Stanley Donen

Context: 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 described his childhood as lonely and unhappy as one of the few Jews in Columbia, and he was occasionally bullied by anti-semitic classmates at school. To help cope with his isolation, he spent much of his youth in local movie theaters and was especially fond of Westerns, comedies and thrillers. The film that had the strongest impact on him was the 1933 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Flying Down to Rio. 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 shot and screened home movies with an 8 mm camera and projector that his father bought for him. Inspired by Astaire, Donen took dance lessons in Columbia and performed at the local Town Theater. His family often traveled to New York City during summer vacations where he saw Broadway musicals and took further dance lessons. One of his early instructors in New York was Ned Wayburn, who had taught eleven-year-old Astaire in 1910. After graduating from high school at sixteen, Donen attended the University of South Carolina for one summer semester, studying psychology. Encouraged by his mother, he moved to New York City to pursue dancing on 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, directed by the legendary George Abbott. The titular Pal Joey was played by the young up-and-comer Gene Kelly, who became a Broadway star in the role. Abbott cast Donen in the chorus of his next Broadway show Best Foot Forward. He 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 was the stage manager and assistant choreographer for Abbott's next show Beat the Band. In 1946, Donen briefly returned to Broadway to help choreograph dance numbers for Call Me Mister. After the success of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Freed gave Donen and Kelly the chance to direct On the Town, released in 1949. The film was an adaptation of the Betty Comden and Adolph Green Broadway musical about sailors on leave in New York City and was the first musical to be filmed on location. Donen and Kelly had wanted to shoot the entire film in New York, but Freed would only allow them to spend one week away from the studio. That week produced the film's famous opening number New York, New York. Away from both studio interference and sound stage constrictions, Donen and cinematographer Harold Rosson shot a scene on the streets of New York City that pioneered many cinematic techniques that would not be used again until they were popularized by the French New Wave ten years later. These techniques included spatial jump cuts, 360-degree pans, hidden cameras, abrupt changes of screen direction and non-professional actors. Donen's biographer Joseph A. Casper stated that the scene avoids being gratuitous or amateurish, while still "developing plot, describing the setting while conveying its galvanizing atmosphere and manic mood, introducing and delineating character." Casper also said that "Today the film is regarded as a turning point: the first bona fide musical that moved dance, as well as the musical genre, out of the theater and captured it with and for film rather than on film; the first to make the city an important character; and the first to abandon the chorus." On the Town starred Kelly, Sinatra and Munshin as three sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in New York whose romantic pursuits lead them to Ann Miller, Betty Garrett and Vera-Ellen. The film was a success both financially and critically. It won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture and screenwriters Comden and Green won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. Like Orson Welles, Donen made his directorial debut at 25. Donen stated that Kelly was "responsible for most of the dance movements. I was behind the camera in the dramatic and musical sequences." Kelly believed that he and Donen "were a good team. I thought we complemented each other very well." After the success of On the Town, Donen signed a seven-year contract with MGM as a director. His next two films were for Freed, but without Kelly. After being replaced as director on Pagan Love Song over personal differences with star Esther Williams, Donen was given the chance to direct his boyhood idol Fred Astaire. Royal Wedding starred Astaire and Jane Powell as a brother-sister American dancing team performing in England during the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip in 1947. Judy Garland was originally cast in the lead role, but was fired for absenteeism due to illness and replaced by Powell. In the film, Powell's love affair with a wealthy Englishman (Peter Lawford) threatens to ruin the brother-sister act, while Astaire finds his own romance with (Sarah Churchill). The film is loosely based on Astaire's real-life career with his sister and early dancing partner Adele Astaire, who retired after marrying an English lord in 1932 and includes one of Astaire's most famous dance sequences: the "You're All the World to Me" number where he defies gravity by dancing first on the walls and then on the ceiling. The shot was achieved by building the set inside a rotating reinforced-steel cylindrical chamber with the camera attached to the cylinder. Both Astaire and the film's lyricist Alan Jay Lerner claimed that they thought of the idea. The film included music by Lerner and Burton Lane and was released in 1951. Later in 1951 Donen made Love Is Better Than Ever. The film stars Larry Parks as a streetwise show business agent who is compelled to marry an innocent young dance teacher (Elizabeth Taylor). Donen and Kelly appear in cameo roles. The film remained unreleased for over a year after Parks admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a member of the Communist Party and named other members and was unsuccessful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER

Question: Did Stanley Donen become an MGM contract director?
Answer: After the success of On the Town, Donen signed a seven-year contract with MGM as a director.