stage→film: dacosta, prince & lapine

Theater directors rarely receive much recognition from critics and movie purists when they venture into filmmaking. It's as if they don't count.

They're clearly out of their league. I mean, how can they possibly have any affinity for the camera or the medium itself? How dare they?

Case in point: Morton DaCosta did wonders with the film versions of two plays that he originally directed for the stage, "Auntie Mame" (1958) and "The Music Man" (1962). Both movies are noteworthy for their utter fidelity to their stage predecessors and yet are impressively cinematic.

And both were also nominated for best picture Oscars but, true to form, the Academy overlooked DaCosta in the director cartegory both years.

DaCosta would direct only one other film, which was not an adaptation  - "Island of Love" (1993), with Robert Preston, Tony Randall and Walter Matthau, a movie that was so mishandled by Warners that it's almost as if it wasn't made.

Harold Prince made what I thought was an auspicious film directing debut with the delicious 1970 Angela Lansbury-Michael York black comedy, "Something for Everyone," one of those

sophisticated sex comedies in which the randy young hero (York) sleeps his way through every member of a wealthy family (shades of Pasolini's "Teorema" with Terence Stamp).

The film is just about impossible to see nowadays, although Prince's second (and last) film, a 1977 truncated version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, "A Little Night Music," starring Elizabeth Taylor, has been available on home entertainment for decades.

The estimable James Lapine, meanwhile, made one of the best films of 1991 - now also forgotton, of course - namely "Impromptu," a randy farce about the affair between Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant) and George Sand (the fabulous Judy Davis in one of her greatest film performances).

Emma Thompson, Julian Sand, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters round out the cast. I can't think of anything wrong with this film.

Like DaCosta in the 1960s and Prince in the 1970s, Lapine has only a couple other film credits. He subsequently filmed the very good 1993 Michael J. Fox-Nathan Lane show-biz comedy, "Life with Mikey" and, for HBO, a 1999 adaptation of the Anne Tyler's "Earthly Possessions," starring Susan Sarandon and Stephen Dorff.

If rep houses still existed and had resourceful bookers, "Something for Everyone" and "Impromptu" would make a great double-bill.

Notes in Passing:  James Lapine, of course, directed his "Impromptu" co-stars, Patinkin and Peters, on Broadway in the 1984 Sondheim musical, "Sunday in the Park with George." Terry Hughes directed the same cast for American Playhouse in 1986.

And it's rarely noted, but Morton DaCosta provided the voice of Edwin Dennis reading his Will during the opening moments of "Auntie Mame."

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~images~

(from top) 

~Poster art for "Something for Everyone"

~Morton DaCosta with Ronny Howard during rehearsals for "The Music Man"
~photography: Warner Bros. 1962©

~Harold Prince with Angela Lansbury on the set of "Something for Everyone" 
~Lansbury with Michael York in a scene from "Something for Everyone"

~photography: Cinema Center 1970© 

~ Poster art for "Impromptu"

~James Lapine on the set of "Impromptu"
~ Bernadette Peters and Judy Davis in a scene from "Impromptu"
~photography: Hemdale 1991©