SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is film directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen and produced by Arthur Freed. It was written by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, based on a song by Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. The film stars Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, and Jean Hagen. Choreography is by Kelly and Donen, the songs by Freed. It was first released on April 10, 1952.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is simply the best movie musical ever made. It has started a Fortieth Anniversary revival run with a brand new 35mm print. You must see it. It is like seeing it for the first time with the brilliant, jewel-like Technicolor fresh and glowing, the print free of scratches, up on the big screen, and Gene Kelly breaking your heart with the pure innocent joy of his dance in the rain.
If ever the word classic applied to a musical number, it applies to the "Singin' in the Rain" number. It starts off with a happy adult man and ends with a little boy splashing in the flooded street and then skipping off with not a care, free even of his umbrella. Not only is there a physical joy to watching Kelly dance in the rain, but it is a revelation when you can distance yourself enough to watch the narrative strength of the choreography, the detailed climb from adultness to childishness. If that cop hadn't shown up, Kelly would still be dancing there; it's one number you want never to end, but when it does you are as transformed as the dancer/singer.
The song, according to one story, was inspired when Arthur Freed, who had just graduated from Broadway High School in Seattle and opened his own music store on Pine Street, watched a man one gloomy, rainy Seattle afternoon outside his shop "just singing and dancing in the rain." He wrote the song with Nasio Herb Brown for one of the first big movie musicals, THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE (MGM, 1929). It has also been used in LITTLE NELLIE KELLY (1940) and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971).
Freed, later a top producer of musicals (THE WIZARD OF OZ, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS), hired Green and Comden (ON THE TOWN) to build a movie around his song, now a standard. It took them a month to nail down the unifying concept: showcasing Brown and Freed songs against the background they were written in, namely, Hollywood's transition to the talkies. The script was finished in April, 1951, Freed having selected "Fit as a Fiddle," "You Were Meant for Me," "Good Mornin'," and nine others. Kelly created the fifteen-minute Broadway Melody ballet and agreed to star in and co-direct. Production closed Nov 21, 1951. It cost $2,540,800 to make ($620,996 over budget). It previewed at the De Anza Theater, Riverside, California, on December 21, to a rave audience. It premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theater instead of the more prestigious Grauman's Chinese Theater, where the opening and closing scenes were shot. Apparently, the studio was not terribly supportive of the film. It turned out to be the tenth most popular film of 1952, grossing $7,665,000. However, it was received only two Oscar nominations and won neither.
Some other trivia about it: Green and Comden had originally seen it as a vehicle for Howard Keel as a bit player in silent movies who becomes a singing cowboy star. This, of course, survives in the stuntman sequence. The song "Make 'em Laugh" was plagiarized from Cole Porter's "Be a Clown," used in the Freed musical THE PIRATE. Donen has acknowledged that was "100 per cent plagiarism."
A lot of you know that Jean Hagen, the screechy-voiced bimbo, dubbed Debbie Reynolds, who is supposed to be dubbing Jean Hagen. One of the things I noticed this time around was how impressed I was by Hagen's performance. She was nominated for an Oscar for the role and deservedly so. It is easy to dismiss the part because she does such a good job of making us dislike the character.
Gene Kelly had a bad head cold during the filming of the Singin' in the Rain sequence and was afraid, terrified, of developing pneumonia during the two day shoot. I noticed his voice was a little hoarse when he says goodnight to Reynolds at the beginning of the sequence, but otherwise one would never guess.
The uncredited cameos include silent comedian Snub Pollard, "Our Gang" kids Baby Patsy, Dale Odell, Roberta Williams, and Gerald Carpenter, and 1930s star Mae Clark (of grapefruit fame).
(A lot the above information I cribbed from William Arnold in the Seattle P-I.)
This Fortieth Anniversary tour is a rare opportunity to see one of the great films of world cinema as it was meant to be seen. In 1988 a poll of world film critics placed SINGIN' IN THE RAIN fifth among the world's best 100 films--CITIZEN KANE ranked ahead of it, but CASABLANCA came in ninth.
See this movie. Pay whatever it takes, but see it.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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