Once More, With Feeling!

Like Carole Lombard, the glorious British comedienne Kay Kendall was one of those rare actresses who successfully combined high glamour and low comedy. By all accounts, Kendall, like Lombard, was daffy and boisterous in real life, a charming madcap. And, like Lombard, she died tragically young. Kendall's last film, Once More, with Feeling! (1960) showcases her gift for knockabout physical comedy, as well as her sophisticated elegance in the story of the tempestuous relationship between an egocentric conductor and his common-law wife. Yul Brynner plays the maestro Victor Fabian, who's caught in flagrante delicto with a worshipful fan by his harpist partner, Dolly (Kendall). After Dolly leaves him, his career suffers, and many professional and personal complications ensue before they realize they can't live without each other. The film was based on a play by Harry Kurnitz, which had opened on Broadway in late 1958, starring Arlene Francis and Joseph Cotten. Brynner, then one of the biggest movie stars in the world, was offered the part of the conductor in the film version. He agreed, if Stanley Donen could be persuaded to direct. By the late 1950s, Donen, who had directed some of MGM's greatest musicals of the decade, had left the studio and had signed a four-film deal with Columbia. He had recently made the sophisticated comedy, Indiscreet (1958) in London, and Donen liked the city so much he decided to move there. Donen agreed to direct Once More, with Feeling!, and changed the film's setting from Chicago to London, making plans to shoot there once again. Donen and playwright Kurnitz, who was adapting his own play, agreed to offer the female lead to Kendall, a close friend of Kurnitz's. "I've never had a picture shape up so fast and smooth," Donen later recalled. But production would be anything but smooth. Kendall, newly-married to Rex Harrison, refused to film in London for tax reasons, and Donen was forced to scrap his plans for location shooting in London. The film was shot in Paris instead, with a Paris theater standing in for London's Festival Hall. Production began in Paris in April of 1959. Kendall had been diagnosed with leukemia in early 1957 and given only two years to live, but as was the custom at the time, she was not told of her condition. Instead, her doctor gave the bad news to Harrison, who was then living with Kendall, but still married to actress Lilli Palmer. Harrison got a quick Mexican divorce, and he and Kendall were married in June. Although Kendall apparently didn't know of her condition, Harrison confided the news to several friends, and her illness was something of an open secret. It's unclear how Kendall managed to pass the insurance physical examinations for her next film, The Reluctant Debutante (1958), and for Once More, with Feeling! By the time production began on Once More, with Feeling! Kendall no doubt had some inkling about how sick she was, but she carried on in her usual madcap manner. Kurnitz recalled a story conference in a noisy Paris restaurant, as Kendall talked on the phone to Harrison. "I'm being a very good girl, darling," Kurnitz heard her say. "I'm in the Christian Science Reading Room with Harry." But her role required a lot of physical comedy, and it was clear how difficult it was for her. "She was very brave," Donen recalled, "but it was poignant to watch her. Everything was now an effort. You could see her fragility getting more and more pronounced as we screened each day's set of rushes." After a few weeks of shooting, Kendall collapsed and was hospitalized. Production shut down while the studio decided whether to replace her. Brynner reportedly told Columbia executives, "If she goes, I go." Since the film was already two-thirds completed, Donen shot around her in Paris while Kendall recuperated in London. By this time, rumors of the severity of her illness had reached the media, and Harrison told the press she had a "lung infection," complicated by "anemia," but that she was "feeling enormously better." Somehow, Kendall managed to rally enough to complete a final week of shooting. After the production wrapped, she and Harrison spent the summer at their home in Italy, but by the end of August, her condition was grave. They returned to London, and Kendall was immediately hospitalized. She died a few days later. Once More, with Feeling! opened in March of 1960, and the reviews were, inevitably, elegiac. Time Magazine, after describing some of Kendall's funniest bits in the film, noted her "delicious wit and berserk precision of gesture that only Bea Lillie...can match. Like Lillie, Kay Kendall was not really so much a comedienne as clown, and her last picture should leave no doubt in anybody's mind that she was a clown with a touch of genius." Director: Stanley Donen Producer: Stanley Donen Screenplay: Harry Kurnitz, from his play Cinematography: Georges Perinal Editor: Jack Harris Costume Design: Givenchy Art Direction: Alexandre Trauner Music: Muir Mathieson Cast: Yul Brynner (Victor Fabian), Kay Kendall (Dolly Fabian), Gregory Ratoff (Maxwell Archer), Geoffrey Toone (Dr. Hilliard), Maxwell Shaw (Jasha Gendel), Mervyn Johns (Mr. Wilbur, Jr.), Shirley Anne Field (Angela Harper). C-93m. by Margarita Landazuri