The Official Blog of Laemmle Theatres.

blog.laemmle.com

The official blog of Laemmle Theatres

  • All
  • Theater Buzz
    • Claremont 5
    • Glendale
    • Newhall
    • NoHo 7
    • Royal
    • Santa Monica
    • Town Center 5
  • Q&A’s
  • Locations & Showtimes
    • Claremont
    • Glendale
    • NewHall
    • North Hollywood
    • Royal (West LA)
    • Santa Monica
    • Town Center (Encino)
  • Film Series
    • Anniversary Classics
    • Culture Vulture
    • Worldwide Wednesdays
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube

Russ Tamblyn In Person for SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS on April 6th

March 28, 2019 by Lamb L.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series pay tribute to director Stanley Donen, who died in February, with a screening of one of his best loved musical films, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The film was nominated for Best Picture of 1954 and earned four other Academy Award nominations; it won the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical.

Donen often strived to expand the musical form in such landmark films as Singin’ in the Rain, On the Town, It’s Always Fair Weather, and Funny Face. With Seven Brides he chose to do an outdoor musical with a Western setting, though much of it was actually shot on the MGM lot.

The most important innovation was that Donen, working closely with choreographer Michael Kidd, decided to focus the musical numbers on a group of male dancers. The film’s producer and MGM executives were nervous about this emphasis, but Donen persisted, and the film’s box office success and critical acclaim vindicated his iconoclastic approach. To execute the musical numbers, Donen recruited experienced dancers Jacques d’Amboise, Tommy Rall, Marc Platt, and our evening’s special guest speaker, Russ Tamblyn, who had one of his most memorable roles as the youngest member of a backwoods family.

Howard Keel plays the oldest of the seven brothers, who comes down from their mountain home to find a bride who can help to keep house for him and his family. Jane Powell, who had starred in Donen’s first solo directing effort, Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire, plays the feisty frontier woman who proves more than a match for the domineering Keel. Other cast members include Julie Newmar, Ruta Lee, Jeff Richards, and Ian Wolfe.

The music was by Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The screenplay was written by veterans Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Dorothy Kingsley, adapted from a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, which was in turn inspired by Roman histories by Plutarch.

That original story about the rape of the Sabine women provoked controversy in later years. Following the ancient history books, Keel’s character encourages his brothers to kidnap the women they love and bring them by force to their mountain home, which is then blocked by an avalanche that prevents their family members from rescuing them until spring. Contemporary audiences have rightly questioned this sexist plot element. But it should be noted that the women more than hold their own against their abductors. Powell in particular plays a very strong-willed character who protects the kidnapped women and forces the men to live in the barn while she watches over the women in the family homestead.

One of Donen’s achievements in all his films was to create imposing, three-dimensional female characters, and Powell’s Milly is just one striking example of the way in which the director—and his female screenwriters—defied the prevailing norms of the 1950s toxic masculinity. Beyond any political controversies, however, the film endures as one of the most scintillating musicals of the era, praised at the time and lovingly remembered today.

In 1954 Variety wrote, “This is a happy, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, country type of musical with the slickness of a Broadway show.” (It was adapted for Broadway two decades later and also inspired a TV series in the 1980s.) The Washington Post’s Richard L. Coe wrote, “Dandy dancing, singable songs and the ozone of originality make Seven Brides for Seven Brothers the niftiest musical I’ve seen in months.”

Many years later, Leonard Maltin wrote, “Rollicking musical perfectly integrates song, dance, and story.” Time magazine’s Stephanie Zacharek called the barn-raising sequence “one of the most rousing dance numbers ever put on screen.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2004.

Russ Tamblyn appeared at our anniversary screenings of the classic West Side Story and the chilling suspense film, The Haunting. He first came to attention when he played Elizabeth Taylor’s kid brother in Father of the Bride and its sequel. He also co-starred in Hit the Deck, The Fastest Gun Alive, Don’t Go Near the Water, Tom Thumb, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and he earned an Oscar nomination for 1957’s Peyton Place. Later he drew renewed attention for his role in David Lynch’s cult series, Twin Peaks.

Format: Blu-ray

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS with Russ Tamblyn in person screens Saturday, April 6, at 7:30pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Filed Under: Actor in Person, Ahrya Fine Arts, Anniversary Classics, Featured Post, Q&A's, Repertory Cinema

1 Comment
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bobbi Osmundson
Bobbi Osmundson
6 years ago

Would love to have this movie play at Playhouse & in Pasadena!

0

Search

Featured Posts

1970s New York City on the brink ~ DROP DEAD CITY opens tomorrow.

“Laura Piani’s splendid debut balances reality with the effervescent charm of vintage swooners.” JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE opens May 23.

Instagram

“Are you tired of streaming movies from your cou “Are you tired of streaming movies from your couch?” Conan O’Brien has a solution for you.
"Wait, isn't this just a movie thea-......"

Epic films, elevated food, and LA's best popcorn! Visit your local Laemmle this Memorial Day Weekend and all summer! Serving cinephiles since 1938. 

Get tickets: laemmle.com
Part of the #WorldwideWednesdays Series! 🎟️ l Part of the #WorldwideWednesdays Series! 🎟️ laem.ly/42k5iM0
#Niki 
Paris, 1952. Niki has recently moved from the U.S. with her husband and daughter.
Despite this newfound distance from a family and country that were suffocating her, disturbing flashbacks of her childhood continue to invade her thoughts. From the hell she is about to discover, Niki will find in her art a weapon to free herself.
‼️In-Person Q&A with Director Jerry Zucker!
📍Join Us Wednesday May 21st @ 7pm

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a special screening of one of the best loved movies of the 20th century, Jerry Zucker’s smash hit supernatural fantasy, 'Ghost.'
Part of the #WorldwideWednesdays Series! 🎟️ l Part of the #WorldwideWednesdays Series! 🎟️ laem.ly/419gzQ1

#DesertOfNamibia
Yôko Yamanaka’s second feature follows a 21-year-old Japanese woman with erratic humor as she ghosts one boyfriend after another. A beautician with little commitment to her work and no real desire to achieve anything, she burns every bridge, accumulating broken hearts in her wake. "Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic…Yamanaka’s work defies binaries… The film and its lead feel[s] pulsatingly alive." ~ Variety #DesertOfNamibia #WorldwideWednesdays #yokoyamanaka #yuumikawaii #山中瑶子 #河合優実
Follow on Instagram

Laemmle Theatres

Laemmle Theatres
Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/lost-starlight | Subscribe: http://bit.ly/3b8JTym | In 2050 Seoul, an astronaut dreaming of Mars and a musician with a broken dream find each other among the stars, guided by their hopes and love for one another.

Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/lost-starlight

RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025
Director: Han Ji-won
Cast: Justin H. Min, Kim Tae-ri, Hong Kyung

-----
ABOUT LAEMMLE: Since 1938, Laemmle [Theatres] has been showing the finest independent, arthouse, and international films.

Subscribe to Laemmle's E-NEWSLETTER: http://bit.ly/3y1YSTM
Visit Laemmle.com: http://laemmle.com
Like LAEMMLE on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/3Qspq7Z
Follow LAEMMLE on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/3O6adYv
Follow LAEMMLE on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/3y2j1cp
Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/echo-valley | Subscribe: http://bit.ly/3b8JTym | Kate lives a secluded life—until her troubled daughter shows up, frightened and covered in someone else's blood. As Kate unravels the shocking truth, she learns just how far a mother will go to try to save her child

Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/echo-valley

RELEASE DATE: 6/13/2025

-----
ABOUT LAEMMLE: Since 1938, Laemmle [Theatres] has been showing the finest independent, arthouse, and international films.

Subscribe to Laemmle's E-NEWSLETTER: http://bit.ly/3y1YSTM
Visit Laemmle.com: http://laemmle.com
Like LAEMMLE on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/3Qspq7Z
Follow LAEMMLE on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/3O6adYv
Follow LAEMMLE on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/3y2j1cp
Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/drop-dead-city | Subscribe: http://bit.ly/3b8JTym | NYC, 1975 - the greatest, grittiest city on Earth is minutes away from bankruptcy when an unlikely alliance of rookies, rivals, fixers and flexers finds common ground - and a way out. Drop Dead City is the first-ever feature documentary devoted to the NYC Fiscal Crisis of 1975, an extraordinary, overlooked episode in urban American history.

Tickets: http://laemmle.com/film/drop-dead-city

RELEASE DATE: 5/23/2025
Director: Michael Rohatyn, Peter Yost

-----
ABOUT LAEMMLE: Since 1938, Laemmle [Theatres] has been showing the finest independent, arthouse, and international films.

Subscribe to Laemmle's E-NEWSLETTER: http://bit.ly/3y1YSTM
Visit Laemmle.com: http://laemmle.com
Like LAEMMLE on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/3Qspq7Z
Follow LAEMMLE on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/3O6adYv
Follow LAEMMLE on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/3y2j1cp
Load More... Subscribe

Recent Posts

  • NORTHERN LIGHTS restored.
  • 1970s New York City on the brink ~ DROP DEAD CITY opens tomorrow.
  • RAN, Akira Kurosowa’s final epic masterpiece, back on the big screen May 23.
  • “Laura Piani’s splendid debut balances reality with the effervescent charm of vintage swooners.” JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE opens May 23.
  • I KNOW CATHERINE week at Laemmle Glendale.
  • Argentine film MOST PEOPLE DIE ON SUNDAYS “squeezes magic out of melancholy.”

Archive

wpDiscuz