| Seven Brides for Seven Brothers | |
| Director: | Stanley Donen |
| Screenplay: | |
| Producer: | Jack Cummings |
| Starring: | |
| Music: | Gene de Paul Johnny Mercer (lyrics) Adolph Deutsch (musical direction) Saul Chaplin (musical supervision) |
| Cinematography: | George Folsey |
| Editing: | Ralph E. Winters |
| Studio: | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Distributor: | Loew's, Inc. |
| Runtime: | 102 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $2,540,000[1] |
| Gross: | $9,403,000[2] |
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a 1954 American musical film, directed by Stanley Donen, with music by Gene de Paul, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and choreography by Michael Kidd. The screenplay, by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Dorothy Kingsley, is based on the short story "The Sobbin' Women", by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was based in turn on the ancient Roman legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which is set in Oregon in 1850, is particularly known for Kidd's unusual choreography, which makes dance numbers out of such mundane frontier pursuits as chopping wood and raising a barn. Film critic Stephanie Zacharek has called the barn-raising sequence in Seven Brides "one of the most rousing dance numbers ever put on screen."[3] The film was photographed in Ansco Color in the CinemaScope format.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and was nominated for four additional awards, including Best Picture. In 2006, American Film Institute named Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as one of the best American musical films ever made. In 2004, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 1850, backwoodsman Adam Pontipee arrives at an Oregon Territory town to look for a bride and breaks into song about it. ("Bless Your Beautiful Hide"). He eventually meets Milly and proposes to her after seeing her strength, hardworking attitude, and the quality of her cooking. He is further pleased at Milly’s insistence on finishing her chores before she leaves with him. Despite not knowing him well, she accepts Adam’s proposal under the belief she will be taking care of only him and she sings about it ("Wonderful, Wonderful Day").
When they arrive at his mountain cabin however, she is surprised to learn that he has six brothers – Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon – who all live uncouth lives with him. As Adam walks her through their house, he informs her she will be responsible for cleaning, laundering, and cooking for all of them, telling her to make dinner and leaving her alone in the kitchen. After a disastrous dinner, an angered Milly accuses Adam of manipulating her into becoming his servant, but he acknowledges that he wanted to marry someone strong and hardworking to work alongside him due to how difficult living in the backwoods is. Adam plans on sleeping outside to avoid losing face with his brothers after Milly refuses to share a bed with him. She eventually lets Adam back into the room upon seeing him climb up to sleep in a tree, explaining she had high hopes regarding marriage and love and decides to sing a song ("When You're in Love").
The next morning, Milly uses her cleverness, skills, and persuasion to begin teaching the Pontipee brothers cleanliness and proper manners. She is later surprised to learn that despite their handsomeness, Adam's brothers have remained unmarried because they rarely see women and never learned how to interact with them. Despite initial difficulties in changing their "mountain man" ways, they realize they can find someone to marry if they follow Milly's example. They then sing ("Goin' Co'tin'"). At a barn-raising social gathering, the brothers meet the townswomen Dorcas, Ruth, Martha, Liza, Sarah, and Alice, all of whom take a fancy to one of the brothers despite the women already having suitors, resulting in another song ("Barn Dance"). The suitors taunt and sneakily attack the Pontipees during the barn raising. The brothers resist the urge to fight at Milly's previous request even after the suitors hit the brothers with the barn-raising tools and boards, but one suitor then attacks Adam, provoking Gideon to retaliate. A brawl ensues in which the physically superior Pontipees overpower the suitors, but the Pontipees anger the townspeople by ruining the barn raising and beating down their men. This cuts down their chances of being with the women they care for.
As winter comes and the brothers pine for the women they fell in love with they sing ("Lonesome Polecat"), and Milly asks Adam to help them. He reads his brothers "The Sobbin' Women" and Milly's Bible, telling them they should do whatever it takes to get their loves.With Adam's aid, the brothers kidnap the six women before causing an avalanche in Echo Pass to stop the pursuing townspeople. However, the Pontipees realize they forgot to kidnap a parson to conduct their weddings, and they will be snowed in at their homestead until spring. Furious at the Pontipees' actions, Milly forces the men to live in the barn while the women stay in the house with her, sleeping in the brothers' beds. In response, a similarly furious Adam leaves for the Pontipees' trapping cabin further up the mountain to spend the winter alone. Gideon tells Milly, but she refuses to stop Adam from leaving.
Over the winter, the women vent their frustrations by pranking the remaining Pontipees and muse upon their slowly softening feelings towards marriage and decide to sing ("June Bride"). Milly informs the women that she is pregnant with Adam’s child and will give birth in the spring. Spring arrives and the women and the Pontipees are paired off and happy in each other's company prompting another song ("Spring, Spring") until Milly announces she is having Adam's baby, causing everyone present to come together to help her. She gives birth to a baby girl and Gideon leaves to tell Adam. Adam still refuses to return, despite learning that he has a child. He expresses anger that Milly has had a girl rather than a boy and accuses her of having a baby just to make him come home. Gideon rebukes him for his selfishness and punches him before leaving, stating that he is ashamed of Adam's behavior towards Milly. Angered, Adam sends Gideon home. After the snow in Echo Pass melts, Adam returns, as he had said he would. He meets his daughter, and together, he and Milly choose a name for her: Hannah. Adam states that while he was in the hunting lodge after hearing about the birth of his daughter, he started to understand how the townspeople would feel having their daughters stolen away from them. He realizes how worried the townspeople must be over the missing women and tells his brothers they should return them. The brothers—although heartbroken—acquiesce, and attempt to bring their respective brides back to their families, but the women run and hide, refusing to go back to town. The brothers try to gather the women to bring them back to the town only to encounter the angry townspeople, who have come through the pass intending to hang them for kidnapping the girls.
Alice's father, Reverend Elcott, hears Hannah crying as the townspeople sneak up onto the farm. Assuming the baby belongs to one of the six townswomen, he asks them whose child Hannah is. After they all answer "mine", the fathers begrudgingly agree to give the six brothers and the six women a collective shotgun wedding.
The Brothers and their Brides:
To perform the dance numbers and action sequences, choreographer Michael Kidd wanted dancers to portray all six of Adam Pontipee's brothers. Kidd said that he "had to find a way to have these backwoods men dance without looking ridiculous. I had to base it all around activities you would accept from such people – it couldn't look like ballet. And it could only have been done by superbly trained dancers." However, he was able to integrate into the cast two non-dancer MGM contract players who were assigned to the film, Jeff Richards, who performed just the simpler dance numbers, and Russ Tamblyn, using him in the dance numbers by exploiting his talents as a gymnast and tumbler.[4] [5]
The other four brothers were portrayed by professional dancers – Matt Mattox, Marc Platt, Tommy Rall, and Jacques d'Amboise. All four balanced on a beam together during their barn-raising dance.
The wood-chopping scene in Lonesome Polecat was filmed in a single take.[6]