Funny Face (1957)

What the trade papers reported

The Canadian Moving Picture Digest of June 2, 1956, named Funny Face among seven large-scale Paramount pictures then in production, describing a musical comedy that paired Hepburn and Astaire on Gershwin music. Motion Picture Exhibitor of January 30, 1957, still carried the title in its Paramount list of films to be reviewed or in production. That entry credits Hepburn, Astaire and Thompson and marks the film as Technicolor, VistaVision and made in France. The same issue’s list of unreviewed titles includes Silk Stockings, with Astaire, Cyd Charisse and Janis Paige. It also lists Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon, with Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier, again marked as made in France.

Roger Edens on the music

The producer and songwriter Roger Edens wrote about the picture in “Labor Pains”, an article for Film and TV Music, once it was in release. He set aside the full story of its origins as too long and probably too personal for the piece. He did reckon the time from conception to delivery at the Music Hall at almost two years, including a delay over difficulties in casting, and added, “Even elephants don’t need that much time!” Edens wrote that the property bought from Gershe was an unproduced stage play called “Wedding Day”, and that its modern subject led the makers to plan an original score with songs and musical sequences worked closely into the script. He gave the credit for the music, “unequivocally”, to the musical director Adolph Deutsch and the staff Deutsch enlisted: Skip Martin, Conrad Salinger, Van Cleave and Alexander Courage.

Edens also recalled a day when Gershe read a newly written darkroom scene to him and Donen. In it, the photographer tries to talk Hepburn’s character into modeling while he develops a negative he has just shot of her. On seeing the print she is horrified and says, “I think my face is perfectly funny.” Edens tells this directly after saying that the film was not called Funny Face at first.

The reviews

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film “delightfully balmy” and “extraordinarily stylish”, and Wikipedia’s entry describes the American reception as generally good. Edens wrote that the advance appraisal had been highly complimentary, and that he was especially grateful for the praise of the musical treatment. The reviewer for The Times, writing on the London opening, disagreed, calling it “a displeasing piece of work” and saying the presence of Astaire could not save it. That reviewer’s main objection was to the film’s attitude toward the intellectual, in Greenwich Village and in Paris, which the notice denied was either parody or satire and traced to an urge to jeer.

The film received four Academy Award nominations: for Gershe’s writing, for the costumes of Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy, for Ray June’s cinematography and for the art direction and set decoration. The National Board of Review cited its photographic innovations. Donen was nominated by the Directors Guild of America and for a Golden Palm at Cannes in 1957.

Later accounts

Later accounts turn on how the picture was assembled. According to Hepburn, she made Astaire a condition of her taking part. In a December 6, 2006, interview on Turner Classic Movies, Donen said the film was made at Paramount with a crew largely from MGM, including himself, Edens and Thompson, because the studio would not let Hepburn go for a picture made anywhere else. Thompson had been a vocal arranger at MGM on musicals including Ziegfeld Follies. Astaire’s entry adds an earlier chapter: after the 1927 stage show closed, he and his sister Adele tested at Paramount and came close to a deal for a screen version, which was abandoned.

The sources disagree on what Gershe wrote. Edens calls it an unproduced stage play, “Wedding Day”, while Wikipedia’s entry on the film names a Broadway musical by Gershe, “Wedding Bells”, and gives Wedding Day only as the film’s original title. They also disagree on the model for Maggie. Wikipedia names Diana Vreeland and recalls a Vogue memo of hers beginning “Today let’s think pig white!”, while the architectural historian Francis Morrone names Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Dick is described as loosely based on Richard Avedon, who supplied photographs seen in the film and designed the opening title sequence.

The film’s first run disappointed at the box office, and Astaire’s entry says it failed to recover its cost despite good reviews. Paramount reissued it in 1964, when My Fair Lady, also with Hepburn, was drawing huge grosses, and the reissue drew crowds and put the film into profit. Hepburn’s vocals in My Fair Lady were dubbed by Marni Nixon, so the singing here carries a later note of dispute about her voice. Givenchy also dressed her in Charade, among other films. A 2006 Gap commercial cut her Funny Face dancing to AC/DC’s “Back in Black”. Thompson acted in only one more feature, and Liza Minnelli, its star, said she disliked how slowly movies were made. The soundtrack has since been reissued in an expanded 60th-anniversary edition with eight alternate tracks, four of them featuring Thompson.