Tina Dawn Brooker approached me about portraying Lisa Bouvier (played by Leslie Caron) in  a scene from one of her favourite films an American in Paris  a 1951 American musical film inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition An American in Paris by George Gershwin. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary, and Nina Foch, the film is set in Paris, and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner. The music is by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, with additional music by Saul Chaplin, the music director.

The story of the film is interspersed with dance numbers choreographed by Gene Kelly and set to Gershwin’s music. Songs and music include “I Got Rhythm”, “I’ll Build A Stairway to Paradise”, “ ’S Wonderful”, and “Love is Here to Stay”. The climax of the film is “The American in Paris” ballet, a 17-minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron set to Gershwin’s An American in Paris. The ballet alone cost almost half a million dollars.

We had a lot of fun on the shoot in the early November sunshine by the Humber which is not quite the Seine and unfortunately Tina’s Gene Kelly did not turn up…