Trailer
Plot summary
Paris, 1900. Gigi, whose full name is Gilberte, lives with her grandmother, Madame Alvarez, who follows a family tradition by sending the girl to her great-aunt Alicia for lessons in etiquette and charm that would prepare her to be a courtesan supported by a rich man. Gigi has little taste for that future; she would rather spend her time with Gaston Lachaille, a wealthy womanizer and old friend of the family whom she regards as an older brother. Gaston finds the social round tedious and passes his free hours at Madame Alvarez's home. His uncle, Honoré Lachaille, presses him to keep appearing at the season's gatherings instead of withdrawing to the country.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Daniel Aubéas Boy at Jardins Des Tuileries (uncredited)
- Richard Beanas Harlequin (uncredited)
- Jacques Bertrandas Maitre D'Hotel Maxim's (uncredited)
- Paul Cristoas Restaurant Patron (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gigi (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Arthur Freed had to fight the Hays Code to put Colette's tale of a courtesan-in-training on screen, and the rights were already sold: Colette's widower had given them to Gilbert Miller. Buying them back from Miller and Anita Loos cost Freed more than $87,000.
- Lerner was sent to Paris to offer the title role to Audrey Hepburn and she turned it down. He then flew to London to see Leslie Caron and was startled to find she had become so anglicised that her French accent was gone.
- Two of the songs were second-hand. The lyrics of the duet I Remember It Well, sung with Hermione Gingold, came from Love Life, Lerner's 1948 collaboration with Kurt Weill, and Say a Prayer for Me Tonight had been written for Eliza Doolittle before it was dropped from My Fair Lady.
- Shooting inside the Paris restaurant Maxim's was a logistical nightmare because its Art Nouveau mirrors reflected the lights and the camera. Minnelli and cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg devised a low-light scheme, and Ruttenberg fixed lamps in place with suction cups to cut down on stands.
- By mid-July the score was nearly finished but there was still no title song. Loewe was at the piano while Lerner was in the bathroom; Lerner liked the melody so much that he ran to the living room with his trousers still round his ankles and asked him to play it again.
- Lerner disliked how Minnelli had shot the Maxim's scene containing Louis Jourdan's number, so at considerable expense the restaurant was rebuilt on a California soundstage and the scene was filmed again by Charles Walters, Minnelli being overseas on another project.
- Lerner thought the film twenty minutes too long, and the fixes would cost $300,000 that Freed did not want to spend. He and Loewe offered to buy ten per cent of the picture for that sum, then $3 million for the print; MGM relented, and eleven days of reshoots put it $400,000 over budget.
- Gigi won all nine Academy Awards it was nominated for, a record Ben-Hur broke the very next year with eleven. The morning after the ceremony the MGM switchboard answered calls with M-Gigi-M.
