Professor David Peimer
An American in Paris
Summary
Professor David Peimer discusses the six-time Academy Award–winning film An American in Paris (1951), inspired by the music of George Gershwin.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
I think that would be another whole talk, Harold. And a fascinating question. I would say yes. And I would bring it from not an obvious perspective, but a more cultural, and this again, this outsider perspective. You know, when I identify with Kamoo, speaking about him last week, and I’m going to talk about Piaf in the next few weeks and Sartre even, the anti-Semetic and the Jew, I think there is something about being marginal or being on the outside of a society, but forced to adapt, or willingly wanting to adapt, and a sense of a bit more freedom than where the place ones come from. Just in a nutshell. And of course there’s a hell of lot more in the Jewishness of the compositions than going to the music, but that would be another time.
Well, as far as I know, I mean, he died very young, we have to remember, 39 if I’m right, that he was just 39 years old when he died. But he was already huge in Hollywood and, you know, he was working with Fred Astaire and others. He really worked with Gene Kelly, sorry, that was Minnelli, but he’d worked with Fred Astaire, et cetera. So I think it was pretty high. And he also went to, when he was in Paris, he studied with a French composer, Ravel, and others. And they all said to him, don’t try and compose classically like us. Go and compose like Gershwin. In other words, they believed in his talent, but you know, more in musical theatre than in classical. So I think obviously amongst certain composers, there would’ve been enormous amount of mutual respect, probably, especially in Paris at the time, the mid 20s when he was there and in America.
Yes. He choreographed most of these scenes. Might have had a bit of help here and there, but as far as I know, most of it.