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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. It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with ...
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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
- 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.
Singin' in the Rain: Directed by Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly. With Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen. A silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his delusionally jealous screen partner are trying to make the difficult transition to talking pictures in 1920s Hollywood.
- (263K)
- Comedy, Musical, Romance
- Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
- 1952-04-10
(Indeed, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ itself had made its screen debut in The Hollywood Revue of 1929.) Debbie Reynolds’ ordeal filming the ‘Good Morning’ tap-dance number famously left her with bloody feet. As for the title song, six months of rehearsal culminated in Gene Kelly gamely splashing about while running a high fever.
A long-standing myth claims the rain was made up of a blend of water and milk to make sure it showed up on camera, but Kelly attributes the effect to clever backlighting. In 2005 a big beat version by electronic act Mint Royale peaked at #20 in the UK thanks to its use in a Gene Kelly cgi-enhanced TV advertisement for Volkswagen Golf.
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Apr 11, 2022 · History, of course, takes time to take shape. Back in 1952, Freed would probably have been surprised to learn that Singin’ in the Rain, rather than An American in Paris, would eventually become the most canonised of all Hollywood musicals – the one routinely cited even by non-acolytes of the genre as one of the greatest films ever made.
