Once More…With Feeling! (album)


 * ''This article discusses the 1960 film. For other topics of the same name, see Once More with Feeling

Once More, with Feeling! (1960) is a British comedy film directed and produced by Stanley Donen from a screenplay by Harry Kurnitz, based on his play. The film was released by Columbia Pictures and has music by Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Richard Wagner, arranged by Muir Mathieson. The cinematography was by Georges Périnal and the costume design by Givenchy.

The film stars Yul Brynner and Kay Kendall with Gregory Ratoff and Geoffrey Toone.

Plot
Egomaniacal and temperamental Victor Fabian is the London Festival Orchestra's conductor. His wife Dolly is a harpist who acts on her husband's behalf, presenting his impossible demands to the symphony's backers, only to then find him dallying with a considerably younger musician. Dolly decides to leave him, whereupon he destroys her harp.

Victor's conducting suffers in Dolly's absence and the orchestra needs her back. His agent, Max Archer, tries to get him a new contract, but young Wilbur, son of the orchestra's patron saint, insists to Victor's horror that any agreement must include a performance of his mother's favorite song, John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.

Rather than return, Dolly wants a divorce so she can marry Dr. Richard Hilliard, a physicist. An angry Victor blurts out that to be divorced, two people must first be married. It turns out colleagues only assumed Victor and Dolly were husband and wife, and they never actually tied the knot.

Victor won't grant a quick marriage and equally quick divorce unless she agrees to live with him for three more weeks. He wears down her resolve, and Hilliard catches her in a frilly nightgown. A frustrated Dolly tells both she just wants to live alone. She applauds from the audience as Victor, with great reluctance, launches the orchestra into a rousing Stars and Stripes Forever.

Background
The play Once More, With Feeling which was adapted for this film, opened on Broadway on 21 October 1958 at the National Theatre, in a production directed by George Axelrod and designed by George Jenkins, and starring Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis, and Walter Matthau, who was nominated for a Tony Award as Best featured actor. The play ran for 263 performances.

The film was Kay Kendall's last. She died of leukemia on September 6, 1959, prior to the film's release.

Cast

 * Yul Brynner as Victor Fabian
 * Kay Kendall as Dolly Fabian
 * Gregory Ratoff as Maxwell Archer
 * Geoffrey Toone as Dr. Richard Hilliard
 * Maxwell Shaw as Jascha Gendel / Grisha Gendel
 * Mervyn Johns as Mr. Wilbur Jr.
 * Martin Benson as Luigi Bardini
 * Harry Lockart as Chester
 * Shirley Anne Field as Angela Hopper