Revealed, how Scots weather was so bad Brigadoon had to reappear in sunny LA!
IT was the tartan-packed tale of a Highland village that emerged from the mists once every 100 years for one day only.
But it has been revealed that the makers of Hollywood classic Brigadoon decided against filming it in Scotland because the weather was so bad.
Patricia Ward Kelly – widow of the production’s star Gene Kelly – said yesterday that because of the climate ‘budgetary constraints’ meant the 1954 musical was shot on an indoor set in Los Angeles.
She said her late husband loved Scotland, famously arriving by train at Glasgow Central Station for a scouting trip to find locations for Brigadoon, in which he played a lost American tourist.
His biography, written by Mrs Kelly, recounts how ‘the weather was so bad that we had to agree with the studio’.
But Mrs Kelly, 58, who is in Scotland for her one-woman show, said her husband always spoke warmly about the country.
‘He thought Scotland was so beautiful. Of course, he was disappointed the film was not made here,’ she said.
‘He studied the Scottish traditional dances and choreographed them for Brigadoon.
‘He said he could envisage the clans coming over the hills, just like the cowboys in a John Ford western. Brigadoon still warms the heart all these years later.
‘People are yearning for something beautiful, a magical world away from grim reality.’
At the height of his fame, Kelly was considered the world’s biggest star.
Mrs Kelly was 26 and he was 73 when she became his biographer. They married in 1990. Kelly died in 1996, aged 83. Tomorrow night, at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Mrs Kelly will recount her husband’s story in Gene Kelly: The Legacy – An Evening with Patricia Ward Kelly.
The show will include film clips, memorabilia and insights drawn from hours of interviews and conversations with her husband.
In April, she will return to Scotland to appear alongside the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with music rescued from MGM vaults from the 1960s.
‘Disappointed the film was not made here’