SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Content Introduction Cast Story Critics Awards

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Introduction

American musical, 1952. Length 1:42, color

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Cast

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Story

Arguably the greatest musical MGM or anyone else ever produced, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has everything—great songs, great dances, a wonderful, nostalgic story, and a superb cast, all directed at a dazzling pace that matches the speed-crazy era it profiles, the Roaring Twenties. The film works on several levels, presenting a great musical but also commenting—often unfavorably but always accurately—on the wild personalities and studio machinations that characterized the colorful period.

Synopsis

Hollywood premiere It opens in 1927 on a movie ritual of pomp and circumstance, a Hollywood premiere, with floodlights bathing the Los Angeles theater where a new swashbuckling movie is being shown. Crowds of screaming teenagers are held back by police, and long limousines arrive in front of the theater that is about to introduce a film starring Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and his blonde bombshell leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen).

Stars' arrival A Louella Parsons-like gossip columnist, Dora Bailey (Madge Blake), greets the arriving stars, describing the wonderful event to radio listeners across the country. All the familiar Hollywood types are present, including cigar-smoking producers, sex queens, and screen lotharios. Song-and-dance man Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) arrives but gets a lukewarm response when the spectators realize he's no one of importance. Then the big names appear: Don, dressed in a long white polo coat and white hat, and Lina, wrapped in expensive furs, both smiling so widely their faces appear ready to crack, and waving frantically to their swooning fans.

Monopolizing the interview They march up the long red carpet to the microphone, where Dora begins asking inane questions of the grinning pair. Because Lina possesses one of the world's worst voices—its shrieking quality reminiscent of a rusty saw striking nails—Don is terrified of allowing her to answer any of Dora's fatuous questions and prevents her from talking by monopolizing the conversation. This, of course, is the peak of the silent movie era, so Lina's voice has never been heard on-screen, and by dictate of R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), head of Monumental Pictures, she has never spoken in public either. R.F. has concluded that if Lina's voice were to be heard, the public would stay away from her films, and he would lose a fortune.

Fictional past To fill Dora's gushy interview, Don recounts his career, fabricating tales of the hard work he and his friend Cosmo put in at ballet classes and music conservatories. In flashback, however, the viewer is shown how Don and Cosmo really came up the ladder: first playing in burlesque houses as comic musicians, wearing loud clothes and doing frenetic dance numbers like "Fit as a Fiddle and Ready for Love" (a song that originally appeared in COLLEGE COACH, 1933).

As Don continues to narrate his fictional past, we see him and Cosmo arriving in Hollywood, where Don becomes a daredevil stuntman, taking punches in westerns, being blown out of airplanes, and even doing stunts around already-established silent-film star Lina. She is portrayed as an egomaniacal, empty-headed sexpot, fond of quoting a reviewer who called her "the brightest star in the firmament."

Star's "discovery." Director Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley)—stereotyped with riding boots, jodhpurs, and beret—"discovers" Don while he is performing impossible stunts and makes him a leading man, teaming him with Lina, who expects Don to woo her now that he has joined her in the "firmament." Although Don cannot hide the fact that he despises her, it becomes clear as we flash-forward to the premiere that he makes a point of adoring his leading lady in public. Don then ends the brief recital of his laborious rise to the top of the Hollywood heap by stating that he has been guided by his motto, "Dignity, always dignity."

Actress's brush-off Later, to escape the clutches of the cloying Lina, Don walks down a street only to be attacked by a bevy of rabid teenage fans, who tear his clothes and cause him to run for his life. He jumps into a car driven by Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who recognizes him but doesn't seem impressed. She drives him to a safe place and, en route, tells him that films have nothing to do with real art, that they are just cheap entertainment, and that she is a real actress.

Hollywood party Don gets the brush-off from the pretty young woman but is later startled to see her pop out of a cake at a Hollywood party and then dance as part of a bumping and grinding chorus line. He approaches her after she does her number and points out that what she has just done is not what he would call high art. Kathy, furious at having her pretensions exposed, picks up a cake and throws it at Don, but he ducks and it hits Lina square in the face, right in the middle of one of her screeching monologues (a scene that pays tribute to the pie-throwing antics of the silent comedians). Don races after Kathy, while Lina explodes in a histrionic temper tantrum.

Introduction of "talkies." Yet there is an even greater uproar at the party when mogul R. F. shows a talking picture, a revolutionary new technical development that all present pooh-pooh as a novelty item worthy of little discussion. R. F. agrees, saying, "The Warner Brothers are making a whole talking picture with this gadget—`The Jazz Singer.' They'll lose their shirts." R. F. soon changes his thinking when THE JAZZ SINGER (1927) becomes an overnight sensation, realizing that talking pictures are "here to stay."

Musical talkie He stops production on the studio's most recent opus, The Dueling Cavalier, and, after conferring with Don and Cosmo, decides to make the film into a musical talkie, to be retitled The Dancing Cavalier. There is one terrible snag, however: Lina's miserable voice. In time, Don learns that Kathy has a job at Monumental, and the two fall in love as Don croons "You Were Meant for Me" (originally performed in BROADWAY MELODY, 1929) on a soundstage, but their relationship must be kept secret from the possessive Lina, who mistakenly believes that Don is her fiancé.

Technically disastrous film Meanwhile, The Dancing Cavalier is completed, but the primitive sound equipment causes it to be a technical disaster. Upon its release, audiences howl with laughter at the distorted voices, the out-of-synchronization sound, and the wires on which the players trip. R. F. quickly pulls the film out of distribution, trying to figure out a way to doctor it and save his studio, aware that the chief problem is Lina's voice. He engages a stuffy diction coach (Bobby Watson) to work with the actors, and Cosmo and Don poke fun at the coach's exaggerated elocution lessons, dancing about the perplexed instructor, singing "Moses Supposes."

Dubbing solution Later that night, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy try desperately to think of a way to save The Dancing Cavalier, staying up all night and, at dawn, singing "Good Morning" (originally done in BABES IN ARMS, 1939). By then they have come up with the perfect solution (or, at least, Cosmo has): Kathy's voice can be dubbed for Lina's.

At first Kathy resists, but Don persuades her that this is a way to begin her film career, that on-screen roles will follow. Finally, she agrees, and the film is released with Kathy dubbing both Lina's speaking and singing voice (ironically, Kathy's singing was actually dubbed by Betty Royce).

"Broadway Ballet." Don further enhances the revised version of the film with a spectacular song-and-dance number, "Broadway Ballet," a story within a story about a young dancer who arrives in New York and, through hard work and talent, becomes a big name on Broadway. A long, near-adagio dance is performed by the aspiring hoofer and a tall, sultry gangster's moll (Cyd Charisse) who captivates him at a nightclub. (With short hair and bangs, the dancer is made up to look like silent screen star Louise Brooks and is terrific as she struts her famous long legs in some dazzling movements with Don, who had to arrange some tricky steps so that he would not appear shorter than his taller partner.)

The revamped Dancing Cavalier is a great success, and Don plans to reveal that the sweet-voiced singer is not Lina, but his own true love, Kathy. But at the premiere of the film, Lina viciously stipulates that the aspiring actress must go on singing and talking for her, that Kathy is to remain forever behind the scenes, making the blonde bombshell look good to the public.

Star's evil plan The audience at the film's opening cheers loudly for the stars and shouts for Lina to sing to them from the stage. A tearful Kathy, knowing she will never have a career of her own, is ordered to go behind a curtain and sing while Lina appears before the crowd and lip-syncs.

But Lina is not to triumph in her evil plan. Don, Cosmo, and studio boss R. F., who has had enough of Lina's high-handed ways, step up to a rope and begin to pull it so that the curtain behind Lina goes up, and Kathy is seen standing behind the posturing star, singing for her. This reduces the audience to howls of laughter, ending Lina's ridiculous career on the spot. She storms off the stage. Embarrassed, Kathy is about to run off when Don stops her and introduces her to the audience as "the real star of The Dancing Cavalier."

New celluloid duo At the film's end, Don and Kathy, united in real life, are shown on a billboard that advertises their new film together; they have become a successful celluloid love team. The camera pulls back to show Don and Kathy standing before the billboard, embracing at the fadeout.

Background

Musical pastiche This superb musical was really a pastiche of numbers taken from the best of MGM's total musical output since the talkies began, all but a few written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Just as Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen looted the studio of every great tune it had presented in earlier musicals, especially those that captured the flavor of the 1920s, the codirectors also used every prop and vehicle in the MGM warehouses. Debbie Reynolds, for instance, at the beginning of the film, is driving Andy Hardy's old jalopy when she rescues Kelly from his "adoring" fans. Moreover, the mansion in which Kelly lives is decorated with tables, chairs, carpets, and chandeliers left over from the sets of a John Gilbert and Greta Garbo silent classic, FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1927). But then everything about the film harkens back to the colorful Hollywood past.

Writers' brilliant concept Betty Comden and Adolph Green, whose names are forever linked to this masterpiece, were assigned to write a musical that would employ all the Freed-Brown numbers. Their research revealed that most of these excellent tunes were presented in films made during the transition from the silent era to the talkie period.

The writers then brilliantly conceived of showing that era in the musical, with all its confusion about the new sound equipment and new stars replacing old ones, a time when bright, shiny faces took the places of heavily mascaraed vamps and mustache-twisting villains. They first thought about remaking BOMBSHELL (1933), a Jean Harlow vehicle, and the front office pushed Howard Keel, then one of the leading baritones on the screen, to star. But this notion was later abandoned, and Kelly was brought in.

Kelly's contribution The gifted dancer was almost single-handedly responsible for the brilliant ambiance of the movie, choreographing and dancing through the marvelous "Broadway Ballet" sequence with its imaginative sets and wonderful guest appearance by Cyd Charisse, whose "crazy veil," a 25-foot long piece of white China silk, streamed about her, kept aloft by three airplane motors whirring off camera. The sequence took a month to rehearse, two weeks to shoot, and cost $600,000, almost a fifth of the overall budget.

Dancin' in the rain Of course, the film's tour-de- force dance number is Kelly's spectacular solo rendition of the title song, as he taps and leaps through a rain-drenched street, swinging around a lamppost, splashing, and jumping in joy over having fallen in love with Reynolds. Skirting about the upside-down umbrella, letting water from a gushing drainpipe cascade onto his smiling face, skipping and dancing along the sidewalk and gutter in the downpour, and displaying acrobatic moves no other dancer but Fred Astaire could hope to achieve, Kelly brought a lasting image of utter joy to the screen. This dance number alone is worth the whole film.

"Make 'Em Laugh." Nearly as entertaining is the magnificent comic dance Donald O'Connor (who never topped his work in this film) performs with props and sets on a soundstage in the wild number "Make `Em Laugh" (a Freed-Brown tune that unabashedly appropriates Cole Porter's "Be a Clown"). O'Connor is so frenetic in this piece that he appears to be a puppet manipulated by unseen hands. He leaps against fake walls, jumps over couches, twirls with a cloth dummy like a dervish, and lands on the floor, where he performs a sort of running movement but is really turning himself on his side, before jumping up and crashing through a wall for a frantic finale. If O'Connor, a dancer since childhood and a great one, had never made another film after SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, his reputation would have been secure with this single number.

Female leads Reynolds's inexperience (she was only nineteen when she got this, her first big break) concerned the front office, but Kelly and Donen convinced the executives that the pert young starlet could hold her own in the film, and she did. Probably the most astounding dramatic performance in this film is rendered by Hagen, who distorts her normal, pleasant voice into a piercing whine throughout the film as she projects a vain, unscrupulous character that epitomizes some of the actresses of the silent era. Her performance (which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) is but another gem in this shining musical.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN had a price tag of $2,540,800, of which $157,000 went for Walter Plunkett's fabulous costumes. Although this figure exceeded the pre-production budget by $665,000, MGM quickly realized the worth of their investment when the initial release of the film earned $7,665,000. For many, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is the finest musical ever made, anytime, anywhere.

Music

The tune Reynolds and the chorus girls dance wildly to at the Hollywood party, "All I Do Is Dream of You," first appeared in SADIE MCKEE (1934); "Should I?" appeared in LORD BYRON OF BROADWAY (1930); and the classic "Singin' in the Rain" (sung and danced to by Kelly, Reynolds, and O'Connor at the beginning of the film behind credits and, later, in one of the greatest dance numbers ever done for the screen, by Kelly) appeared in THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929 (1929). "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" and "Broadway Melody" are from BROADWAY MELODY (1929); "Would You" is from SAN FRANCISCO (1936); "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'," "You Are My Lucky Star" and "Broadway Rhythm" are from BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936 (1935); and "Beautiful Girl" (sung with panache by Jimmie Thompson) was originally crooned by Bing Crosby in GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933).

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Critics

Leonard Maltin Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

Perhaps the greatest movie musical of all time, fashioned by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from a catalogue of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown songs. The setting is Hollywood during the transition to talkies, with Hagen giving the performance of a lifetime as Kelly's silent screen costar, whose voice could shatter glass. Kelly's title number, O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh," are just two highlights in a film packed with gems. Later a Broadway musical.

Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

The image that everyone remembers from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has Gene Kelly hanging from a lamppost and swinging his umbrella in the wild joy of new love. The scene builds to a gloriously saturated ecstasy as Kelly stomps through the puddles of water in the gutters, making big wet splashes.

The entire sequence, from the moment Kelly begins to dance until the moment the cop looks at him strangely, is probably the most joyous musical sequence ever filmed. It celebrates a man who has just fallen in love and has given himself over to heedless celebration. And the rainwater provides the dancer with a tactile medium that reflects his joy in its own noisy way.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has been voted one of the greatest films of all time in international critics' polls, and is routinely called the greatest of all the Hollywood musicals. I don't think there's any doubt about that. There are other contenders—TOP HAT, SWING TIME, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, THE BAND WAGON, OKLAHOMA!, WEST SIDE STORY—but SINGIN' IN THE RAIN comes first because it is not only from Hollywood, it is about Hollywood. It is set at the moment in the late 1920s when the movies first started to talk, and many of its best gags involve technical details.

A restored print of the movie, made from the original three-strip Technicolor process with its brilliant reds and yellows, went into national release to celebrate RAIN's fortieth anniversary in 1992. It is also available in video, including high-quality laserdiscs from MGM and Criterion. Looking at it again proves that the movie still has every ounce of its original charm, but then that didn't come as a surprise to me since I've seen it at least once a year since the first time I saw it at Chicago's late, lamented repertory house, the Clark Theatre.

Unlike most of the movie musicals of recent years, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN was not based on a Broadway stage production; it worked the other way around, with a London and Broadway musical in the 1980s being based on the movie. The original screenplay held up so well that the Tommy Steele stage version in London followed the film even in small details.

The movie was cobbled together fairly quickly in 1952 to capitalize on the success of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS—which won the Academy Award as the best picture of 1951 and also starred Gene Kelly. The new movie had an original screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and new songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. But some of the songs, including the famous title tune, were anything but new. The Criterion Collection laserdisc includes old film clips of a version of "Singin' in the Rain" from HOLLYWOOD REVIEW OF 1929, "You Were Meant for Me" from BROADWAY MELODY of 1929, and "Beautiful Girl" from the Bing Crosby musical GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933).

Film historian Ron Haver, who does the scene-by-scene commentary on an alternate sound track of the laserdisc, points out that SINGIN' IN THE RAIN was not immediately hailed for its greatness. It did well at the box office, but won no Academy Awards and was on no critics' year-end lists of best films. Only after it went into repertory in 1958, as part of a package of MGM classics, did audiences begin to realize how special it was.

The influential critic Pauline Kael was managing a repertory theater in Berkeley then, and her program notes, calling the movie "just about the best Hollywood musical of all time," helped establish the movie's eventual reputation.

Maybe because the movie was made quickly and with a certain freedom (and because it was not based on an expensive stage property), it has a wonderfully free and improvisational feeling. We know that sequences like Donald O'Connor's neck-breaking "Make 'Em Laugh" number had to be painstakingly rehearsed, but it feels like it was made up on the spot. So does "Moses Supposes," with O'Connor and Kelly dancing on tabletops.

Debbie Reynolds was still a teenager when she starred in the movie, and there is a light in her eyes to mirror the delight of her character, who is discovered leaping out of a cake at a party and soon becomes the onscreen voice of Lena Lamont (Jean Hagen), a silent star whose voice is not suited to talkies, to say the least. The movie's climax, as Reynolds flees from a theater while Kelly shouts out "Stop that girl!" and tells everyone who she is, and that he loves her, is one of those bravura romantic scenes that make you tingle no matter how often you see it.

There's great humor in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, too, especially in the scenes that deal with the technical difficulties of the early days of talkies. Lena Lamont can never seem to remember which flower arrangement holds the concealed microphone, and so her voice booms and whispers as she turns her head back and forth. This was not an imaginary problem for early actors in the talkies; Chicago bandleader Stanley Paul collects early sound movies with scenes that reflect that very problem.

Although SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has been on video in various versions for a decade and is often seen on TV, a big-screen viewing will reveal a richness of color that your tube may not suggest. The film was photographed in bold basic colors—the yellow raincoats are an emblem—and director Stanley Donen and his cast have an energy level that's also bold, basic and playful. But is this really the greatest Hollywood musical ever made? In a word, yes.

CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review: 5.0 stars out of 5

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Awards

• Nominated for Supporting Actress 1952: Jean Hagen
• Nominated for Music - Scoring of a Musical Picture 1952: Lennie Hayton

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Last updated: June 5, 1998