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Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, and featuring Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, Rita Moreno and Cyd Charisse in supporting roles.
The song is best known today as the centerpiece of the musical film Singin' in the Rain (1952), in which Gene Kelly memorably danced to the song while splashing through puddles during a rainstorm. The song is also performed during the opening credits of the film, and briefly near the end of the film by Debbie Reynolds.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
Singin’ in the Rain, American musical comedy film, released in 1952, that was a reunion project for the American in Paris directorial team of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, who was also the films’ star. Singin’ in the Rain emerged as a classic, considered by many to be the greatest Hollywood musical ever made.
Writers Adolph Green and Betty Comden discovered that MGM had a cache of many wonderful but unheralded songs featured in the studio’s films from the early sound era. This inspired them to use these tunes as the basis of a screenplay about the trials and tribulations endured by people in the film industry when sound was introduced, a process that made plenty of new stars while destroying many established ones. Kelly portrayed a studio star who falls in love with an aspiring actress, played by Debbie Reynolds. Her lovely voice wins her a place opposite him in the new “talkie” films, pushing aside his screechy-toned leading lady, played by Jean Hagen.
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•Studio: MGM
•Directors: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
•Writers: Adolph Green and Betty Comden
•Music: Nacio Herb Brown and Lennie Hayton
•Gene Kelly (Don Lockwood)
•Donald O’Connor (Cosmo Brown)
•Debbie Reynolds (Kathy Selden)
•Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont)
•Millard Mitchell (R.F. Simpson)
•Cyd Charisse (Dancer)
- Lee Pfeiffer
In 1971, the Gene Kelly recording of this song got another outing when it was played over the closing credits of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Earlier in the film, Malcolm McDowell sang the tune as he and his colleagues carried out a robbery, assault and rape.
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- It wasn't adapted from a Broadway musical. Many movie musicals of the 1930s, '40s and '50s were based on stage shows, but this wasn’t one of them. Rather, it was a new script, written just for the movie, featuring old songs written for previous movies.
- It was conceived by producer Arthur Freed as a means of showcasing songs he had written, but it wasn't (just) an ego trip. Freed was a successful lyricist in the 1920s and '30s, collaborating with composer Nacio Herb Brown on dozens of songs for MGM musicals.
- The one "original" song written specifically for the movie is actually a rip-off. As the film was about to commence shooting, directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly realized Donald O’Connor didn’t have a solo number.
- Debbie Reynolds had no dance experience before she made the movie. She pointed this out when she was asked to be in Singin’ in the Rain, but Kelly said he could teach her, just as he’d done with Frank Sinatra for Anchors Aweigh.
Dec 30, 2021 · Singin’ in the Rain remembered by its makers — and still reignin’ 70 years on. Nigel Andrews revisits his interviews with Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen and Debbie Reynolds to tell the story of how...
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One of the most memorable sequences in history is the title of the song Singin' in the Rain. This song is the most dynamic song ever filmed, compared to the stiff performance rendition it received by Gus Edwards in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 .
