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"Singin' In the Rain"

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History

Singin' in the Rain (1952) is one of the most-loved and celebrated film musicals of all time from MGM, before a mass exodus to filmed adaptations of Broadway plays emerged as a standard pattern. It was made directly for film, and was not a Broadway adaptation.

The joyous film, co-directed by Stanley Donen and acrobatic dancer-star-choreographer Gene Kelly, is a charming, up-beat, graceful and thoroughly enjoyable experience with great songs, lots of flashbacks, wonderful dances (including the spectacular Broadway Melody Ballet with leggy guest star Cyd Charisse), casting and story. This was another extraordinary example of the organic, 'integrated musical' in which the story's characters naturally express their emotions in the midst of their lives. Song and dance replace the dialogue, usually during moments of high spirits or passionate romance. And over half of the film - a 'let's put on a play' type of film, is composed of musical numbers.

This superb film, called "MGM's TECHNICOLOR Musical Treasure," was produced during MGM studios' creative pinnacle. From the late 1930s to the early 1960s, producer Arthur Freed produced more than forty musicals for MGM. The creative forces at the studio in the Freed Unit - composed of Freed, Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen, and actor/choreographer Gene Kelly - also collaborated together to produce such gems as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949), Best Picture Oscar-winner a year earlier with director Vincente Minnelli - An American in Paris (1951), Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Gigi (1958).

Because the colorful, witty film is set in 1927, it humorously satirizes and parodies the panic surrounding the troubling transitional period from silents to talkies in the dream factory of Hollywood of the late 1920s as the sound revolution swept through. The film's screenplay, suggested by the song Singin' in the Rain that was written by Freed and Brown, was scripted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who also wrote On the Town (1949)). The time frame of Comden's and Green's script, the Roaring 20s Era of flappers, was mostly determined by the fact that lyricist Freed (and songwriter Nacio Herb Brown) had written their extensive library of songs in their early careers during the 1920s and 1930s, when Hollywood was transitioning to talkies. The musical comedy's story, then, would be best suited around that theme. Except for two songs, all of the musical arrangements in the film to be showcased were composed by Freed and Brown for different Hollywood films before Freed became a producer.

[The title song was originally created by lyricist Arthur Freed and composer Nacio Herb Brown for MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929). The general storyline of the film was derived from Once in a Lifetime (1932), a hilarious adaptation of the Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman play also set during the time of panic surrounding Hollywood's transition to talkies.]

The plot of the film is actually an autobiography of Hollywood itself at the dawn of the talkies. The story is about a dashing, smug but romantic silent film star and swashbuckling matinee idol (Don Lockwood) and his glamorous blonde screen partner/diva (Lina Lamont) who are expected, by studio heads, to pretend to be romantically involved with each other. They are also pressured by the studio boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) to change their silent romantic drama (The Duelling Cavalier) and make their first sound picture, renamed as the musical The Dancing Cavalier. There's one serious problem, however - the temperamental, narcissistic star has a shrill, screechy New York accent. The star's ex-song-and-dance partner (Cosmo) proposes to turn the doomed film into a musical, and suggests that Don's aspiring actress and ingenue dancer-girlfriend (Kathy Selden) dub in her singing voice behind the scenes for lip-synching Lina. The results of their scheming to expose the jealous Lina and put Kathy in a revealing limelight provide the film's expected happy resolution.

Surprisingly, this great film that was shot for a cost of $2.5 million (about $.5 million over-budget), was basically ignored by film critics when released and treated with indifference (with box-office of $7.7 worldwide). It received only two Academy Award nominations - Best Supporting Actress (Jean Hagen), and Best Musical Score (Lennie Hayton) and didn't win any awards. The film's musical score Oscar nomination lost to Alfred Newman's score for With a Song in My Heart.

The film opens outside the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre at an exciting 1927 Hollywood film premiere. It is Monumental Pictures' opening night for its latest romantic, black and white swashbuckler, The Royal Rascal, starring two successful silent film stars, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and his leading lady - beautiful blonde bombshell Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen, an understudy for another quintessential, squeaky-voiced dumb blonde named Billie Dawn, portrayed by Judy Holliday in the Broadway production of Born Yesterday, and in the subsequent film Born Yesterday (1950)). One of the fans in the crowd holds up Screen Digest, a fan magazine, with Don and Lina pictured on the cover with the story titled: "Lockwood and Lamont - Reel Life or Real Life Romance?" The tabloids exaggerate their relationship - presenting them as virtually engaged.

A Louella Parsons-like radio interviewer Dora Bailey (Madge Blake) announces the arrivals of all the stars. The first limousines pull up at the show with lesser stars and their escorts, as fans cheer, anticipating the arrival of the major stars.

• the "darling of the flapper set" Zelda Zanders (Rita Moreno in an early role, her fourth film) and J. Cumberland Spendrill III (Stuart Holmes), a "well-known eligible bachelor"
• the "exotic star" Olga Mara (Judy Landon) in a black spider-web dress and new husband Baron de la Ma de la Toulon (John Dodsworth)
• studio musician Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor playing a role modeled after pianist/songwriter Oscar Levant), Don Lockwood's "best friend" and long-time partner, who plays the piano on the set for Don and Lina "to get them into those romantic moods". His exit from a vehicle produces little fanfare.

Finally, Hollywood's favorite romantic team/couple of silent movies, Don and Lina, arrive ("those romantic lovers of the screen"). As they step out of their limousine, he is wearing a totally white, belted polo coat and white felt hat, and Lina has on a glittering light silvery-green gown and fur-collared stole. They are greeted with tremendous cheers from the fans, and the interviewer's words about the gorgeous couple: "They're a household name all over the world, like bacon and eggs."

Don is asked by the radio interviewer to entertain the public with an account of his rise from vaudeville:

Are these rumors true that wedding bells are soon to ring for you and Lina?...You've come a long way together, Don. Won't you tell us how it all happened?...I want your story from the beginning...The story of your success is an inspiration to young people all over the world. Please.

He begins his conveniently-laundered version of his rise to stardom with one motto he has always lived by, instilled in him by his parents from the very beginning:

Dignity - always dignity.

Then, in flashback, he reminisces for the listening public, in exaggerated fashion, about his life story and rise to the top in show business. Don tells of his early pre-Hollywood days, dancing school, rigorous musical training at the conservatory of fine arts, and many performances with his vaudeville partner/musician, Cosmo.

The narrative images on the screen belie every embellished, fabricated word he speaks - in reality, the pictures and descriptions are terribly disjointed. [The film's theme is the 'out of sync' disjunction of words / sounds / movie images from reality - what can be believed in the magical world of film? Can we believe our eyes and our ears?] What actually happened to Cosmo and Don is seen entirely differently - as an uphill struggle for two musicians/performers.

The next stage in Don's career took him to "sunny California" - Hollywood. (Don and Cosmo are pictured standing in front of an unemployment office in the rain.) "We were...staying here, resting up when the offers from the movie studio started pouring in." They got their start both playing B-movie background music for Monumental Pictures' westerns, starring Lina Lamont. Don's first break occurred when he was asked by the director Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley) to substitute for a knocked-out and unconscious stuntman, and was given the co-starring role opposite Lina. He is shown doing even more spectacular movie stunts - flying an airplane into a house, riding a motorcycle over a cliff, and running into a burning, exploding shack [many of the earliest film stuntmen actually worked their way into performing as actors]:

My roles were urbane, sophisticated, suave...And of course, all through those pictures, Lina was and is always, an inspiration to me. Warm and helpful. A real lady.

Lina gives Don the brush-off, knowing that he is only a stuntman. Monumental Films' producer R. F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), impressed by Don's stunt work on the set, asks him to come to his office for lunch to see about putting him in a picture with Lina: "We'll discuss a contract." The vain Lina (overhearing the proposal) suddenly shows an interest in him, although she would have nothing to do with him earlier. Don uses this to his advantage and asks Lina: "Are you doing anything tonight, Miss Lamont?" She shakes her head no and puts her arm through his - without speaking. But he replies: "Well, that's funny. I'm busy." She kicks him in the seat of his pants, as he recalls their entire career together.

The story then returns to the front of Grauman's Theatre in the present, and Don continues, doing all the talking for the pair: "Well, Lina and I have had the same wonderful relationship ever since." During the screening of The Royal Rascal (a spoof fashioned after Gene Kelly's performance in MGM's The Three Musketeers (1948)), one of the young flappers in the audience comments to her girlfriend about the sophisticated screen image that Lina's beauty projects: "She's so refined. I think I'll kill myself."

During the curtain call, following the showing of the new swashbuckler silent film The Royal Rascal that ends with the stars kissing each other, Don doesn't let Lina say a word, and we soon learn why. Backstage after the successful premiere, dim-witted, shrill-voiced, silent film star, blonde, egomaniacal bombshell Lina speaks for the first time, in a shrill, common voice. [As stated earlier, her role deliberately imitates Judy Holliday's characterization of ditzy Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950), both on stage and screen. And she also is imitating a composite of 20s vamps, such as Pola Negri, Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, and Norma Talmadge.] Simpson congratulates Lina for her smash-hit performance:

Simpson: Lina, you were gorgeous.
Cosmo: Yeah, Lina, you looked pretty good for a girl.

She vents her wrathful anger at everyone with her grating Bronx accent - the sound of her voice is an ironic contrast to her glamorous image:

F' heaven's sake, what's the big idea? Can't a girl get a word in edge-wise? After all, they're my public too!

Fortunately, silent film audiences are unaware of Lina's horrible speaking voice, but it is difficult to keep her quiet and have Don make all the speeches. She asks: "What's wrong with the way I talk? What's the big idea? Am I dumb or somethin'?" Her entourage is speechless.

She goes to Don for support: "Donny, how can you let him talk to me like that, your fiansee?" And he tries to play down their romantic pairing off-screen by the rumor mills and fan magazines:

Now Lina, you've been reading those fan magazines again. Now look Lina, you shouldn't believe all that banana oil that Dora Bailey and the columnists dish out. Now try to get this straight. There is nothing between us. There has never been anything between us. Just air.

Don is frustrated by the "cooked-up romance just for publicity," and he commiserates with his pal Cosmo about it:

Don: What's the matter with that girl? Can't she take a gentle hint?
Cosmo: Well, haven't you heard? She's irresistible. She told me so herself.

On his way to a post-preview party after leaving the theatre's film premiere, Don and Cosmo's car gets a flat tire. When the movie star is mobbed by autograph seekers and fans, who tear his clothes, he desperately calls for a taxi:

Don: Hey Cos, do something, call me a cab.
Cosmo: (non-chalantly) OK, you're a cab.

Exasperated, he jumps onto a trolley and from there jumps into the front seat of a passing, open red convertible-jalopy [the car used in the Andy Hardy series of films]. The young lady driver, who has rescued him, shrieks in fright - thinking he is a criminal. But once he is identified as a bona fide movie star by a friendly police officer, she calms down. She offers him a ride to Beverly Hills, and introduces herself as Kathy Selden (a pert 19 year old Debbie Reynolds, a former 1948 Miss Burbank, in her third film for MGM and in her first major role), a young, bouncy, flapper - an aspiring, fresh-faced and enthusiastic actress. He responds, "Enchanted, Miss Selden." She wonders why his clothes are ripped, and he explains it is due to the loving enthusiasm of his adoring fans. Don feeds her a line about the sorry life of movie stars as he moves closer and closer to her:

Well, we movie stars get the glory. I guess we have to take the little heartaches that go with it. People think we lead lives of glamour and romance, but we're really lonely - terribly lonely.

Kathy tells him she doesn't think much of the silent movies or go very often, thinking it a bastard art. She refuses to be impressed by screen celebrity or the acting of silent film stars:

I don't go to the movies much - if you've seen one, you've seen them all...Oh, no offense. Movies are entertaining enough for the masses, but the personalities on the screen just don't impress me. I mean, they don't talk. They don't act. They just make a lot of dumb show...

He is slightly put off by her analysis of his craft, piqued by her 'superior' remarks about the movie business. As she reaches their destination to drop him off, she announces in a chirpy, singing voice: "Here we are, Sunset and Camden." She continues to talk about the real art of acting, as he makes cynical comments:

Kathy: Acting means great parts, wonderful lines, speaking of glorious words, Shakespeare, Ibsen.
Don: Words, tell me, what's your lofty mission in life that lets you sneer at my humble profession?
Kathy: I'm an actress.
Don: What?...
Kathy: On the stage.
Don: Oh, on the stage. Well, I'd like to see you act. What are you in right now? I could brush up on my English, or uh, bring along an interpreter, that is, if they'd let in a movie actor.
Kathy: Well, I'm not in a play right now, but I will be. I'm going to New York.
Don: Oh, you're going to New York and then some day we'll all hear of you, won't we? Kathy Selden as Juliet, as Lady Macbeth, as King Lear. You'll have to wear a beard for that one, of course.
Kathy: Oh, you can laugh if you want to, but at least the stage is a dignified profession.
Don: (scoffing) Dignified profession!
Kathy: And what do you got to be so conceited about? You're nothing but a shadow on film, a shadow. You're not flesh and blood.
Don: Oh, no? (He moves closer to kiss her amorously)
Kathy: Stop! (She pushes him away)
Don: What can I do to you? I'm only a shadow.
Kathy: You keep away from me. Just because you're a big movie star, wild parties, swimming pools, you expect every girl to fall in a dead faint at your feet. Well, don't you touch me.

After finally getting out of the car, he makes fun of her aspiring, would-be actress talent: "Farewell, Ethel Barrymore. I must tear myself from your side." But clumsily, he has slammed the car door on his coattail, and rips his coat as he walks away. She has the last laugh on him.

That same evening, Monumental Pictures studio chief, R. F. Simpson holds a post-preview party at his home to celebrate the premiere. On the dance floor is a caricatured couple, looking like slick-haired Rudolph Valentino and a vampish Olga (resembling Pola Negri or Gloria Swanson). Don arrives late after changing his clothes. To surprise the partygoers, Simpson plays a short demonstration of the new talking pictures phenomenon. Reactions vary, but most guests refuse to take it seriously:

Just a toy...It's a scream...It's vulgar.

Simpson himself predicts that talkies, a new technological gadget, will not be successful: "The Warner Bros are making a whole talking picture with this gadget. The Jazz Singer. They'll lose their shirts." Don again meets Kathy, who has been hired from the Cocoanut Grove to be the dancing pop-out girl (in skimpy pink attire) from a huge cake that has been rolled into the room. He greets her again with sarcasm: "Well, if it isn't Ethel Barrymore!" Before she takes part in the entertainment, Don disparages her acting skill some more:

I do hope you're gonna favor us with something special tonight. Say, Hamlet's soliloquy, or the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet? Don't be shy. You'll make about the prettiest Juliet I've ever seen.

[This comment makes reference to the early and primitive MGM talking picture Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) in which various MGM contract players performed in specialty acts, including John Gilbert and Norma Shearer doing an updated balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in two-color Technicolor.]

Kathy participates in a song and dance, Charleston-like number to the tune of "All I Do Is Dream of You" with a dozen other chorus girls - all wound up in colored confetti. Don makes fun of Kathy and irritates her with more insults ("I just had to tell ya how good you were"). She retaliates with a cream pie but accidentally hits Lina in the face by mistake. Cosmo jokes: "Lina, you never looked lovelier." Flustered, Kathy must make a hasty exit, even though Don tries to stop her so that he can speak to her again.

Three weeks later, the first full-length talkie, The Jazz Singer (1927) opens successfully. Plans at Monumental call for the studio's next silent film to be another Lockwood-Lamont pairing, The Duelling Cavalier, a "French Revolution story" produced by studio chief Simpson. Don appears to be depressed, thinking of Kathy whom he has not seen since she vanished from the party. He is also worried about the impact sound films will have on his own career.

In the studio, filled with primitive movie sets and glimpses of films being produced (a jungle picture titled Chant of the Jungle with natives dancing around a cauldron, a football flick with cheerleaders urging the fans, and a fist-socking western), his wise-cracking pal Cosmo attempts to cheer him up, because he is an actor and 'the show must go on.' Cosmo performs a wacky but memorable sequence, an amusing, acrobatic, highly energetic tour-de-force number, entitled "Make 'Em Laugh." [Its source was Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" that was performed by Kelly in director Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate (1948) with Judy Garland.] The physically-taxing song about an entertainer's lot, performed as a tribute to the era of silent films' slapstick comedians, is cheerfully performed solo with props and sets on the set. Among other things, rubber-bodied Cosmo falls down, runs up a wall, turns a complete somersault, falls off a couch, and dances through the props.

On the first day of shooting their new silent film with Monumental director Roscoe Dexter, Lina complains about her silvery-white wig:

Lina: Gee, this wig weighs a ton. What dope'd wear a thing like this?
Roscoe: Everybody used to wear them, Lina.
Lina: Well, then everybody was a dope.

Lina asks Don why she hasn't seen him, suspecting that he has been looking for "that girl" (Kathy). Lina admits she arranged to have Kathy fired, for hitting her in the face with a pie ("I arranged it...Well, they weren't gonna fire her, so I called 'em up and told 'em they'd better"). Don is flabbergasted. But before he can react, he must perform in a love scene with his hated co-star and pretend to be "madly in love" with her.

The love scene is hilarious, as their dialogue in the silent film version is totally opposite from their acting:

Don: Why, you rattlesnake you. You got that poor kid fired.
Lina: That's not all I'm gonna do if I ever get my hands on her.
Don: I never heard of anything so low...What did you do it for?
Lina: 'Cause you liked her, I could tell.
Don: So that's it. Believe me. I don't like her half as much as I hate you. You reptile!
Lina: Sticks and stones may break my bones...
Don: I'd like to break every bone in your body.
Lina: You and who else, you big lummox?

After they kiss in the scene, she thinks he must have some real feelings for her, but he confesses that he is only acting:

Lina: Oh, Donny! You couldn't kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy, weensy bit!
Don: Meet the greatest actor in the world. I'd rather kiss a tarantula.
Lina: Oh, you don't mean that.
Don: I don't -- Hey, Joe, bring me a tarantula.

Suddenly, Simpson enters the set and announces that the studio is to shut down, to prepare to catch up to the sensational sound revolution brought on by The Jazz Singer.

The public is screaming for more...talking pictures...Every studio is jumping on the bandwagon, Dexter. All the theatres are putting in sound equipment. We don't want to be left out of it.

Simpson is convinced that The Duelling Cavalier must be instantly converted to a sound picture. Cosmo predicts he will be out of a job, and shrugs, but then is assured by Simpson that he will be hired to head the new music department:

Cosmo: Talking pictures, that means I'm out of a job. At last I can start suffering and write that symphony.
Simpson: You're not out of a job, we're putting you in as head of the new music department.
Cosmo: Well, thanks, R.F.! At last I can stop suffering and write that symphony.

Simpson predicts a new sensation: "Lamont and Lockwood: They Talk!" Lina pipes up with her shrill, nasal Bronx/Brooklyn accent:

Well, of course we talk. Don't everybody?

A Variety headline spins into view and announces that the sound revolution is coming and causing a furor in filmdom: REVOLUTION IN HOLLYWOOD. EXECS A-DITHER AT PIC SOUND. Sensational triumph of First Talkie Upsets Applecart For Many Who See Nothing but Higher Costs in Change-over Bound to Follow Scientific Progress Due to New Inventions. A second headline also proclaims: STUDIOS CONVERT TO TALKIES. 'Mad Scramble' On For Sound. A burning hole in another issue reads: MUSICAL PICTURES SWEEP NATION. Smash Biz All Over Country. A short, hyperkinetic and colorful song-and-dance montage (with Busby Berkeley kaleidoscopic images) illustrates the change-over to talking pictures, including a short medley of songs sung by a chorus: "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'," and "The Wedding of the Painted Doll," and one titled "Should I?" by a male singer with a megaphone impersonating Rudy Vallee.

In the meantime, Kathy, who has been given a small dancing role in one of Monumental Studio's musical films featuring the song "Beautiful Girl," is "found" by Simpson after viewing the number from off-stage. She is offered a minor film role (as Zelda's "kid sister") through Don's unexpected support, although it is to be kept a secret from Lina:

Don: Unhappy? I think it's wonderful.
Cosmo: Sure, he's been lookin' for her for weeks.
Don: Yeah.
Simpson: Are you speaking for Lina also?
Don: Now look, R.F., the owner of the Cocoanut Grove may do what Lina tells him to, but you're the head of this studio.
Simpson: That's right. I'm the head of this studio. She's hired! But don't let Lina know she's on the lot.

Don is delighted and thrilled to see her again, and makes his peace with her, but he is tongue-tied with words. So he sings and they dance a love duet together, "You Were Meant for Me," in which Don declares his love for Kathy. The enchantingly romantic number is performed in the Astaire-Rogers tradition [and similar to a scene in Kelly's own Summer Stock (1950)]. It is all an illusion, shot on an empty studio stage where he has set the stage with "the proper setting..." consisting of dramatic studio lighting and a wind machine. To seduce her, he places her on a stepladder (positioning her like Juliet on her balcony) and calls up a sunset (from colored lights) and a breeze (from a wind machine):

...a beautiful sunset, mist from the distant mountains, colored lights in a garden. My lady is standing on her balcony in a rose-trellised bower, flooded with moonlight, we add 500,000 kilowatts of stardust, a soft summer breeze, and - you sure look lovely in the moonlight, Kathy.

Simpson tries to prepare the company for sound. In scenes of comic exaggeration, making fun of the problems Hollywood faced with the coming of sound (a Variety headline reads: HOLLYWOOD LEARNS TO TALK, Big Bonanza for Diction Coaches), diction lessons are given to many of the stars, including Don and Lina. Diction coach Phoebe Dinsmore (Kathleen Freeman) patiently but unsuccessfully tries to teach diction to nit-wit Lina. Wrestling with all round vowels, she is beyond hope.

And I caaan't stan' 'im.

Don has no real problem with the transition. Another stuffy diction coach (Bobby Watson) teaches him to say: "Arrrround the rrrrocks the rrrugged rrascal rrran." And then both Don and Cosmo are given a tongue-twister. After Cosmo distorts his cartoon-like face behind the teacher, they lampoon their instruction by putting it to music in "Moses Supposes," (one of the songs specifically written for the film). They demonstrate through song and rapid tap-dancing how successfully they have mastered their diction lessons:

Moses Supposes

Moses supposes his toes are roses/
But Moses supposes erroneously/
Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses/
As Moses supposes his toeses to be.

The filming of the sound version of the film The Duelling Cavalier is one of the high points of the film. The scene, opening with a sign reading: QUIET WHILE RECORDING, cleverly makes fun of the problems early sound sets were plagued with - especially their clunky, oversensitive microphones. The talkies set appears historically accurate - a sound-proof booth surrounds the camera and microphones are strategically placed. In a series of funny sequences, Lina is unable to speak into a microphone. She is first instructed to talk directly toward a hidden microphone in a bush, using round tones: "Pierre, you shouldn't have come." Her attempts fail disastrously: "Well, I can't make love to a bush," she whines. An attempt to use a hidden microphone in the bosom of her low-cut dress is also a catastrophe - it only records her heartbeat. A third vain attempt is made to hide the microphone in a corsage on her shoulder, but the microphone wires cause Lina to take a very unfeminine flip backwards when a visiting producer on the set trips over them.

On a rainy night (Don, Kathy and Cosmo arrive with their raincoats - the same ones they wore during part of the opening titles when they sang "Singin' in the Rain"), the theatre preview showing of their first talkie for the studio, The Duelling Cavalier, is a hilarious disaster. Lina's horrid voice is extremely irritating and unladylike. Volume problems and extraneous recorded noises (Lina's playing with her pearl necklace in particular) make the sneak-preview audience howl with laughter, and criticize the script ("Did somebody get paid for writing that dialogue?"). Outside, one man reacts: "Sounds like a comedy inside." Lines placed out of synchronization in the film make Lina say: "No, no, no" in the Villain's voice. And the Movie Villain says: "Yes, yes, yes" in Lina's voice. Lina reacts to the film with: "I liked it," but obviously, Lina will not make the smooth transition to talkies, possibly damaging Don's career as well. [Historically, screen actors and actresses during Hollywood's transition period faced similar disgrace and ridicule and the loss of their careers, e.g., John Gilbert.]

Depressed by the preview, fellow conspirators Don, Cosmo and Kathy discuss their problems later that drizzly evening during an all-night talk session. Depressed, Don confesses his shortcomings as an actor to them:

Don: Everything you ever said about me is true, Kathy. I'm no actor. I never was. Just a lotta 'dumb show.' I know that now.
Cosmo: Well, at least you're taking it lying down.
Don: No. No kidding, Cosmo. Did you ever see anything as idiotic as me on that screen tonight?
Cosmo: Yeah, how about Lina?
Don: All right. I ran her a close second. Maybe it was a photo finish. Anyway, I'm through, fellas.
Kathy: Don, you're not through!
Cosmo: Why, of course not. Why, with your looks and your figure, you could drive an ice wagon or shine shoes!
Kathy: Block hats!
Cosmo: Sell pencils!
Kathy: Dig ditches!
Cosmo: Or worse still, go back into vaudeville.

Trying to salvage the film and their careers, Kathy and Cosmo eventually come up with a brilliant, novel idea - make the disastrous costume film into a musical (in the next six weeks before the film's release)!

Add some songs and dances, trim the bad scenes, add a couple of new ones...

Even though it is 1:30 in the morning (not late evening March 23rd, but actually early morning March 24th), they burst into song and tap-dancing for "Good Morning," an upbeat number. It is performed in the kitchen and on furniture throughout the house, using props everywhere. They are joyously expressing their relief over a perfect solution. But then Don has a sudden fear - it can't be a musical because of Lina. Cosmo agrees:

She can't act, she can't sing, and she can't dance, a triple threat.

But then, Cosmo suggests another brilliant solution - Kathy will dub Lina's voice as she lip-synchs:

Wait a minute. I'm just about to be brilliant. Use Kathy's voice. Lina just moves her mouth and Kathy's voice comes over singing and talking for her.

Don objects at first: "Cause you (Kathy) wouldn't be seen. You'd be throwing away your own career." But Don agrees if it is only for one picture.

Later that night, as Don takes Kathy home and kisses her in the doorway, it is still raining. After saying goodnight to her, she tells him to take care of his health and throat in the 'heavy dew,' because he will now be a great singing star. Don replies: "Really? From where I stand, the sun is shining all over the place." Naturally, he has fallen in love with Kathy and he waves on his driver so he can proceed home on his own.

In a classic, heart-lifting, enchanting dance scene during a cloudburst, he does a glorious, almost five minute performance of the title song "Singin' In the Rain" - a spontaneous expression of his crazy-in-love, euphoric mood and happiness over his new-found love for Kathy. The title song has become movie legend as the most famous dance number in American film - and it is Gene Kelly's finest solo performance ever, although he was suffering from a 103 degree fever.

[This scene was shot on a studio backlot in Culver City, California. It is well-known that milk was mixed in with the water, fed by long lengths of pipes leading to overhead sprays, to make the liquid more visible. The scene was a late addition to the script, in order to provide literal justification for the film's title, and to ensure that the public wouldn't feel cheated if the film didn't have a 'singin' in the rain' sequence.]

Composed of only ten distinct shots (with a dissolve at its beginning - at the front door - and at its ending), he strolls down the empty two blocks of street in the rain passing shop windows (including a Pharmacy/Drug Store with a 'Smoke Mahout' window display, the Richard Carlane Music Studio, the LaValle Millinery Shop, the 'First Editions' Book Store, and Mount Hollywood Art School). At first he keeps his umbrella open above him to keep dry, but after a few short steps, he shrugs and closes it (and either lays it on his shoulder, swings it, keeps it to his side, or imaginatively incorporates it into the number).

He skips on the sidewalk, exuberantly climbs on and swings around a lamppost with one hand, with his umbrella folded up in his other outstretched hand. He continues to saunter and slosh along, then jumps and tap-dances through the puddles - becoming more and more child-like. He lets a drainpipe of rainwater drain on his upturned, broadly-smiling face, kicks up water, splashes, cavorts, and stamps around with sheer delight. After twirling on the cobble-stoned street, he balances on the street curb like a tightrope walker. When a mystified and vaguely hostile policeman (Robert Williams) finally walks over to find out what he is doing jumping up and down in deep puddles, and looks at him suspiciously, he reacts guiltily toward the authority figure. [When the camera cuts from one view to another, Kelly's two hands on the umbrella change to only his right hand on the umbrella.] He slows down, turns, and answers simply: "I'm dancin' and singin' in the rain." He closes his umbrella, grins boldly, walks off, hands his umbrella off to a needy passerby ('Snub' Pollard), and waves back toward the policeman from afar.

The next day, Don and Cosmo explain their saving idea to Hollywood studio head R. F. Simpson. The Duelling Cavalier is to be renamed The Dancing Cavalier and the plan is to include large-scale musical numbers within the film. To execute their plan and make the film a successful musical, in a series of cleverly-filmed transitions, Kathy's voice is recorded singing "Would You?" with an orchestral back-up conducted by Cosmo. [Kathy's singing voice is dubbed with the voice of Betty Noyes - see note below.] The scene in the recording studio dissolves to an image of Lina (with her kewpie-doll voice) practicing and struggling to mouth the words to the looped soundtrack for the song.

On the set during actual filming, Don and Lina - in colorful costumes, act out the scene as Kathy's dubbed voice is superimposed onto the soundtrack. The full-color scene on the set is drained of its color - switching to a black-and-white image. As the camera tracks backward, a smaller black-and-white image appears on the screen of the studio's projection room. Don, Cosmo, and Simpson are watching some of the rushes from the newly-dubbed film and Simpson is ecstatic with the results of the dubbing: "Perfect. That Selden girl is great. As soon as the picture is released, I'm going to give her a big buildup."

Don succinctly explains his fantastic idea for all that remains for the film: "one scene and a number...it's a new one. It's for the modern part of the picture." He suggests a large, modern, dance production number that will be inserted into the sound film:

[The ambitious ballet number is titled: "Broadway Melody Ballet" - it's a 14-minute extravagant sequence that cost about $600,000 to produce. The fantasy number, a 'show within a show,' has no direct relation to the plot and is out of place in the film. It tells a show-business rags-to-riches story of a young dancer's success on Broadway. It is a surrealistic, Busby Berkeley-type extravaganza spoof with many sets, costumes, and extras. The entire "Broadway" ballet is filled with magic, unexpected transitions, a huge cast, and spectacular uses of light, color, costumes and sets.]

It's the story of a young hoofer who comes to New York. First we set the stage with a song. It goes like this.

As he points in the direction of the blackened projection room screen, his tuxedoed image appears on-stage. He sings the ballet's opening song: "The Broadway Rhythm." Against an impressionistic background of Broadway signs inspired by the 1920s, Don Lockwood is then presented as a gawky, bespectacled, naive 'young hoofer' who arrives on the Great White Way with his suitcase in hand, looking for his big break.

The spectacular, new musical balletic dance number traces his arrival in New York, where he goes to a theatrical agency and auditions ("Gotta Dance! Gotta Dance!") but is rejected by two agents. A third agent takes him to a speakeasy where he lands a job. He is singing and dancing to "Broadway Rhythm" when, in an extraordinary scene, a woman's long shapely leg appears abruptly on the screen, dangling and balancing the straw hat from his head on her upturned foot. His eyes and the camera follow the leg up to the figure of a seductive Dancer (Cyd Charisse), a gangster's moll. He meets the girl of his dreams, a beautiful, bewitching exotic nightclub performer and city vamp, looking like vixenous silent star Louise Brooks. [In the pas de deux with Charisse, Kelly's ballet is a parody and spoof of gangster movie conventions and familiar movie stars of the era.]

She is wearing a short, gloriously sexy green dress, and has a long cigarette holder in her hand. She leaves the table where her silver dollar-flipping, scar-faced gangster boyfriend (resembling actor George Raft in Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932)) sits with two mugs. She dances provocatively around him, shaking her hips and blowing cigarette smoke in his face. She removes his glasses and hat, steams up the glasses with her breath and wipes them on her thigh, and then kicks away both his hat and glasses. She places her long cigarette holder in his mouth. They continue dancing sensuously close together, and she begins to kiss him. But she is lured away by the sight of a thick, sparkling diamond bracelet, held out by her gangster boyfriend's hand.

The young dancer is not allowed to follow his dream girl, although he is ushered through a stage door to the Columbia Burlesque stage, where he soon rises to fame, becoming a star of Palace Vaudeville and eventually entering The Ziegfeld Follies. Outfitted in a tuxedo at a fancy gala celebration while surrounded by flappers, he sees the beautiful girl again. As an imagined, idealized dream vision in a scarf dance, she wears a long [25 feet or longer] white, fluttering and billowing silk scarf. He lyrically dances with her 'pas de deux' in a romantic setting of pinks and grays, but when he returns to reality, she rejects him and he becomes forlorn. He walks off to the huge Broadway set that opened the number, where he sees another young hoofer arriving in town - like himself years earlier. His spirits are revived, and he joyfully leads the massive chorus in a large-scale finale to "Broadway Melody."

Reluctant boss Simpson stubbornly reacts to the new ideas: "I can't quite visualize it. I'll have to see it on film first." He doesn't share their enthusiasm but agrees to make The Duelling Cavalier into a musical film. Don assures him: "On film, it will be better yet."

Lina's career is saved, when Kathy has her voice substituted for all of Lina's lines and songs.

[In the film-within-a-film sequence here and later during the premiere showing of The Dancing Cavalier, when Debbie Reynolds (as Kathy Selden) speaks Lina Lamont's lines - the lines were actually dubbed by Jean Hagen herself! And 19 year-old Debbie Reynolds, who couldn't dance, was tutored by Fred Astaire for her role.]

After recording Kathy's voice, Don confesses his love for her and kisses her, and promises to publicly proclaim their love immediately, but she objects:

Kathy: Your fans will be bitterly disappointed.
Don: From now on, there's only one fan I worry about.

Lina discovers them together (with a tip from friend Zelda about the voice-dubbing deception) and shows how jealous she is over the attention Kathy receives from Don:

Lina: I want that girl off the lot at once. She ain't gonna be my voice. Zelda told me everything.
Don: Thanks, Zelda. You're a real pal.
Zelda: Oh, any time, Don.
Kathy: Now look, Miss Lamont, Don and I have...
Lina (interrupting): (To Kathy) Don! Don't you dare call him Don. I was calling him Don before you were born! I mean...

She persists even after learning that the lovers plan to marry. Because she jealously regards Kathy as the reason for the end of her romance (non-existent) with Don, she insists that Kathy be kept off the lot and deprived of getting full screen credit and publicity. Lina asserts, in the famous lines:

You mean it's gonna say up on the screen that I don't talk and sing for myself?...They can't do that!...They can't make a fool out of Lina Lamont. They can't make a laughing stock out of Lina Lamont. What do they think I am, dumb or something? Why I make more money than Calvin Coolidge put together.

To retaliate, Lina sends out exclusive publicity stories to all the papers and gossip columnists in town (Dora Bailey's column in particular), quoting the producer Simpson as saying: "Monumental Pictures Wildly Enthusiastic Over Her (Lina's) Singing Pipes and Dancing Stems." The bitchy star threatens Simpson, the producer: "You wouldn't want to call the papers and say that Lina Lamont is a big fat liar." And she threatens to initiate a lawsuit if Kathy's understudy role is revealed in on-screen credits:

What do you think I am, dumb or somethin'. I had my lawyer go over my contract...And I control my publicity, not you...The studio's responsible for every word printed about me. If I don't like it, I can suuue...I can suuue. If you tell the papers about Kathy Selden, it would be de-tri-mental and de-li-tereous to my career. I could suuue you for the whole studio.

By a clause in her contract, Lina demands that Kathy be confined to dubbing her voice for her entire career. Simpson thinks Lina is out of her mind - that would take away Kathy's chances at her own career, and people don't do things like that. Lina believes her favorable reviews, as she snaps back:

Peo-ple? I ain't peo-ple! I am a...'a shimmering glowing star in the cinema firm-a-mint!' It says so - right there.

At The Dancing Cavalier's premiere (advertised as "ALL SINGING, ALL TALKING, ALL DANCING"), at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the audience gives the stars a wild, tremendous ovation. Backstage, Don learns that Lina has succeeded in orchestrating a five-year contract with a "confused" Simpson, making Kathy her "voice" for many more pictures - and so Don threatens to quit.

During the curtain call, the audience calls for Lina to speak and perform a number on stage for them. Of course, big-headed Lina fatefully decides that she wants to speak to the audience following the triumphant premiere of the revamped film. At center stage, she begins, in a nasal voice: "Ladies and g'men. I cahn't tell you..." Silent star Lina delivers a famous line in her curtain call, revealing that even though she is beautiful, she has a horrible speaking voice:

If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'. Bless you all.

The theatre audience can't believe their ears: "Hey, she didn't sound that way in the picture." So they shout for Lina to give a live encore.

In a memorable sequence, Don, Simpson and Cosmo find a vengeful way to expose Lina even further. Kathy is rushed behind the stage curtain to perform "Singin' in the Rain" in A flat as Lina pantomimes and mouths the words in front of the curtain. During the performance, they pull the curtain aside, and to the audience's amazement, there is Kathy at a microphone behind Lina, singing the lyrics. The audience reacts hysterically, realizing that Lina's vocal talents really belong to Kathy.

[The raising of the curtain to expose the illusion recalls a similar scene in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Ironically, some of Kathy Selden's songs are themselves dubs - the inexperienced, 19 year-old ingenue Debbie Reynolds' singing voice was dubbed by Betty Noyes in "Would You?" and probably for "You Are My Lucky Star."]

Cosmo steps in for Kathy, singing in his baritone voice, as Lina continues the masquerade out front. When she realizes she has been exposed, Lina is laughed off the stage. She rushes off, taking a hasty exit. So does Kathy - up the theatre aisle.

Don wants the audience to know that it was Kathy whose voice they applauded that night. On stage, he announces:

Ladies and Gentlemen. Stop that girl. That girl running up the aisle - stop her. That's the girl whose voice you heard and loved tonight. She's the real star of the picture. Kathy Selden.

The audience applauds Kathy and convinces her to stop. Don starts to sing to her: "You Are My Lucky Star." With tears in her eyes, Kathy turns and walks toward the stage. He approaches and reaches out to her and leads her onstage, as they finish singing together and embrace. Kathy is finally appreciated as a star in her own right.

A profile of the right side of Don's face dissolves into the same image during a clever transition into the last scene. As the camera pulls back, Kathy and Don are pictured facing each other on a billboard that announces them as the new stellar love team of Monumental Pictures in their first picture together, Singin' in the Rain. They consummate the success of the show (and their budding personal relationship) by kissing in front of the billboard that is positioned on a hillside.