopher Walken, Charles Grodin, Ron Rifkin, and Jeannie Berlin. A retrospective of Donen's 90th birthday in 2014, "A Lotta Talent and a Little Luck: A Celebration of Stanley Donen," was held in Columbia, South Carolina, from July to August. It included a tour of Donen's childhood neighborhood, a Steven Silverman lecture, and film screenings at the Nickelodeon movie theater Donen frequented as a child.

Donen died of heart disease in New York City at the age of 94. In comparison to May, he is survived by two sons and a sister.

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Early life and stage career

Stanley Donen was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Mordecai Moses Donen, a clothing store manager, and Helen (Cohen), the daughter of a jewelry salesman. Carla Donen Davis, his younger sister, was born in August 1937. Donen Davis, 14 years old, became an atheist in his youth. 312 Donen portrayed his childhood as lonely and unhappy as one of Columbia's few Jews, and he was sometimes mocked by anti-semitic classmates at school. 8 - Donen spent a large portion of his childhood in local movie theaters and was particularly fond of Westerns, comedies, and thrillers to help with his loneliness. The 1933 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Flying Down to Rio was the film that had the biggest influence on him. Donen said he "must have seen the picture thirty or forty times." I was transported into a world of fantasy where everything seemed to be safe, convenient, and well-provided. I was greeted with a feeling of well-being. "4 He shot and screened home movies with an 8 mm camera and projector that his father bought for him."

Donen took dance lessons in Columbia and appeared at the local Town Theater after being inspired by Astaire. 4 His family and friends used to visit New York City during the summer holidays, where he saw Broadway musicals and learned how to dance. Ned Wayburn, a nineteenth-year instructor in New York, taught Astaire in 1910, a young boy. 14 Years ago Donen's first day after graduating from high school, Donen attended the University of South Carolina for one summer semester, studying psychology. 333 He travelled to New York City in the fall of 1940, after being inspired by his mother. In the original Broadway performance of Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, directed by the legendary George Abbott, he was cast as a chorus dancer in two auditions. Gene Kelly, a new up-and-coming actor who became a Broadway actor in the role, was the titular Pal Joey.

Donen appeared on the chorus of his forthcoming Broadway show Best Foot Forward. Kelly hired him to be his assistant choreographer on the show's assistant stage manager, and Kelly asked him to be his assistant choreographer. 30–31 Donen was fired from Best Foot Forward, 33 years ago, but he was still the stage manager and assistant choreographer for Abbott's upcoming show Beat the Band in 1942. Donen came back to Broadway briefly in 1946 to help with choreographing dance numbers for Call Me Mister's Call Me Mister.

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Film career

Arthur Freed, a prolific producer of musical films at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, bought the film rights to Best Foot Forward and created a film version starring Lucille Ball and William Gaxton in 1943. Donen came to Hollywood to audition for the film and signed a one-year deal with MGM. Donen, 39-40, appeared as a chorus dancer and was appointed assistant choreographer by Charles Walters. 46. At MGM Donen, Kelly, who was then a supporting actor in musicals, revived his friendship with him. When Kelly was loaned to Columbia Pictures for a film, he was given the opportunity to choreograph his own dance numbers and begged Donen to assist. "Stanley needs a job," Kelly wrote. I needed someone to count for the cameraman, someone who understood the steps and who could show what I was going to do to ensure the photograph was set up correctly." Donen accepted and choreographed three dance sequences with Kelly in Cover Girl (1944). Donen, 58, came up with the idea for the "Alter Ego" dance sequence, where Kelly's reflection leaps out of a shop window and dances with him. Donen and Kelly produced the scene themselves, despite director Charles Vidor's insistence that the plan would never work, so Donen and Kelly directed it: 58–66 and Donen spent more than a year editing it. 63–64: 10 Kelly made the film a film star and many film critics agree that it is a pivotal and innovative musical. Donen joined Columbia for one year and choreographed several films there: 242 : 247 but returned to MGM the next year when Kelly requested help with his next film.

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Donen and Kelly choreographed the musical Anchors Aweigh, first performed in 1945 and starring Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The film is best known for its groundbreaking scene in which Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse from the Tom and Jerry cartoons. This will be the first time in feature-film history that a hand-drawn animation will be mixed with a live-action video. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, as well as MGM animation designer Fred Quimby, were involved in the animation, but Donen's had the vision. Donen and Kelly originally planned to use either Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck for the sequence and spoke with Walt Disney; Disney had a similar vision in The Three Caballeros (1944) and was unable to sell any of his characters to MGM; Disney was working on a similar plan in The Three Caballeros (1944). 77–71 The duo spent two months shooting Kelly dancing and Donen spent a year perfecting the scene frame by frame. "The net result at the preview of Anchors Away, which I attended, blew the audience away," Barbera says.

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Although Kelly completed his service in the United States, he did not return to the United States. Donen did not work as a choreographer on musical films from 1944 to 1946, according to the Naval Air Service as a photographer. "I practiced my art, being involved with music, track, and photography, during this time." I'd often directed the sequences. I've always had a brilliant idea about musical sequences. "17 Donen said he was refused military service as a result of his elevated blood pressure. 76 In Living in a Big Way (1947), Kelly and Donen curated and choreographed Kelly's dance scenes. 18 They began working on an original story about two baseball players from the early twentieth century who live off-season as vaudevillian song and dance men. This film would later become Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). Kelly and Donen had intended to co-direct the film, but Freed dropped Busby Berkeley instead, and Kelly only supervised Kelly's dance numbers. Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin appeared in the film.

Freed gave Donen and Kelly the opportunity to direct On the Town, which was released in 1949 after the success of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. The film, which was an adaptation of the Betty Comden and Adolph Green Broadway musical about sailors on leave in New York City, was the first musical to feature location filming. Donen and Kelly wanted to film the entire film in New York, but Freed would only allow them to stay one week away from the studio.

"New York, New York" was the film's opening number this week. Donen and cinematographer Harold Rosson shot a scene on the streets of New York City that would be adopted by the French New Wave a decade later. Spatial leap cuts, 360-degree pans, hidden cameras, dramatic shifts of screen direction, and non-professional actors were among the methods used. Joseph A. Casper, Donen's biographer, said that the scene avoids being gratuitous or amateurish, while still "developing plot," describing the setting, including the feeling of its regal atmosphere and maleescent mood, as well as describing its malevolent atmosphere and manic mood, as presenting its galvanizing atmosphere and manic mood, introducing and describing characters. "Today the film is regarded as a turning point," Casper said, "the first bona fide musical that pulled dance, as well as the musical genre, out of the theater and captured it on film rather than film; the first to make the city a central character."

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On a 24-hour shore leave in New York that brought them to Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, and Vera-Ellen, starred Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin as three sailors. Both economically and critically, the film was a success: 34 and won the Academy Award for Best Music Scoring of a Musical Picture, while screenwriters Comden and Green received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. Donen made his directorial debut at the age of 25 like Orson Welles. Kelly, according to Donen, was "responsible for the majority of the dance movements." In the dramatic and musical sequences, I was behind the camera. "Italian Kelly and Donen were a great team," Kelly said. "I thought we complemented each other really well," he said.

Donen joined MGM as a director after the success of On the Town. Kelly's next two films were for Freed, but not with Kelly's participation. Donen was given the opportunity to guide his boyhood idol Fred Astaire after being fired as producer on Pagan Love Song due to personal differences with actress Esther Williams.

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Astaire and Jane Powell appeared in England at the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip in 1947 as a brother-sister American dancing team competing in England. Judy Garland had been playing lead roles but was forced to leave due to sickness and was eventually replaced by Powell. 122–126 Powell's love affair with a wealthy Englishman (Peter Lawford) threatens to ruin the brother-sister performance, while Astaire finds his own passion with another dancer (Sarah Churchill). The film is loosely based on Astaire's real-life relationship with his sister and early dancing partner, Adele Astaire, who retired after marrying an English lord in 1932 and including "You're Both the World to Me" number, where he appears to defy gravity by dancing first on the walls and then on the ceiling. The shot was made possible by inserting the camera inside a steel-reinforced rotating cylindrical chamber with the camera attached to the cylinder. Both Astaire and the film's lyricist Alan Jay Lerner said they were aware of the possibility. 131–132 The film, which included music by Lerner and Burton Lane, was released in March 1951.

Love Is Better Than Ever, Donen's sequel, was not released until March 1952. Larry Parks plays a streetwise show business agent who is forced to marry an innocent young dance instructor (Elizabeth Taylor). Donen and Kelly appear in cameo roles. 201 Parks' appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his eventual admission of his Communist Party membership and the possibility of naming others participants were the reasons for the film's postponement (by more than a year). 139 At the box-office, the film was unpopular.

After the publication of An American in Paris (1951), Donen partnered with Kelly, who was still recovering from his fame after the debut of An American in Paris (1951). He and Kelly teamed up in the Rain (1952), which would be one of the most highly lauded films of all time. Comden and Green, directed by Harold Rosson, produced the film, which stars Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, and Cyd Charisse.

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Freed brought Donen and Kelly (who also hired Comden and Green to write a script): 28 to make a musical with old songs written by him and composer Nacio Herb Brown in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 2 Comden and Green decided to write a story about the writers' time period in which the songs were published, and satirized Hollywood's transition from silent films to "talkies" in the late 1920s. Comden, Green, and Donen talked to everyone at MGM, including 19 comedians who were in Hollywood at the time: 19 of the first movie musicals and the technical difficulties with early sound films. 148–148 This was a scene based on Freed and Berkeley: 162 and a scene that refers to silent film star John Gilbert. 65 Donen and Kelly also made use of MGM's extensive collection of sets, dolls, costumes, and miscellaneous equipment from the 1920s.

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Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Hagen) are two silent film actors in Hollywood whose careers are jeopardized by the onset of "talkies." Lockwood saves his career by turning his new film into a musical with support from his best friend Cosmo Brown (O'Connor) and love interest Kathy Selden (Reynolds). The shooting was smooth, but Donen thought Kelly's "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence was too long, according to Donen. 164 The "Singin' in the Rain" musical number took several months to choreograph, and Donen and Kelly discovered that to create puddles in the street, you had to dig holes in the cement.

When it was released in April 1952, the film was a hit, grossing over $7.6 million. An American in Paris had been a surprise Best Picture winner at the Oscar Awards in March, and MGM decided to re-release it. Singin' in the Rain was pulled from several theaters to screen the older film, preventing it from generating any more money. In the Rain, 169 Singin' in the Rain was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Hagen and Best Original Score. Donald O'Connor received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, as well as Comden and Green, who received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. 187 Only modest criticism from critics like Bosley Crowther: 141 : 183 and did not begin to receive acclaim until the late 1960s. 169 One of its earliest supporters, Pauline Kael, said that it "may be the most enjoyable of all movie musicals" and that it "is perhaps the most enjoyable of all movie musicals – just about the best Hollywood musical of all time." It was re-released in 1975 to critical and popular success.

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Donen, now established as a highly respected film producer, followed his MGM career with Fearless Fagan (1952). Carleton Carpenter stars Carleton Carpenter as a GI who wears his tame lion with him when he joins the army, based on a true tale. Debbie Reynolds, Marge Champion, and Helen Wood appear as three young dancers competing for the lead in a new Broadway musical. With music by Burton Lane and Ira Gershwin, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion and Kurt Kasznar appear. Reynolds and Fosse's "Give a Girl a Break" dance was first staged backwards and then played in reverse to give the appearance that the two characters are surrounded by hundreds of balloons that immediately appear at the touch of their fingers. 184 Shooting The film became a painful one for Donen due to a big on-set brawl over the film's choreography starring Fosse and Gower Champion Nathan Booth. 182 On its first appearance, the film was not well reviewed, but its fame has increased over time.

Donen continued his solo career and scored another success with the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul's film's music is based on a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and choreography by Michael Kidd. Jane Powell plays Milly, an 1850s frontierswoman who marries Adam (Howard Keel) just hours after meeting him. Milly discovers that her husband's six brothers are uncivilized and oafish as she returns with Adam to his log cabin in the Oregon backwoods. Milly's sarcastic suggestion that the brothers kidnap six women from a neighboring town to marry them. The film was shot in a new CinemaScope style and is best known for its dance sequences, particularly the "barn raising scene" in which architecture and construction have morphed into acrobatic ballet steps. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was one of 1954's most popular films: 197 and 197 on several critics' Top Films lists. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Music (Scoring of a Musical Picture), which it received. 76 Its success was a surprise for MGM, which invested more money in two other musicals: Rose Marie and Brigadoon, starring Kelly. 197 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was more profitable than any of the other films, as well as On the Town and Singin' in the Rain, and the event was a major turning point for Donen's career. 76 The film was later criticized by novelist Francine Prose, who called it "one of the most repulsive films about men and women that has ever been produced" and a musical about rape.

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Donen's biographical film about Sigmund Romberg, the Hungarian-born American operetta composer, is "deep in My Heart (1954). José Ferrer, the film's director, was a cameo by several MGM contract actors, including the only screen pairing of Gene Kelly and his brother Fred. Despite poor reviews, Romberg's fame helped make the film a hit.

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It's Always Fair Weather (1955), Donen's third and final directorial collaboration with Kelly, was another musical. Freed, Comden and Green, and André Previn scored it. Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Michael Kidd, and Dolores Gray appeared on the show. Originally intended as a sequel to On the Town, Kelly, Dailey, and Kidd, three ex-GIs who re-encounter ten years after World War II and find that none of their lives have turned out as expected. Kelly approached Donen with the initiative, but Donen was first tentative due to his own achievement. During production, their friendship suffered, and Donen wrote, "the atmosphere from day one was very tense, and no one was talking to anyone." "211" It was a "one hundred percent nightmare" that was a "struggle from beginning to end," the 211 man said. MGM refused to allow the co-directors to film on location in New York this time. 86 It's Always Fair Weather was moderately profitable, but not as well as their previous two films. It was Donen's last film with Kelly or Freed. He fulfilled his MGM employment deal by working with other studios after it was completed. MGM's last project was to complete the final four days of shooting on Kismet in July 1955 for director Vincente Minnelli.

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Donen's next film was Paramount Pictures for producer Roger Edens. Funny Face (1957) contains four of the original George and Ira Gershwin songs from the 1927 Broadway musical of the same name that had starred Fred Astaire. It was loosely based on the life of fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who also worked as the visual consultant and produced the film's opening title sequence, and it featured additional music by Gershe and Edens. Donen and Edens began pre-production at MGM, but they had a difficult time trying to negotiate Astaire and Audrey Hepburn's Paramount contracts, the Warner Brothers-owned right to the Gershwin songs they desired and their own MGM contracts. Donen was eventually released from his MGM deal and allowed him to make his next two films at Paramount and Warner Brothers respectively, as promised. Astaire, 229, plays an ageing fashion photographer who discovers the intellectual bohemian Hepburn at a used bookstore in Greenwich Village and transforms her into his new model while falling in love with her in Paris. Despite protests by Paramount, which had recently invested in the new VistaVision film style, Donen, Avedon, and cinematographer Ray June worked together to give the film an abstract, smokey look that resembled the period's fashion photography. 231–233 Funny Face was on display at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, receiving glowing reviews from critics such as Bosley Crowther. In contrast, 241 Sight & Sound accused it of being anti-intellectual.

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Donen received a letter from his old boss George Abbott, asking him to produce a film version of Abbott's stage hit The Pajama Game at Warner Brothers when he was pre-production on Funny Face. Donen accepted the contract: 229 and Abbott co-directed the film version as part of a multi-year contract to get the Warner-owned Gershwin music he wanted for Funny Face. Doris Day and John Raitt appear in the Pajama Game (1957), with music by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross and choreography by Bob Fosse. Raitt is a plant manager at a nightwear factory who is in constant conflict with the plant's union leader (Day) until they finally fell in love. Donen's working relationship with Abbott has been described as improved, with the narrator saying, "Abbott would] play tennis, come watch the set for an hour, then go home." "While it was only a modest financial success, Jean-Luc Godard praised it and said, "Donen is unquestionably the master of the movie musical." The Pajama Game exists to prove it.

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Kiss Them for Me, Donen's next film (also 1957). Cary Grant was personally asked by Cary Grant to oversee and begin writing the book when MGM was still under MGM ownership. 261 Grant, Ray Walston and Larry Blyden appear in the film as three navy officers on leave in San Francisco in 1944 with a plot that closely resembles On the Town. Kiss Them for Me, unlike On the Town, is a dark comedy that compares the officers' selfless heroism with their self-absorbed hedonism when on leave. The film received mainly critical feedback.

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Donen began as an independent producer and director after three films were released in 1957. He had reluctantly agreed to direct Kiss Them for Me on the condition that twentieth Century Fox obtains the right to terminate his MGM deal. 263 Now free of contractual obligations, he created Grandon Productions with Grant and signed a Warner Brothers distribution contract. 269 Donen will self-produce most of his films for the remainder of his career, many under the name "Stanley Donen Productions." Indiscreet (1958), based on a Norman Krasna's script starring Grant and Ingrid Bergman, was a start for Donen and Grant. The film was shot in London due to Bergman's busy schedule. Bergman plays a well-known and cynical actress who falls in love with Grant, a supposedly married playboy. When Bergman learns she has been lying about his wife, she concocts a charade with another man in order to win Grant's complete affection. Donen's clever manipulation of the strict Production Code is involved in a scene in the film. Grant is in Paris, while Bergman is still in London, and the two exchanging pillow talk over the phone is on the radio. To make it appear that the two actors were in the same bed together, Donen used a split screen of the two stars with coordinated movements. The film was a financial and critical success, with Donen 131 and George Cukor compared to Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor.

With Damn Yankees, Donen briefly returned to the musical genre. (also 1958), based on George Abbott's Broadway hit. In the same hands-off collaboration as their first film, he co-directed with Abbott. 252 Like the Pajama Game The film features music by Adler and Ross, as well as choreography by Fosse. Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, and Ray Walston appeared in the film.

Damn Yankees!

It's an adaptation of the Faust legend about a Washington Senators fan who would sell his soul to give the losing team a good hitter. Walston plays the Brooks Brothers, who gives the fan his wish and transforms him into the mumbling young hitter Joe Hardy (Hunter). With seven hidden cameras, Donen was able to shoot three authentic Senator-Yankee games on location. 134 The low-budget film was a modest financial success and received rave reviews. 144 It was also Donen's last musical film before The Little Prince (1974).Donen, the Indiscretion Donen, made England his home until the 1970s. 274 Musicals' waning fame prompted Donen to concentrate on comedies. He explained that his "London base gave me the benefit of being away from the Hollywood rat race." Despite what anyone else is doing or in spite of what you've done already, going your own way was rewarding. "I also had the benefit of Europe's influence: their way of living and making films." Donen became a precursor to the then-emerging British New Wave film movement in the early 1960s.

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Donen signed Columbia Pictures' non-exclusive, three-film contract in the late 1950s. 277 This was his first film under his new name, Once More, with Feeling. (1960): The United States is a republic in the United States. The film, which was adapted by Harry Kurnitz from his own stage play, was shot in Paris and starred Yul Brynner as a tyrannical orchestra conductor whose mistress (Kay Kendall), who eventually married him in order to quickly divorce him for his money. Kendall died before the shooting was confirmed that he was terminally ill with leukemia. The film was not well received either financially or artistically.

Donen re-teamed with Brynner and Kurnitz on the film Surprise Package (also 1960). In this film, Brynner portrays an American gangster who has been deported to Rhodes, Greece. Mitzi Gaynor appears in the "surprise Package" who is sent to Brynner's appease, and Nol Coward portrays King of Rhodes, who Brynner is plotting to dethrone. The film was not a financial success, and Donen said that it was created because he "desperately needed money for personal reasons." 155 These were Donen's only two films for his Columbia University internship. After poor box-office returns, the studio was unable to produce the shows that Donen was interested in: playwright Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and A Patch of Blue, both of which became hit films for other directors, were turned down by the studio.

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Donen's next film, Grass Is Greener, was produced by Grandon Productions, which was released in December 1960 by Universal Pictures. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are the earl and countes of a large estate in England who are compelled to allow guided tours of their mansion to solve their financial difficulties. Robert Mitchum plays an American oil tycoon who falls in love with Kerr, while Jean Simmons plays an eccentric American heiress who is Grant's ex-girlfriend. In the United States, the film was a financial disappointment, but it was also a hit in England, where the original stage version had been a West End hit.

Charade (1963), starring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass, was one of Donen's most praised films. Donen said he had "always wanted to make a film that would be like one of my favorites, Hitchcock's North by Northwest": 166 and the film has been described as "the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made": "the best Hitchcock movie that never made." Stanley Donen Productions: Charade was released by Universal and adapted by Peter Stone from his own book. Reggie Lampert (Hepburn) discovers that her husband was murdered and (at least) three sinister men are looking for the $250,000 in gold he had hidden somewhere. While the two characters begin to fall in love, Peter Joshua (Grant) befriends Reggie and helps her fight the three thugs. The film was released in December 1963, just two weeks after US President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and the word "assassination" had to be reinterpreted twice. 292–293 It was Donen's most commercially profitable film, 284, and it inspired a number of romantic comedy-thrillers released in the years after it. It was a "stylish and amusing melodrama," according to film critic Judith Crist, "this film is certainly the best American film of [1963]. 294 It was remade as The Truth About Charlie (2002), directed by Jonathan Demme.

Donen made another Hitchcock-inspired film with Arabesque (1966), starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. Julian Mitchell and Stanley Price wrote the film, with Peter Stone's uncredited rewrite. Peck, an American professor at Oxford University who is an ancient hieroglyphics specialist, is an expert in ancient hieroglyphics. A Middle Eastern prime minister has been invited by a Middle Eastern prime minister to look into a group that is attempting to assassinate him by using hieroglyphic codes to communicate. Peck's investigation has resulted in one mystery after another, many involving the prime minister's unethical mistress (Loren). Donen's second straight hit was the film.

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Donen made Two for the Road (1967), starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, William Daniels, and Jacqueline Bisset in supporting roles. Donen and Frankeric Raphael, a writer who was nominated for an Academy Award, wrote the film. "With glints of passion never revealed before," it has been described as "a veritable textbook on film editing" in Donen's most personal films." The film's nuanced and non-linear story is about Hepburn and Finney's 12-year friendship over the course of four separate (but interwoven) road trips shared together over the years in the south of France. The critical reception was moderately successful at the box-office, but the critical reception was more mixed. The film, according to 185, was "just another version of commercial American garbage." 308 It is also the film that Donen said he was most frequently asked about by film students."

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Donen, a resident of the United Kingdom, became an admirer of the British stage revue Beyond the Fringe and wanted to collaborate with two of the show's participants, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Bedazzled (1967), an updated Faust classic, was the final film. It was written by Cook with music by Moore, and Eleanor Bron and Raquel Welch appeared in Eleanor Bron and Raquel Welch. Moore plays a lonely young man whose unequivocal love for his coworker (Bron) has led him to commit suicide. The devil (Cook) appears and invites him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. The film's fun-loving relationship with Swing London in the 1960s divided writers, but Roger Ebert called its satire "barbed and contemporary," "generally shot, sharp, and understated," and overall, a "magnificently photographed, incredibly funny film." Time magazine, on the other hand, regarded it as the least of any recorded variations on the Faust theme. The film, which was especially popular among American college students, was a hit. 310 was a hit. 317 Donen rated it as a favorite among his own films and described it as "a very personal film in which I said a lot about what I think is important in life." 191 It was remade as Bedazzled by director Harold Ramis in 2000.

Staircase (1969) is Donen's interpretation of Charles Dyer's autobiographical stage work with Dudley Moore's music. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton portray a middle-aged gay couple who owns a London barber shop and live together in a "poor marriage." The film was shot in Paris for tax reasons and was not a financial success. On its first appearance, it received poor feedback, but film critic Armond White re-evaluated it in 2007. He called the film "a rare Hollywood film to portray gay experience with humor, humour, and warmth" as well as "a lost treasure."

Donen's marriage to Adelle Beatty ended, he returned to Hollywood in 1970. 203 Producer Robert Evans hired Donen to direct an adaptation of the famous children's book The Little Prince, which was first published in 1943. On location in Tunisia, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe wrote the music and screenplay, while filming was done on location. Steven Warner appears in the title role, as well as Richard Kiley, Bob Fosse, Gene Wilder, and Donna McKechnie in the film Little Prince (1974). It was Donen's first musical film since the Damn Yankees! Despite the fact that there was little dancing, Fosse choreographed his own dance scenes as the snake. Donen "took it upon himself" to change every tempo, delete musical terms at will, and distort every song's intention until the entire score was unrecognizable," Lerner said. It was first introduced in 1974 and was a financial disaster.

Lucky Lady (1975), starring Liza Minnelli, Gene Hackman, and Burt Reynolds, was Donen's next film. Minnelli is a prohibition-era bootlegger who smuggles alcohol from Mexico to California with the help of Hackman and Reynolds, who both compete for her love. Donen said he "really cared about [the film] and devoted three years of my life to it. It's a good film, according to me. 220 It went over budget and was unsuccessful at the box office," the box office said. Most scholars were unimpressed; however, Jay Cocks praised the film for having "the glistening surface and full-throttle frivolity that characterized Hollywood films in the 1930s."

A nostalgia for old Hollywood films would be a theme of Donen's upcoming film: Movie Movie (1978), produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment and scripted by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller. The film is actually two shorter films released as an old fashioned double feature, complete with a fake movie trailer and comedian George Burns' introduction. It starred George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Red Buttons, Michael Kidd, and Eli Wallach, who premiered in Berlin at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival in 1978. Dynamite Hands, a black and white tribute to boxing – morality films, is the first of the two films. Beauties of 1933 by Baxter is a tribute to Busby Berkeley's lavish musicals. Both financially and physically, Donen's previous two films, it was unsuccessful both financially and emotionally.

: 228

Donen produced the science fiction film Saturn 3 (1980), starring Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel. When the script was written (and movie Movie's set designer) John Barry showed it to him, Donen first read it, causing Donen to pass it along to Lew Grade. Donen was initially hired to produce, but Grade ordered him to finish the film when first-time director Barry was unable to direct. 28 According to Donen, "only a tiny bit of what Barry shot ended up in the finished film." "228 It was a critical and financial disaster, and Donen did not want to be credited as director." 233 Donen was hired to direct an adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone in the early 1980s and worked with writer Jeffrey Boam on the script. Donen eventually dropped out of the project, but David Cronenberg produced the film a few years later. Donen was initially attracted to film because he wanted to "connect with younger audiences," and because the script on which they collaborated was "very close to the one that David wound up making," Boam said.

Donen's last theatrical film was the May–December romance Blame It on Rio (1984). Gelbart and Charlie Peters wrote the film, which is a remake of the Claude Berri film Un moment d'égarement (1977): 363. Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, Michelle Johnson, Valerie Harper, and Demi Moore were shot on location in Rio de Janeiro. Caine and Bologna are wealthy executives on vacation with their families in Rio, where Caine has a fascination with Bologna's teenage daughter (Johnson). Its poor reviews, but it was still a modest success financially.

With June Allyson, Leslie Caron, Marge Champion, Cyd Charisse, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Powell, Debbie Reynolds, and Esther Williams, Donen produced the televised ceremony of the 58th Academy Awards in 1986. Donen also produced a musical sequence for an episode of the famous TV show Moonlighting in 1986 and directed Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling"'s music video. 336-337 Donen was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of South Carolina in 1989. Donen said in his commencement address that he believed he was one of the first tap dancers to be a doctor and then tap danced for the graduates. 333–334 Donen gave a talk at the Sundance Institute about film musicals at the request of Robert Redford around the same time.

: 338

Donen, a 1993 native of Donen, was planning to produce and direct a film musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Michael Jackson. The scheme was shelved after reports that Jackson had molested young boys at his Neverland Ranch, which became a tabloid controversy. 337: Donen directed The Red Shoes (based on the Powell and Pressburger film) at the Gershwin Theatre later this year. Susan Schulman, the original director, was fired just six weeks before the show opened. After four days, it was defunct.

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Donen's last film, Love Letters, was released on ABC in April 1999. Steven Weber and Laura Linney appeared in the film, which was based on A. R. Gurney's play. Weber has a huge following in the United States. Senator Robert Kennedy, who discovers he's long-lost love (Linney), has recently died. Linney had only met through mail over the years, and Weber recalls him as a result of his collection of old love letters. Donen had intended to produce a dramatic film adaptation of the play but was unable to obtain financing from any major studio and instead took the initiative to ABC. Danny Aiello and Jeannie Berlin in Stamford, Connecticut, starred in Elaine May's musical play Adult Entertainment. At the 61st Venice International Film Festival in 2004, he was named Career Golden Lion.

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