Oscar Levant came up with the idea of playing multiple roles during his performance of the third movement of Gershwin's "Concerto in F." (He was an observer in the audience and played all the instruments on stage). Though cleverly executed, it was not an original idea, since Buster Keaton originated the clever stunt in the two reel short The Playhouse (1921).

The makers of An American in Paris owed a debt to the artistic sensibilities of many artists. Fortunately, they were able to thank one in person when they screened the film for elderly French artist Raoul Dufy in Paris. When Dufy saw the flick, he wept and asked to see it again.

Film critic Andrew Sarris, a guiding force in the auteur theory of directorial authorship, once said that if there were an "auteur" guiding An American in Paris, it was the ghost of George Gershwin.

In his autobiography, director Vincente Minnelli had a few things to say about the auteur theory. "Some erudite types point to An American in Paris as the perfect example of the studio-as-auteur theory. I disagree. Though I don't minimize anyone's contributions, one man is responsible for bringing it all together. That man was me." So there.

The song "Love is Here to Stay," heard in many recent romantic comedies, including When Harry Met Sally... (1989), was George Gershwin's last, unfinished song. Oscar Levant helped Ira Gershwin complete the song after George's death.

For those of you keeping score, the painter styles depicted in the final ballet include: Dufy (Place de la Concorde), Renoir (Pont Neuf), Utrillo (Montmartre), Rousseau (the zoo), Van Gogh (Place de l'Opera), and Toulesse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge).

The cement staircase used in An American in Paris was recycled from the 1944 set of Kismet; and the Paris street set rested on a hill created by a pile of debris from The Wizard of Oz (1939). The Cafe Bel Ami set turned up in Vincente Minnelli's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962).

Georges Guetary's song number, "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise," was designed as a satire of the Folies-Bergere, with as much exposed flesh as the production code would allow.

by Scott McGee