I'm laughing at clouds

Just a personal confession in tribute to Stanley Donen (1927-2019). In 2011, I was watching a local access channel on my cable here on my Philippine island, a million miles from home (or so it felt at the time), and whomever was looking at DVDs that day, a security guard at the station perhaps, had chosen Singin' in the Rain, one of those films, of which there are only a handful, that are guaranteed to blow the dust off the dustiest soul. My surprise was unspeakable, and I watched and watched, feeling like every moment I was reliving a miracle. So familiar, but possessing a strangeness past familiarity - the visitation of an old ghost looking as young as the day it died.

Stanley Donen had been a dancer before he turned to directing dancers in On the Town in 1949. I just learned, reading his obit, that he came from Columbia, South Carolina, which is where I lived, on and off, from 1967 to 1988. In a Vanity Fair interview he said, “I saw Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio when I was nine years old, and it changed my life. It just seemed wonderful, and my life wasn’t wonderful. The joy of dancing to music! And Fred was so amazing, and Ginger [Rogers] – Oh, God! Ginger!” That's another link I share with him. In the mid-1930s, my father was in the Army stationed at Fort Ord in Southern California. He was in the military police and when he was judged the best in a personnel inspection, instead of a decoration, he was awarded a date with Ginger Rogers to a USC football game.

My favorites of his films are Two for the Road, the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Bedazzled, and, believe it or not, Blame It On Rio, with Michael Caine, a film whose only misstep was the casting of the friend of Caine's daughter.

I watched Singin' in the Rain all the way up to the scene in which Gene Kelly walked Debbie Reynolds home in the rain. And as he turned from her door and began to dance and sing the title song, tears filled my eyes and I cried like a baby. I'm not sure why. Homesickness sometimes sneaks up on me, completely unawares. A piece of home visiting me here in the heart of darkness.

Thank you, Mr. Donen.