Vincente Minnelli - biography

“I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.”

“Cedric Gibbons was the grand cardinal of the art department.”

“The Pirate is surrealism and so, in a curious way, is Father of the Bride.”

“American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important.  I don’t know why.”

“I made three films with Douglas, two with Charles Boyer.”

“I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.”

“Dali was the great painter then and surrealism was a way of life.”

“I started out to be a painter and was born into the theater.”

“I learn new things all the time.”

“But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.”

“But I went down to Venezuela and spend a few weeks going through jungles.  It’s fantastic looking.”

“But surrealism is present in most of my pictures.”

“Color can do anything that black-and-white can.”

“Designing Woman was written for the screen.”

“Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences.  He worked with Welles, you know, and he’s a marvelous man.”

“I always have coffee without sugar, you know.  Just cream.”

“I always liked the Van Gogh story because I was terribly involved in that.”

“I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment.  And I didn’t resist it.”

“I seem to be drawn to things that actually happen.”

“I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.”

“I’ve worked with an awful lot of people.  Katy Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.”

“If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.”

“In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine.”

“It’s always the story that interests me.”

“It’s the story that counts.”

“No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn’t completely there.”

“Nowadays the audience has changed.  No one can anticipate the audience.”

“That’s what I think musicals will come to.  No backstage stories, nothing of that sort.”

“We shot that in all the real places where Van Gogh worked.”

“West Side Story was terribly important because of the style of the dancing and the gangs of New York.”

Vincente Minnelli directed the following films:
Panama Hattie (1942)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
I Dood It (1943)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
The Clock (1945)
Ziegfeld Follies (1945)
Yolanda and the Thief (1945)
Undercurrent (1946)
Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
The Pirate (1948)
Madame Bovary (1949)
Father of the Bride (1950)
Father’s Little Dividend (1951)
An American in Paris (1951)
Lovely to Look at (1952)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Story of Three Loves (1953)
The Band Wagon (1953)
The Long, Long Trailer (1953)
Brigadoon (1954)
The Cobweb (1955)
Kismet (1955)
Lust for Life (1956)
Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Designing Woman (1957)
The Seventh Sin (1957)
Gigi (1958)
The Reluctant Debutante (1958)
Some Came Running (1958)
Home from the Hill (1960)
Bells Are Ringing (1960)
The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963)
Goodbye Charlie (1964)
The Sandpiper (1965)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
A Matter of Time (1976)