Cold War
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Singin in the Rain
pictures
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for budget of $2.54 million, released April 10, 1952 by MGM and grossed $3.6 million, Technicolor 35mm negative, 1.37:1 screen aspect ratio, mono sound, 103 mins.; Laserdisc released 1991; restored theatrical print from original 3-strip Technicolor negatives released 1992; DVD released 1997 with remastered Dolby digital sound
Production:
Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
Written by Betty Comden, Adolph Green
Produced by Arthur Freed
Original music by Nacio Herb Brown, Lennie Hayton
Cinematography by Harold Rosson
Film Editing by Adrienne Fazan
Sound recording by Douglas Shearer
Special Effects by Warren Newcombe, Irving G. Ries
Choreography by Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
Orchestration by Wally Heglin, Conrad Salinger, Skip Martin
Vocal arrangements by Jeff Alexander, Roger Edens
Cast:
Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood
Donald OConnor as Cosmo Brown
Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Selden
Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont (and as the singing voice of Debbie Reynolds)
Millard Mitchell as R. F. Simpson
Cyd Charisse as Dancer
Douglas Fowley as Roscoe Dexter
Rita Moreno as Zelda Zanders
Madge Blake as Dora Bailey
Kathleen Freeman as Phoebe Dinsmore, Linas diction coach
Bobby Watson as Dons diction coach
Betty Royce as the singing voice for “Would You?”
Notes:
Singin in the Rain was first conceived as a “catalogue” picture by Arthur Freed for MGM in 1949. He had written the song 20 years earlier with the composer Nacio Herb Brown for the Hollywood Music Box Revue in 1927, a stage show of showgirls and songs and spectacular sets of the type made famous by the Ziegfeld Follies. After the sound revolution swept through Hollywood in the wake of the 1927 Jazz Singer, Irving Thalberg hired Freed and Brown to write music for MGMs first revue musical, Broadway Melody, in 1929. Freed had worked as a mood pianist in silent films when he first moved from New York to Hollywood in 1925 (like Cosmo) and helped Thalberg (like R. F.) and the MGM studio (like Monumental Pictures) make the transition to sound. The characters of Lina Lamont (like Judy Holliday), director Roscoe Dexter (like Busby Berkeley), Dora Bailey (like Louella Parsons) were based on real people. The song “Singin in the Rain” and other Freed-Brown songs would be used in repeatedly in many MGM pictures, starting with Hollywood Revue of 1929. Arthur Freed became a leading producer of musicals at MGM, putting together a talented group known as the Freed Unit after it made The Wizard of Oz in 1938. When MGM purchased the entire backlist or “catalogue” of songs from Freed and Brown in March 1949, the song “Singin in the Rain” became the property of MGM and Freed proposed featuring his song in a backstage-type musical film remake of the 1928 Excess Baggage that was set in vaudeville era. Freed hired Betty Comden and Adolph Green in May 1950 to write the story for the film. Comden and Green had been the writers for On the Town that starred Gene Kelly in 1943. They decided to set the story in Hollywood precisely during the transition to sound when the Freed-Brown songs were originally written. They watched old movies with Stanley Donen who was hired as the films director and who had just finished co-directing On the Town with Gene Kelly. The final draft of the script was completed August 10, 1950, with Kelly signed as the star for what was written as primarily a singing film as soon as he finished An American in Paris in January 1951.
The film went into production by March 1951, and photography began June 18, 1951. But Gene Kelly caused significant changes in the script. He envisioned the film as primarily a dance film and wanted the dancer Donald OConnor as his sidekick Cosmo. Kellys role expanded to co-director, choreographer, actor, singer, dancer.