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March 2, 2018 (XXXVI:6) and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952), 103 min.

The online version of this Goldenrod handout has color images.

Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly Written by and Produced by Non-Original Music by ( “Broadway Melody ,”; “All I Do is Dream of You”; “Good Morning”; “You Were Meant for Me,”; “”) and Al Goodhart (“Fit as a Fiddle”) Cinematography Film Editing Adrienne Fazan Art Direction by Randall Duell and Choreography Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, (assistant choreographer)

National Film Preservation Board, USA 1989

Academy Awards, USA 1953: Nominated Best Actress in a Supporting Role, ; Best Music, Scoring of a Musical found escapist sanctuary every afternoon in the local movie Picture, theaters. “I saw in when I was nine years old, and it changed my life. It just seemed wonderful, CAST and my life wasn’t wonderful. The joy of dancing to music! And Gene Kelly...Donald 'Don/Donnie' Lockwood Fred was so amazing, and Ginger— oh, God! Ginger!” When he Donald O'Connor...Cosmo Brown talks about his transition from dancer to director, he recalls: ...Kathy Selden “sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And Jean Hagen...Lina Lamont the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could ...R.F. Simpson (President, Monumental put music in the picture! That’s how it all began.” Between 1949 Pictures) and 1959, Donen was either the key creative force behind or an ...Dancer essential element in the production almost all of ’s ...Roscoe Dexter (Director, Monumental critically acclaimed musicals. Donen directed his idol Fred Pictures) Astaire in (1951) and (1957), and ...Zelda Zanders aka Zip Girl helmed such crowd-pleasing titles as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and (1958). In later years, he STANLEY DONEN (b. April 13, 1924 in Columbia, South showed a deft touch with light comedies like Indiscreet (1958), Carolina) was once dubbed “The King of the Hollywood as well as thrillers like Charade (1963). Though his directorial Musical”. Donen, who began his career as a dancer, was career wound down in the early 1980s, in 1988 he was rightfully somewhat of a Hollywood prodigy co-directing feted with an honorary Academy Award. He did have one (1949) with Gene Kelly at 25 and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) at (in)famous credit in the ‘80s: He directed ’s video 28. As a child, he was bullied for being Jewish at school and he for “Dancing on the Ceiling”, because of his experience directing Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—2

Fred Astaire's dancing on the ceiling routine from Royal sick with a fever of anywhere from 101 to 103 degrees, Wedding (1951). While his films were often successful, the same depending on who’s telling the story. Singin' in the Rain became can’t be said of his marriages (he was married four times). His such a classic that, a generation later, the bleakly futuristic “A first wife actually later married Gene Kelly, while his second Clockwork Orange” featured its anti-hero doing a sadistic parody wife was a former girlfriend of . Donan’s sister of Kelly's umbrella dance. Kelly’s last movie musical was once said of his unlucky marriage streak, “Stanley keeps thinking (1980) co-starring Olivia Newton-John, and his final romances will turn out the way they do in the movies.” dance credit was as a dance consultant for Madonna's 1993 "Girlie Show" tour.

BETTY COMDEN (b. May 3, 1915 in Brooklyn, City, NY—d. November 23, 2006, age 91, in , NY) is most famous for penning the line, “New York, New York. It’s a helluva town” from the song “New York, New York” in the musical On the Town (1944). Comden, along with her writing partner Adolph Green, supplied lyrics and librettos for some of Broadway’s most enduring musicals, and the story and screenplay for films such as Singin' in the Rain (1952). While many movie musicals of the , '40s and '50s were based on stage shows, tonight’s film is not one of them. It was an entirely new script, written just for the movie, featuring old songs written for previous movies. Comden and Green, whose writing partnership lasted more than 50 years, won for GENE KELLY (b. August 23, 1912 in , PA February three of their shows: , Hallelujah, Baby! and 2, 1996, age 83, in Beverly Hills, CA) lived his life like a . Born in Russia, Comden emigrated to Brooklyn, New Hollywood musical. Kelly was a failed law student who once York, as a child. When she was still a student at NYU, she made money teaching basic dance steps in the basement of his appeared in a revue in Max Gordon's jazz club, the Village parents’ home. After a few Depression-era amateur Vanguard, in . There she met Adolph Green, a contests, he conquered Broadway and then Hollywood, starring young performer called and composer Leonard in such films as Singin' in the Rain, On the Town and An Bernstein. The foursome formed the Revuers, which became a American in . Along the way, he revolutionized motion successful show and the first example of a Comden-Green picture choreography and achieved success as a director and partnership. Bernstein wanted to develop his 1937 ballet Fancy producer as well. Singin' in the Rain, the beloved, campy Free into a musical, a new prospect for them all. The result was Hollywood spoof with Reynolds and O'Connor, provides the On the Town (1944), the story of three sailors on leave in lasting image of Kelly’s winning screen persona: an affable, wartime New York. The musical, in which Comden and Green optimistic man with a crooked Irish grin and soft spot in his also performed, ran for over a year, and was made into a film heart. Often called the best musical ever made, the film also starring and Gene Kelly. Success continued swiftly showcased Kelly as a virile heartthrob, opposite the leggy Cyd with (1945) and Wonderful Town (1953). Charisse in the sultry “Broadway Ballet.” Though forever Film work began to go hand in hand with their success on remembered for his dancing, Kelly also won praise for his role in Broadway. Notably, there was the pair’s script for the Inherit the Wind, the 1960 film with and Fredric exhilarating Singin' in the Rain, Band Wagon (1953), and the March. Unlike Astaire with whom Kelly was frequently story for It’s Always Fair Weather (1953), with music by André compared, and tails were not his style. Rather, Kelly, who Previn, which popularized the phrase “thanks a lot, but no stood 5-foot-9 and weighed 165 pounds, presented the dancer as thanks.” In the , the pair worked on the underrated the common man—a regular guy who looked good in a sailor’s “Hallelujah, Baby!” (1967) written with in mind and uniform, or all wet, stomping in a puddle and splashing a beat chronicled 60 years of race relations in America. Horne ended up cop. Most typically, his screen image was casual: sport shirts and turning it down and the unknown Leslie Uggams was plucked slacks, with white socks to draw attention to those dazzling feet. from obscurity to give a tremendous performance. Faced by Many of his co-stars in tonight’s film remember Kelly as a controversy on all sides, it ran for nine months. Comden, slim, demanding choreographer. Much has been made about how the dark-haired and composed was the perfect foil to the often last shot of “Good Mornin’” required over 40 takes. One of the rumpled, wild-haired and restless Green. A match that lasted reasons is most of the dancing in the film is presented without a over 60 years. Of their writing style, Comden once said “We lot of editing. The camera moves around, but it doesn’t cut to stare at each other. There are long periods where nothing other angles very often, and the dancers’ bodies are usually happens, and it’s just boring and disheartening. But we have a wholly visible. So when there are, say, three dancers who are theory that nothing’s wasted, even those long days of starting at supposed to be in unison, and one part of one person’s body does one another.” The two were so close, they often finished one the wrong thing, you’ve got to do it again. Reynolds said that at another’s sentences, prompting many to assume the pair were the end of a 14-hour day shooting the scene, her feet were married. Tributes to the pair culminated with a two-night bleeding. Also, contrary to legend, the “Singin’ in the Rain” Carnegie Hall concert in 1999, and their work continues to be number wasn’t shot all in one take—or even all in one day. It revived on Broadway. lasted a couple of days, and on at least one of them, Kelly was Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—3

ADOLPH GREEN (b. December 2, 1914 in The Bronx, New RANDALL DUELL (b. July 14, 1903 in Russell County, KS— York City, NY—d. October 23, 2002, age 87, in New York City, d. November 28, 1992, age 89, in , CA) is most NY) began his career in the 1930s as an actor and raconteur in well-known for constructing Magic Mountain and various theme circles that included Comden, composer and parks across America. In our neck of the woods, he created future film star Judy Holliday. He and Comden launched to fame Darien Lake amusement park in Corfu, NY. However, Duell with On the Town (1944), the pioneering wartime ballet with starred in film. A 1925 graduate of the USC School of music by Bernstein. After Singin’ in the Rain, his career in film Architecture, he turned to films when the Depression had slowed took off. Some of his other scripts include U.S. construction to a crawl. He had been lent by an architectural (1953), and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), both of which firm to MGM to consult on a set for Romeo and Juliet and was to earned Green and Comden Oscar nomination. As his film work stay at that studio for the next two decades, earning Academy flourished, so did his Broadway career. He won five Tony Award nominations (along with partner Cedric Gibbons) for art Awards either as a creator of show or for his lyrics, script or direction and/or set design for When Ladies Meet (1941), score. He won for “Wonderful Town” (1953), “Hallelujah, Random Harvest (1942) and The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Baby!” (1968), “Applause” (1970), “” Although he was not nominated for an Oscar, his most celebrated (1978) and “The ” (1991). Green, a native of credit is probably the one he shared with Cedric Gibbons for New York, said he enjoyed lampooning the cultural elite. He was Singin' in the Rain (1952). He left pictures in the , telling a partly inspired by the tradition of the famed Algonquin Round Los Angeles Times interviewer in 1970 as bulldozers were Table, the circle of New York writers and humorists that churning up the hills of Valencia creating Magic Mountain: “I included Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman and . He thought it would be kind of nice to get into something else.” found Comden a kindred spirit, saying, “We have a surrealistic Duell also worked on Pleasure Island in Boston and Freedomland sense of humor and love nonsense.” A photographer was once in New York. His company also designed the theme park portion trying to shoot them for a 1989 spread and wanted a certain look. of MGM's 33-acre, $1-billion hotel, casino and studio-tour-type “Winsome?" Comden asked. “Win some, lose some,” Green shot attraction in . To succeed, he said then, any back. Green is the father of actress Amanda Green and New amusement park needs good access to freeways and a population Yorker writer Adam Green. open to new ideas. Many of his ideas for the parks came from the hours he spent in bookstores looking over works for children. “If HAROLD “HAL” ROSSON (b. Born: April 6, 1895 in we can find things the kids are interested in and put it in three Geneseo, NY—d. September 6, 1988, age 93, in Palm Beach, dimensions, we've accomplished something.” FL) was one of three brothers and a sister who came to Hollywood in the early part of the century (Arthur and Richard became directors while Helene Rosson acted in silent pictures). He began his career as an actor at the old Vitagraph studio but switched to camera operation in time to film David Harum (1915), his first credit. In 1936 he shared (with W. Howard Greene) an honorary Academy Award for pioneering color cinematography on the desert melodrama The Garden of Allah. It was, Rosson said in a 1971 interview, the first color photography he had ever attempted. Rosson shot eight films for between 1915 and 1929. Rosson worked with almost every important director of the studio system including Josef von Sternberg, Sam Wood, Cecil B. DeMille, W.S. Van Dyke, Howard Hawks, Mervyn LeRoy, , , and . He shot the “The Trolley Song” number in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) for Minnelli and On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952) for Kelly and Donen. His most famous collaboration was with director , starting in 1923 with (1923) and culminating in 1939 with his work on The Wizard of Oz (1939) [Fun fact: in December 1938, under the direction of producer CEDRIC GIBBONS (b. March 23, 1893 in Dublin, Ireland—d. David O. Selznick, Rosson shot the burning of sequence July 26, 1960, age 67, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA) had only for Gone with the Wind (1939), for which Fleming was credited one directorial credit to his name—Tarzan and His Mate (1934)– as the director.] He also worked on ’s The Asphalt it was as a designer at MGM that he is best known. From 1924 Jungle (1950) and The Red Badge of Courage (1951). He was until 1956, Gibbons’ name appeared in 1500 movies as the nominated for four Oscars: in 1940 for Boom Town, in 1944 for credited art director. That’s a Hollywood record for individual Thirty Seconds Over , in 1950 for and film credits. (A clause in his contract stipulated that his name in 1956 for The Bad Seed. He retired in 1958 after shooting appear on every MGM release.) Though his actual hands-on Onionhead (1958) for director Norman Taurog, though he involvement may have only been 10% of that total, 150 films is returned to shoot El Dorado (1967) for Howard Hawks. still an impressive number. More an executive than an on-the-set designer, he supervised a huge staff and made sure the designs they created were in keeping with the glossy style MGM was Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—4 known for. Gibbons had visited the 1925 Exposition des Arts sue, anyway) because he was grateful to Freed for all the career Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, which was the peak support he’d given him. O’Connor was also a heavy smoker, of Art Deco in Europe. Gibbons brought these ideas back with which made Kelly’s endless takes physically exhausting. He him to the States where he incorporated them into many of the barely made it through the entire shooting of “Make ‘em Laugh” studio’s films from the late 1920s. It could be said that it all without collapsing. He was ordered to three days bed rest after started with (1928), the first in a trilogy completing the shot. Rumor has it that this soured O’Connor on of films starring which told the stories of modern Kelly who he found to be a tyrant on the set. Despite grueling women in the Jazz Age. The follow-ups, conditions, Singing in the Rain was O’Connor’s biggest hit (1929) and (1930) also feature remarkable netting him a 1953 Golden Globe award for best actor. set design such as the Art Deco treehouse in the last of the series. His designs for films were so influential, many homes in DEBBIE REYNOLDS (b. April 1, 1932 in El Paso, TX—d. American started to reflect his Art Deco look. According to one December 28, 2016, age 84, in Los Angeles, CA) had a newspaper at the time: “The decorating craze touched off by Our wholesome girl-next-door look coupled with a no-nonsense Dancing Daughters was unprecedented. Households began aping attitude in her roles. They ranged from sweet vehicles like Gibbons’ use of such elements as venetian blinds, dancing Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) to more serious fare such as The figurines, and indirect lighting. Those with money and relatively Rat Race (1960) and How the West Was Won (1962) But amid all adventurous tastes were soon having their homes redecorated in the success, her private life was at the center of one of the ‘modern’ style. Unfortunately, few of these homes could Hollywood’s biggest scandals when then-husband, singer Eddie fully capture the scale and luxury of Gibbons’ sets, which tended Fisher, left her for in 1958. Reynolds was 8 to depict drawing rooms roughly the size of Grand Central when her father moved the family to Burbank, CA. At age 16, Station.” He also designed the Oscar itself, winning it 11 of the “Frannie” entered and won the 1948 Miss Burbank Contest. 37 times he was nominated. Spotted by Warner Bros. talent scout who signed her to a $65-a- week contract. Studio head Jack Warner renamed her Debbie — against her wishes, she said. Reynolds languished at the studio, often having to perform errands such as escorting visitors on tours or addressing envelopes; she appeared in front of the cameras only for a bit part in June Bride (1948) and then a flashier role as ’s sister in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (1950). When the contract lapsed, MGM picked her up at $300 a week. The studio, where she would reside for the next 20 years, first assigned her a role lip-synching Helen Kane’s voice as the original Betty Boop in the musical Three Little Words (1950). In romantic musical Two Weeks With Love (1950). she first used her own signing voice for “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” and she was also given a supporting role in Mr. Imperium (1951) starring . After the studio insisted on her as the romantic lead in Singin’ in the Rain, Kelly put her through rigorous dance training, which she admitted she needed. Reynolds had been a gymnast, so she wasn’t completely

unfamiliar with physical movement requiring grace and stamina. DONALD O’CONNOR (b. August 28, 1925 in , IL—d. Ever the trouper, she buckled down and rehearsed day and night September 27, 2003, age 78, in Calabasas, CA) had been onstage until she could share a dance floor with Kelly and O’Connor since infancy and in movies since he was 12. He had 36 film without embarrassing herself. She was quite young, too, turning credits, mostly musicals and Francis the Talking Mule pictures, 19 during the shoot. [Kelly, her love interest in the film, was 39.] under his belt when he got the Singin’ in the Rain gig. Kelly was She later said, “The two hardest things I ever did in my life are 13 years older and came to Hollywood a bit later than O’Connor, childbirth and Singin’ in the Rain.” The work paid off as the film yet still racked up 18 films between 1942 and 1951, when at last kickstarted her movie career. In 1956, she also starred in Bundle their paths crossed. And they almost didn’t: Freed, the producer, of Joy opposite crooner Eddie Fisher, whom she had recently wanted Kelly’s co-star for married. Next, Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) which featured the Cosmo role, but everyone else—screenwriters Betty Comden her million-selling single of the ballad “Tammy,” defined and Adolph Green, directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen— Reynolds and may have limited her to roles as the wholesome wanted someone who could dance. As the film was about to all-American type. She went on to play essentially the same part commence shooting, directors Donen and Kelly realized in such films as The Mating Game (1959) and The Pleasure of O’Connor didn’t have a solo number. Nothing in the His Company (1961) with only the occasional tart turn in movies Freed/Brown collection seemed to fit, so they asked the pair to such as The Rat Race (1960). When Shirley MacLaine dropped whip up something new, something along the lines of “Be a out of 1964’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Reynolds got her Clown,” from ’s 1947 MGM musical The Pirate. chance to shine centerstage in a meatier musical. One of the Freed and Brown did exactly that, delivering “Make ‘em Laugh,” show’s signature songs, “I Ain’t Down Yet,” became an a song that Donen later called “100 percent plagiarism” of “Be a unofficial anthem for the actress as she survived all the turmoil in Clown.” The story goes that Cole Porter didn’t mind (or didn’t her life. The role garnered Reynolds her only Oscar nomination. Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—5

In 1973, her second marriage fared as poorly as her first, when (1942). After World War II, Mitchell acted in a several movies, she discovered that her husband had gambled away her entire often cast as sardonic, yet stolid characters. He was in the fortune. To cover his gambling losses, Reynolds worked it off by highest-grossing movie of 1953, Anthony Mann Western, The appearing 42 weeks a year in nightclubs in Las Vegas and Reno. Naked Spur, playing an old prospector who falls in with James In the 1980s, Reynolds private life was once again in the Stewart. He received top billing in My Six Convicts (1952), spotlight when her daughter, Carrie Fisher, released her tell-all winning a Golden Globe for his performance, but not garnering novel Postcards From the Edge. The work centered on the an Oscar nomination for the same role (a dubious honor held by stormy relationship between an actress and her showbiz-star only 7 actors.) Best known for his screen role as movie mogul mother. Though many were convinced this was a roman à clef, ‘R. F. Simpson’ in Singin' in the Rain (1952). A heavy smoker Reynolds laughingly pooh-poohed comparisons with the self- his entire life, he died one year after completing the film at age centered mom. (MacLaine, the original choice for Molly Brown, 50. played the mother in the 1990 film adaptation.) In 1993, the Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino opened in Vegas, where she appeared for most weekends in the showroom with Rip Taylor. She continued to work well into her 80s, via film and TV work, guesting on The Golden Girls and Roseanne and drawing an Emmy nomination in 2000 for her recurring role on “Will and Grace” as the Grace’s entertainer mother. In 2015, Reynolds received the SAG lifetime achievement award, but sadly passed away the following year only one day after the death of her daughter.

JEAN HAGEN (b. Jean Shirley Verhagen on August 3, 1923 in Chicago, IL—d. August 29, 1977, age 54, in Los Angeles, CA) graduated from , where she studied drama and was a roommate of fellow actress . Hagen began her show business career in the late , performing in radio programs and dabbling in Broadway plays. She made her film debut in 1949 with a role as a comical femme fatale in the -Spencer Tracy pairing Adam's Rib. Her first leading role came the following year, when she CYD CHARISSE (b. Tula Ellice Finklea March 8, 1922 in starred opposite Sterling Hayden in the classic The Amarillo, TX—d. June 17, 2008, age 86, in Los Angeles, CA) Asphalt Jungle (1950), a performance which gained her was, unlike many top female dancers in the era of movie considerable attention and praise. The performance for which musicals, a trained as a ballerina in the Russian tradition. She Hagen is best remembered today is for Singin' in the Rain. initially took up ballet after a bout with polio to build back up Hagen’s portrayal of the helium-voiced star Lina strength in her body. Charisse spent her early childhood taking Lamont earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she Supporting Actress; she lost to Gloria Grahame for The Bad and married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she the Beautiful (1952). Following her success, Hagen joined the appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), cast of the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy (1953). She billed as Lily Norwood. Took her name Cyd from a nickname was nominated for three Emmys for her role as Margaret originated from her brother. Initially, he could not say sister and Williams, but grew tired of the role after three seasons and called her Sid. She took the nickname and convinced her agent to subsequently left the show. For the rest of her career, Hagen keep the name with the present spelling. He feared that Sid was mostly made guest appearances on numerous television shows, too masculine. The same year, she played a Russian dancer in including Presents (1955), The Andy Griffith Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by . In 1945, Show (1960), Wagon Train (1957), and Starsky and Hutch she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in (1975). She also had supporting roles in Sunrise at Campobello (1945), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year (1960) and Dead Ringer (1964). In tonight’s film Debbie contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over Reynolds character lip-synced to Hagen’s spoken voice for film- the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain (1952) with within-the-film, The Dancing Cavalier. For the singing, it was Gene Kelly that made her a star. Charisse is only onscreen for a Reynolds lip-syncing to Betty Noyes in the scene, in few minutes, in the aforementioned “Broadway Melody” dream which Noyes had earlier dubbed Hagen. Another fun fact: Hagen ballet sequence. The role would logically have gone to Reynolds, was two months pregnant when she completed Singin’ in the but she simply didn’t have the dancing chops to pull it off. Leslie Rain. Caron, who’d danced with Kelly in An American in Paris, wasn’t available. So the job went to Charisse whom Kelly had admired MILLARD MITCHELL (b. August 14, 1903 in Havana, since seeing her work with Fred Astaire in Ziegfield Follies. Cuba—d. October 13, 1953, age 50, in Santa Monica, CA) a Charisse had lost out on two of MGM's biggest movie musical popular stage and radio actor in the 1930s in New York, where roles. She fell and injured her knee during a dance leap on a film, he also filmed his first cinema appearances: industrial short which forced her out of the role of Nadina Hale in Easter Parade features. His first Hollywood role was in Mr. and Mrs. North (1948). replaced her. She also had to relinquish the Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—6 lead female role in An American in Paris (1951) due to up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress pregnancy. took over the role and became a star. in a Musical for “The Ritz”. She would later reprise the role in She was offered the lead role of Jo Stockton in Funny Face the film version, The Ritz (1976). She then won (1957) but declined. The role was eventually played by Audrey for (1976) and The Rockford Files (1974). Hepburn. Although one of the greatest female dancers in the Never one to slow down, so did TV work in the ‘80s, appearing history of the movie musical, her singing in films was almost in the pilot for the sitcom Empty Nest (1988), which was an always dubbed, most notably by Carol Richards in episode of The Golden Girls (1985). The premise was changed in (1954) and a young Vikki Carr in The Silencers (1966). She the final version of Empty Nest (1988), in which she did not made appearances on television and performed in a nightclub appear. In 2010, she was awarded the American National Medal revue with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. Martin said of the Arts on February 25, 2010 at the in he could tell who she had been dancing with that day on an Washington D.C. for her services and contributions to the arts MGM set. If she came home covered with bruises on her, it was and in 2015 Awarded a Kennedy Center Honor. At the Golden the very physically-demanding Gene Kelly, if not it was the Globe awards this year she presented a Lifetime Achievement smooth and agile Fred Astaire. In 1952, she had a $5-million award to her friend of 50 years . At 86 she is insurance policy accepted on her legs. In tonight’s film, Kelly currently starring in the re-make of ’s One Day at a choreographed his dance scenes with Charisse to hide the fact Time as the sexually-charged grandmother. She is the last that she was taller than him in her heels. To keep the height surviving cast member of tonight’s film. difference from being obvious, Kelly arranged the routine so that they were never both standing upright when they were next to each other, always bending toward (or away from) one another instead. Much has been written about the passion in her dance scene with Kelly. Watch as Kelly and Charisse are dancing at the 1:22:03 mark in the film, and you’ll see a . The camera doesn’t move, but something’s clearly been snipped. The unconfirmed—but probably true—explanation is that censors deemed a portion of the dance too suggestive. (They’d warned Kelly beforehand not to choreograph Charisse wrapping her legs around his waist, even though real ballet dancers do that all the time.) The footage was removed, and the music was re-scored to match the new cut. Whatever was taken out is presumably lost forever, as the entire Singin’ in the Rain negative was destroyed in a fire.

RITA MORENO (b. Rosita Dolores Alverío on December 11, 1931 in Humacao, Puerto Rico) has had a thriving acting career for the better part of six decades. She also is one of the very few performers (and the very first woman) to win an Oscar, an Ronald Haver: “Singin’ in the Rain” (Criterion Notes) Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy. Moreno moved to New York City Singin’ in the Rain is, in the opinion of most in 1937, where she began a professional career before reaching contemporary film critics, one of the great movies of the sound adolescence. The 11-year-old Rosita got her first movie era. The mere mention of its title brings a smile to the face of experience dubbing Spanish-language versions of US films. Less every movie lover, regardless of age. Its central image, that of than a month before her 14th birthday, she made her Broadway Gene Kelly joyfully dancing and hanging exuberantly from a debut in the play "Skydrift" costarring with Arthur Keegan and a lamppost during a downpour, has come to exemplify not only the young . As a young actress she was often best of the M-G-M musical but also the high point, the full stereotypically cast as the Spanish sexpot or the “exotic” girl, as flowering of the American musical genre. And yet it was not she was on an episode of Father Knows Best in 1954. Among the always so. When Singin’ in the Rain first burst upon an better pictures she appeared in were the classic Singin' in the unsuspecting moviegoing public in 1952, it was advertised as Rain (1952) and The King and I (1956), and West Side Story “the new entertainment thrill from the studio and the star who (1961). When filming her final scene in which her character gave you the Academy Award-winning musical An American in “Anita” is harassed and nearly raped by New York street gang Paris.” It opened in most first-run theatres across the country in members “the Jets,” Moreno was reduced to tears, as it brought April, just in time for Easter, and faced formidable competition. flashbacks of similar real-life childhood experiences. For her 1952 was a watershed year for Hollywood, and as a moviegoer performance, she became the first Hispanic woman to win an that month, you had your choice of Cecil B. DeMille’s circus Oscar. Yet, despite her success, Moreno struggled to find work in epic The Greatest Show on Earth; John Huston’s adventure- the 1960s. Ironically, it was in two vastly diverging roles—that romance The African Queen; With a Song in My Heart, the of a $100 hooker in director ’ Carnal Knowledge musical of singer Jane Froman; Elia (1971), and Milly the Helper in the children’s TV show The Kazan’s Viva Zapata! starring Marlon Brando; Fritz Electric Company (1971)—that signaled a career renaissance. Lang’s Rancho Notorious starring ; Fred Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to the Zinnemann’s High Noon starring ; Joseph L. TV show The Electric Company's album, following it Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—7

Mankiewicz’ Five Fingers starring Judy Holiday; and a re-issue Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which, shorn of its musical of the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. interludes, could still stand on its own as one of the funniest Singin’ in the Rain received good reviews, with most comedies ever written. Set in Hollywood in the late 1920s, when critics remarking it was not quite the equal of the the changeover from silents to talkies was wreaking havoc with aforementioned An American in Paris. The picture played around careers, economics, production methods and story styles, the the country for the next several months very successfully, taking script paints an affectionately satiric, humorous and (somewhat) in $7,500,000, making it one of the top grossing films of the accurate picture of a time, a place and art/ industry. The songs year. At year’s end, however, it did not appear on any critic’s “10 were almost all written by the picture’s producer Arthur Freed Best Pictures of the Year” list, and when the Academy of Motion and his partner Nacio Herb Brown during the era in which the Picture Arts and Sciences picture is set, and all were written gave out the “Oscars,” Singin’ for early musicals. (The in the Rain lost in the two exceptions: “Make ‘Em Laugh,” categories in which it had written by Freed and Brown been nominated (Best Scoring especially for Donald O’Connor of a Musical Picture [Lennie in the film, and “Moses Hayton] and Best Supporting Supposes” by Comden, Green and Actress [Jean Hagen]. De Rodger Edens.) Contrary to a Mille’s The Greatest Show on trend that had begun on Broadway Earth was voted “Best in the 1940s, there was no attempt Picture.”) Thereafter, as with in Singin’ in the Rain to most movies of the time, it “integrate” the musical numbers disappeared from the nation’s into the plot or make them screens, but not, however, indicators of character. Instead, from the hearts and memories the screenplay serves as the of moviegoers. framework for a succession of exhilarating musical numbers Then, in early 1958, M-G-M began a series of limited which exist for no other reason than to bring pleasure and visual re-issues of some of its classic films under the title “Masterpiece stimulation to the audience. Reprints.” Included in the first group of twelve was Singin’ in the The co-direction by Stanley Donen and the film’s star Rain; this package was in constant circulation for the next few Gene Kelly distills the essence of all the performance styles out years, playing short engagements in theatres all over the of which the musical comedy genre emerged: , revue, country—finally becoming a staple of the burgeoning “revival” ballet, tap and jazz dancing—all of which were combined with and “repertory” theatres that were springing up in the major rare precision and fused perfectly in Singin’ in the Rain. The metropolitan areas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Most performances of the leads (especially Jean Hagen’s nasally importantly to the re-evaluation of Singin’ in the Rain, however, vacuous “Lina Lamont”), the singing, dancing, production was the emergence, around this same time, of college and numbers, the dialogue, the pacing, energy and the overall joy and university film societies, where, in addition to the study of the exuberance of the movie are what makes Singin’ in the Rain one standard American and European film classics from the teens and of the great films. It’s a picture that can be seen over and over twenties, some far-sighted professors were now including more again with no loss of its high spirits, its good nature, its wit, contemporary “entertainment” films in the study courses. It was humor, energy and imagination. It is, in the words of New York , in program notes for a 1958 screening of the film Times film critic Vincent Canby: “. . . an always youthful, at her Cinema Guild repertory theatre in Berkeley, , joyously indestructible . . . Hollywood masterpiece.” who first pointed out that “Singin’ in the Rain . . . is just about the best Hollywood musical of all time.” She was in the vanguard From Peter Wollen: Singin’ in the Rain. (BFI 1992) of a new breed of film critics, raised on the delights of The single most memorable dance number on film is Hollywood “entertainments” and persuasive in the argument that Gene Kelly’s solo dance in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, in the film of “there is more energy, more originality, more excitement, more the same name, which he co-directed in 1951, with Stanley art in American kitsch like . . . Singin’ in the Rain than there is in Donen, for the Freed Unit at MGM. Despite a bumpy opening, the presumed ‘High Culture’ of . . . Hiroshima mon amour . . .” when the flm was shunted aside after ite premiere in April 1952 This revisionist attitude toward Hollywood “escapist” films on in order to make way for the re-release of MGM’s An American the part of some influential critics (as opposed to “reviewers” -- in Paris, which swept the Oscars later the same month, it and most writing about film was limited to daily reviews until the nonetheless turned out to be an enormous popular and box-office late 1950s) explains why Singin’ in the Rain was ultimately hit. In time, it also enjoyed an acknowledged critical success, elevated to the pantheon of “great films.” However, inclusion in eventually reaching the number four slot in Sight and Sound’s this category does not necessarily inspire the love and devotion 1982 fiftieth anniversary poll of world critics’ ‘Ten Best Lists’, of the mass moviegoing public. placed behind only ’s Citizen Kanei, ’s Singin’ in the Rain, due to its constant theatrical La Regle du jeu, and ’s The Seven Samurai. circulation and its frequent prime-time telecasts in the 1960s, became one of the most familiar and beloved musicals of our On one level, Singin’ in the Rain can be seen as a time. This was due partly to the reasons listed by Ms. Kael: , whose story basically boils down to ‘putting energy, originality, excitement. It’s also due to the screenplay of on a show’, as in the cycle of - Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—8 musicals made for the Freed Unit in its earlier dropped out, leaving Gene and Fred as a brothers act. It is years. Now, instead of amateur theatricals in the barn, the show interesting that, unlike Astaire, Kelly never danced with a regular is the first musical picture being made at Monumental, a fictional female partner, and generally seemed to prefer male partners. Hollywood studio. However, unlike the conventional ‘putting on Astaire, of course began dancing with his sister Adele, whereas s show’ musical, in Singin’ in the Rain the musical numbers are Kelly worked his way up with his brother Fred. They began in not limited to the film within the film but also occur at regular working men’s clubs. Moose Clubs, halls and intervals within the framing story, built round the relationships so on, before graduating to vaudeville and ‘presentations’ between the major characters. They are stitched into the dramatic (dancing with on-stage bands) and finally putting on their own action. The ‘Singin in the Rain’ sequence is not just an shows. But, while still based in Pittsburgh, Kelly took a series of entertainment interlude, it is conceived as an expression of Don summer ballet classes in Chicago, studying with Kotchetovsky, Lockwood’s feelings at a particular point in both his professional who had been the partner and husband of Nijinska. In dance and his personal life. terms he was, so to speak, determined to be upwardly mobile, This preoccupation with adding a ballet carriage and arm the ‘dramatic integrity’ of the dance movements above the waist to tapping numbers derives, to an important feet below. extent, from developments in the Kelly’s experience in New Broadway stage musical. In the York strengthened the inclination to early 1940s the and the dramatise his dance. His first musical comedy developed a new important role was as Harry the vision, whereby the dances were Hoofer in Saroyan’s play The Time of integrated into the drama as Your Life, which opened in October expressions of characters’ moods 1939. This was Saroyan’s follow-up and feelings, rather than slotted in to The Great American Goofi, the simply as opportunities for ‘ballet-play’ choreographed by spectacular dancing. This , who also danced the development coincided with the lead. Harry was one of a motley crew shift of responsibility for dances of bums, sailors, prostitutes and from a ‘dance director’, responsible drifters frequenting a waterfront bar. for spectacle, to a ‘choreographer’, responsible for dramatic Kelly commented later: dance. In the end, the choreographer, instead of being a subordinate, began to be the major figure in the production of a I realised there was no character—whether a sailor or a truck musical, and Kelly’s own example, in the cinema, contributed driver or a gangster—that couldn’t be interpreted through significantly to this end. On Broadway, the decisive step is dancing, if one found the correct choreographic language. You usually attributed to , for her work as can’t have is a truck driver coming onstage and doing an choreographer of Oklahoma! in 1943. entrechat. Because that would be incongruous—like a lady In fact, this change within the Broadway musical opening her mouth and singing bass. But there was a way of reflected a change in American ballet: the inauguration of a getting that truck driver to dance that would not be specifically American style of choreography, dealing with incongruous—just as there was a way of making Harry the American subjects and dramatising the dancing. ... Hoofer, a saloon bum, look convincing. It may seem obvious This period in American dance history was also the now, but at that time, it was a big discovery for me. period in which Gene Kelly left his native Pittsburgh, arriving to work in New York in August 1938, before moving on to His success as Harry the Hoofer, the part of a dancer in Hollywood in November 1941 and directing his first film, On the a straight play, got Kelly the role which first made him a star, as Town, too many years later, in 1950. As soon as he arrived at the Joey in the Rodgers and Hart musical . Here too he was Freed Unit, Kelly began agitating to get new choreographers out playing a hoofer, this time a heel living off his appeal to women to Hollywood from New York, as well as experimenting with the and exploiting them and anyone else for whatever he can get. It new choreography in his own numbers. Particularly, he was was unusual for a musical in its pessimism and dark view of its interested in Eugene Loring, who was brought out to the Freed central character, but again it gave Kelly an opportunity to Unit in 1943 and went on to work on Minnelli’s Yolanda and the develop a dramatic role through his dancing. John Martin, the Thief, and, much later, as choreographer of Funny Face and Silk critic of , wrote that ‘the whole production is Stockings. so unified that the dance routines are virtually inseparable from Kelly, however, came originally out of tap rather than the dramatic action’. ballet. In Pittsburgh his father had been a phonograph record salesman who, ironically enough in the light of Singin’ in the Tap dancing had always had a dimension of ‘character Rain, was put out of work by the slow-down of the record dancing’, but this was mainly for purposes of comedy. Kelly industry which followed the Crash, the rise of radio and the moved character dancing into the dramatic mainstream. At the arrival of . The Kelly family took up a new career, same time, in tension with the drive towards integration, he running a popular dance school in the Pennsylvania steel town of stayed loyal to his roots in tap. Tap dancing differs from most Johnstown. Kelly’s early experiences of performance were of tap other forms of dancing in that it appeals to the ear as well as the dancing with his brother Fred and sister Louise, who eventually eye. In fact it is defined by the rhythmic sound of the metal taps Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—9 on heel and toe,which distinguish it from its neighbours, clog and praised his choreography, a compliment he later returned in softshoe dancing. During the 1930s, tap dancers, such as the praising her early work for its impact on him as a young man. or Fred Astaire, would have radio spots. The effect of the ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ sequence would be incomplete without Kelly’s attention to the filming of the Gene Kelly’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ sequence can be dance and its staging for the camera. Kelly began thinking about looked at (or listened to) as a novelty tap number in terms of its film dance right from his first appearance on film, in Busby sound. Its predecessor in this respect is the ‘Squeaking Board’ Berkeley’s For Me and My Gal, made in 1942. Kelly had a dance which Kelly did as his solo in the year difficult relationship with Berkeley. Berkeley, like many before. Hollywood dance directors, including Alton, did not dance or In ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ the sound effects are caused by choreograph himself. He dreamed up and staged dance numbers the rain and the pools of water. There is a background noise of and left the choreography to others. Berkeley, of course, was an the hiss of rain falling, accompanied by the squelchy sound of the extremely innovative director. He was proud of planning each taps. This eventually escalates to the gushing sound of the water- shot for a single camera, with long takes and continuity between spout and the louder, sploshing noise made by Kelly jumping up shots, at a time when musicals were filmed with multiple and down in the puddles. Holes were especially dug on the cameras and incessant cutaways to different angles. He was sidewalk and filled up with water (six puddles), precisely where incredibly inventive in thinking up new ‘homogeneous Kelly’s choreography demanded them, and a lake was dug out in quadrangle equations’, as he called his geometrical schemas, on the gutter of the street. In fact, the whole number, which was shot which to base his spectacular sequences. As he put it, ‘It was out of doors on one of the permanent streets built on the studio hard to think up an original number because I never brought back lot (East Side Street), demanded complex engineering to someone out from the side of the wings and then they went into deliver the right flow of water through a series of pipes for the their dance. Never in my life. That’s the old way.’ rain and the downspout. The area was also blacked out with In Berkeley’s most famous film, 42nd Street, the dancing tarpaulins (rather than shooting ‘day for night’) and had to be lit star, Ruby Keeler, a former nightclub specialty dancer, did her from behind so that the rain was visible in the glare from the own tap choreography. carbon arcs and to avoid reflections in the shop windows. (In the Berkeley’s approach, however innovative in its time, opening and closing was completely unacceptable to downpour sequences of Kelly, who was trying to combine , Kurosawa added the roles of performer, ink to the rain to make it choreographer and director, rather more visible and I have been than conceiving the number as told that a similar method visual spectacles into which the was used in Singin’ in the dancers had to fit as best they Rain.) could, making use of whatever Kelly further choreographic help they could find dramatised the dance in the for themselves. Kelly, of course, rain by giving his was able to help himself, but at the movements a childish preview of For Me and My Gal he exuberance and glee, realised he would have to rethink combined with his usual his attitude to dance if he was to athleticism. He explained achieve the effect he wanted on that to help him create the right mood, he ‘thought of the fun film. He learned a number of lessons. First, that movement on children have splashing about in rain puddles and decided to film is always in relation to the camera and that the visual effect become a kid again during the number.’ In fact, a lot of Kelly’s of looking through the camera eye at a screen is different from dancing has a feeling of childish fun and fooling to it. It must be that of looking through the human eye at a stage. Spatial context relevant too that he spent so many years teaching children to and scale appear very different—people far away look tiny—and dance at the family school in Johnstown and Pittsburgh. It is as if the effect of movement is also different, favouring especially he identified with the children in the ambivalence between the movement towards the camera. Lateral movements can cancel discipline and hard work required to get dance steps perfect and each other out, unless they are carefully planned. Second, that, as the anarchic pleasure, underlined by the disapproving look of the he had concluded from his stage performances, ‘whoever or policeman, which comes from stomping in puddles and hippety- whatever you’re portraying, you have to remain totally in hopping along the kerb. Kelly is also proud of the dance character when you dance.’ Even more than in the theatre, the sequence he did for ’s in dance had to express the dancer’s dramatic role, rather than break 1947, where he choreographed a complicated sequence with completely away from it as if it were an isolated performance. more than a dozen children—‘Ring Around the Rosie’, the first Stanley Donen had been a dancer in Pal Joey and Kelly part of which was based on children’s games, such as hopscotch, asked him to help with his subsequent stage performances and seesaw, bouncing balls and rolling hoops, moving on to an then, in 1942, to come out to Hollywood as his assistant, acrobatic solo which used the frame and railing and rafters and eventually becoming co-director with him. Donen explains their pulleys and ladders of a half-built house, the children gazing up working procedure in Cover Girl, the first film where Kelly had a from beneath. This was the Kelly film for which Martha Graham contractual right to guide his own dance sequences: Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—10

We tried to come up with something novel for him to do. We created by the rain, by reflecting surfaces, by complex camera then developed the idea of the sequence, arranged the transitions movements and crane shots, and by the precisely synchronised in and out [i.e. the timing and framing of cuts from one shot to timing of those movements. another, keeping continuity], and mapped out the camerawork This complex collaboration is sometimes taken as and lighting. Very rarely did I tell him about dance steps. We refuting the auteur theory, the thesis that films can be interpreted next arranged the music in such a way that it would help to as structure whose consistency of style and theme derives from a organise the staging and camera movement. During the actual single auteur. Yet it is clear that Singin’ in the Rain is a filming Gene worked in summation of Gene Kelly’s own front of the camera, I work up to that point, echoing and behind. There was no developing numbers he had done in director on the set except earlier films, crystallising the us. Then we checked to principles and ideas about dance and see if it was photographed film which he had been forming, properly and supervised consciously or unconsciously, since the editing. A curious early childhood, more intensely still thing about the since his arrival in Hollywood. This photographing and editing is not to deny the crucial role played in those days was that you by his collaborators. never shot more than exactly what ended up on Singin’ in the Rain finished the screen [a discipline production on 21 November 1951. A that surely resulted from little over a year and a half later, planning the sequence Gene Kelly was in London at the time precisely around the of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. He transitions in the dance as was invited by Jules Stein ov MCA to they corresponded to synchronised match cuts in the film]. watch the procession from his balcony window. It was raining and Kelly and his family had difficulty getting through the crowds to the MCA building. As Donen points out. Astaire’s number often ‘owed nothing to the theatre: they were specifically cinematographic’. Suddenly, over the loudspeaker system, a man who had been In fact , from his first film appearance in Flying Down to Rio, keeping everyone informed about what was happening, said: Astaire and Pan [his choreographer] had insisted on filming him ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you all to join Gene Kelly in long takes and wide frame, with match cutting, Indeed, in ‘Singin in the Rain’ and on came the record. A few seconds Astaire’s understatement fits perfectly into the film format, later, thousands of lovely, cold, wet, shivering English men and minimising effort and working through nuance. Kelly, who was women started to sing. It was the biggest thrill of my life. It beat much more emphatic and athletic, had to devise a style with more anything I’d ever known—the opening of Pal Joey, my Academy pronounced camera movements, to match the kinetic energy of Award—you name it. It was a once-in-a lifetime experience, and the camera with that of his body. I felt if I never achieved another thing—which was the way The ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ sequence consists simply of things seemed to be going—I’d have justified my existence. ten shots, beginning and ending with a dissolve, lasting in all a Suddenly the English could do no wrong. little under five minutes. The structure of the piece is one of escalation in the In fact, Kelly was indeed harassed for his political views dynamics of movement, as it progresses from the initial still by the Tenney Committee, whose reports of 1947 and 1948 moment on the porch, through the saunter and vamp, to the song specifically named him, not for his union activities, but for his itself, inaugurated first by an acrobatic leap, then falling back to active role in the Progressive Citizens of America, a pro-Wallace a stroll, and eventually building again into the dance. organisation of which he became Vice-Chairman; in the The sequence is an outstanding example of the use of Hollywood Democratic Committee, of which he was Vice- transitions for the dramatic integration of song and dance President, which was judged ‘a CP front’ by the Committee; and numbers into the narrative of the film. in other similar associations. Evidence given to the House A number such as ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ required a great Committee in 1947 similarly associated him with the Progressive solo performer, but also an ability to integrate the solo, both Citizens of America. Moreover, Kelly actively intervened against diachronically into the dramatic action of the film and the House Committee when it subpoenaed the ‘unfriendly synchronically with the work of the choreographer (in this case nineteen’. He supported the Committee for the First Amendment, the same person, working with Donen and his dance assistant, which was formed to defend their rights. He was Master of ), the visual director (Stanley Donen, working in Ceremonies at the mass rally which was called by the close collaboration with Kelly) and the musical arranger (Roger Progressive Citizens of America in solidarity with the nineteen. Edens). The original song, by Freed and Brown, was the He went on the famous planeload of stars who flew to precondition for the solo, as, more indirectly, was the Comden Washington at the time of the hearings to protest them, although and Green script which provided its context. Beyond that, Harold MGM had pleaded with him not to go. All these honourable acts Rossen, the cinematographer, had to solve the technical problems Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—11 led, of course, to his becoming one of Jack Tenney’s ‘most Kelly’s career was built as a performer, but, given the frequent targets’. [Kelly’s wife, , was blacklisted.] specialised nature of dance, he was compelled to become first a choreographer and then a film-maker, simply in order to realise It is tempting to try to interpret Singin’ in the Rain in his ambitions as a dancer. ...Kelly’s achievement was thus a terms of the political climate in which it was made: to note, for multiple and composite one, as a dancer, as a choreographer, and example, that the story hinges on the thwarting of a plot to as a film auteur. The first reflected his popular roots, the second blacklist Kathy Selden, launched by an informer and enforced by his artistic ambitions, and the third his hunger for a mass appeal. using the media to pressure a weak-willed studio, which The result was that Kelly succeeded in recapturing for ultimately puts profit before principle, until finally the situation the cinema an aesthetic which has almost been lost since the is resolved and virtue triumphs in a wishful happy ending. Or silent days. Arnheim noted that the films of the early years were perhaps the ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ dance sequence represents less realistic and therefore expressed the various dramatic types Kelly’s determination to be optimistic in a miserable political by motions of graphic simplicity. There was musical purity and climate, insisting that he may have behaved in an unorthodox, beauty in the graceful leaps of and the heavy uninhibited way, but that basically he is joyous and generous and stamping of Paul Wegener’s Golem. Unquestionably the greater American whatever the law may think as it holds him in its ‘lifelikeness’ of the later style has robbed the film play of much disapproving gaze. Perhaps. of its melodic shape. There was, in those dance-like pantomimes, The tragedy remains that Hollywood allowed itself to be a dance-like quality, which was most filmic and should not intimidated into losing so much of its talent or, in the end, only remain lost forever. kept it at the price of humiliating conformity and compromise This was the quality which Kelly recaptured, in the which enervated and destroyed its creative energy, right through ‘graceful leaps’ and ‘heavy stamping’ of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, to the 1960s. The depth of this tragedy is still not recognised to pushing it beyond dance-like pantomime into dance itself. And, its full extent. It is still necessary to insist on how devastating the at the same time, by pushing the art of dance onto the terrain of right-wing roll-back of the post-war decade was. Singin’ in the film, he also took the art of cinema with him to new heights. Rain was the peak of Kelly’s achievement and that of his collaborators. There are many reasons why it was never surpassed. The studios were divorced from the theatres, cinema itself gave way to television, gave way to rock ‘n’roll, and in all three cases Hollywood was painfully uncertain how to respond. But, as well as these institutional, cultural and technological trends, I believe that it was McCarthyism, in the broad sense on the term—the determination to destroy all traces of Popular Front culture —that first tragically limited the MGM musical and eventually brought it to a halt.

As Kelly put it, ‘Almost everything in Singin’ in the Rain springs from the truth. It’s a conglomeration of bits of movie lore.’ Veterans on the set still remembered the early problems of sound recording; the art directors unearthed equipment from the past and manufactured Cooper-Hewitt lights and an ‘icebox’ to house the sound camera from old specifications and designs; a neglected glass sound-stage was found and brought back into service; the furniture from Flesh and the Devil, starring and in 1927, From : The Great Movies. (Broadway Books NY was rediscovered and used in Don Lockwood’s home; the 2002) costume designer, , devised costumes for Lina There is no musical more fun than Singin’ in the Rain, Lamont which were ‘as nearly as I can remember, duplicates of and few that remain as fresh over the years. Its originality is all some I did in all seriousness for Lilyan Tashman. And she was the more startling if you reflect that only one of its songs was the epitome of chic at that time.’ Detail and loving care gave written new for the film, that the producers plundered MGM’s Singin’ in the Rain a depth which is belied by its surface storage vaults for sets and props, and that the movie was frothiness. originally ranked below An American in Paris, which won a best In its narrative line, the script was more complex than picture Oscar. of the years knows better than the most back-stagers. First, it has a fairy-tale foundation. The kernel Academy: Singin’ in the Rain is a transcendent experience, and of its story is basically a variant on that of Hans Christian no one who loves movies can afford to miss it. Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, plus a trick and a counter-trick, The film is above all lighthearted and happy. ... and coupled with a typical romantic plot consisting of a series of Singin’ in the Rain pulses with life. In a movie about real and threatened separations and reunions between a couple. making movies, you can sense the joy they had in making this The heroine has her voice taken from her by a wicked witch and one. It was codirected by Stanley Donen, then only twenty-eight, cannot marry the hero unless it has been recovered. and Kelly, who supervised the choreography.... One of this movie’s pleasures is that it is really about something. Of course it’s about romance, as most musicals are, Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—12 but it’s also about the film industry in a period of dangerous J.A. Casper, in his monograph on Donen, quotes transition. The movies simplifies the changeover from silents to generously from his interviews with the director, who recalled a talkies but doesn’t falsify it. Yes, cameras were housed in lonely, rather unhappy childhood. “It’s a long, grim story about soundproof booths, and microphones were hidden almost in plain being a Jew in a small southern town, being a minority in a place view. And, yes, preview audiences did laugh when they first where at that particular moment were thought of as some heard the voices of some famous stars; “Garbo talks!” the ads sort of people with horns. I felt apart from the rest of the people/ promised, but her costar, John Gilbert, would have been better Therefore I withdrew into myself.” off keeping his mouth shut. The movies opens and closes at Donen’s loneliness was alleviated by his absorption in sneak previews, has sequences on soundstages and in dubbing the movies—the Westerns and comedies and thrillers he saw at studios, and kids the way the studio manufactured romances the local theatre and the home movies he shot with the 8mm between their stars. camera his father gave him, though he “didn’t have the When producer Arthur Freed and writers Betty Comden discipline“ to edit the latter. The first turning point in his life and Adolph Green were assigned to the project at MGM, their came in 1933, when at the age of nine he saw his first musical. It instructions were to recycle a group of songs the studio already was ’s Flying Down to Rio, with Fred Astaire owned, most of them written by Lennie Hayton, with Nacio Herb and , and the film transported Donen “into some Brown. Comden and Green noted that the songs came from the sort of fantasy world where everyone seemed to be happy, period when silent films were giving way to sound. And they comfortable, easy, and supported.” He “sat there day in and day decided to make a movie about the birth of the talkies. That led out watching that movie. I must have seen the picture thirty or to the character of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), the blond forty times.” bombshell with the voice like fingernails on a blackboard. His admiration for Astaire led him to take dancing Hagen, in fact, had a perfectly acceptable voice, which lessons for himself—in Columbia and, during the summers, in everyone in Hollywood knew; maybe that helped her win an New York, where he also saw all the Broadway musicals. By the Academy nomination for best supporting actress. (In a cheeky time he was in high school he was working at Columbia’s Tow irony, she dubbed Debbie Reynolds’s singing voice in the scene Theatre and ,according to Casper, he was only sixteen when he where Debbie’s character is shown behind the screen singing for graduated and set off for New York. Some sources say that Hagen!) Hagen plays a caricatured dumb blond, who believes Donen completed one term at the University of South Carolina she’s in love with her , Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), before succumbing to the pull of Broadway, but Casper because she read it in a fan magazine. She gets some of the contradicts this. And indeed, it seems not to fit with the fact that, funniest lines (“What do they think I am? Dumb or something? in the fall of 1940, Donen landed a place in the chorus of Rogers Why, I make more money than Calvin Coolidge put together!”). and Hart’s Pal Joey. ...Singin’ in the Rain remains one of the few movies to Directed by and starring Gene Kelly, Pal live up to its advertising. “What a glorious feeling! The posters Joey was ahead of its time—most critics complained of its said. It was the simple truth. unpleasantness. But Donen, a shy and awkward teenager mortified by his own thick southern accent, recognized its brilliance and Kelly’s “unique talent.” Kelly himself saw that Doen was energetic and ambitious,” and the following year took him as his assistant choreographer for Best Foot Forward. Donen also danced in the chorus and served as assistant stage manager, and in 1942 worked with Kelly and Abbott again as assistant choreographer and stage manager of Beat the Band. When the producer Arthur Freed bought Best Foot Forward for MGM, Donen followed Kelly to Hollywood. At that time MGM boasted three production units devoted to musicals, one headed by Jack Cummings, one by , and one by Freed, a former songwriter. As Casper says, Freed’s unit “led the way with its crystallization of the ‘integrated’ musical ( in which a strong coherent plot and consistent characters …dictated the film’s visual look and numbers).” Donen says that “Arthur just had some sort of instinct Stanley Donen in World Film Directors Vol. II. . Editor John to change the musical from a backstage world into something Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Company. NY, 1988 else. He didn’t quite know what to change it into, just that it had Stanley Donen American director, producer, and to change. choreographer was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the first child of Mortie Donen, whose Russian-Jewish parents had With persistence and with Kelly’s support, Donen landed a migrated to the in their youth, and Helen Donen, a seven-year contract with MGM. He began as a chorus boy in the second-generation American of German-Jewish origins. Mortie screen version of Best Foot Forward (1943), made on loan to Donen managed a chain of dress shops in North and South Columbia.. Cover Girl is generally recognized as an important Carolina and Tennessee. He and his family spent their summers work in the transition from backstage musical to the modern in New York, where his employers had their headquarters. “integrated” form, and some attribute this breakthrough to the Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—13 unsung contributions of Kelly and Donen rather than to its Most of the footage is used in the spectacular opening director, . number “New York, New York,” when the three sailor erupt out Back at MGM, Kelly and Donen were arguably of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and there begins, as Casper says, “a responsible for what was most original and inventive in the pell-mell, kinetic transpatial montage,,,among the town’s actual choreography of Anchors Away (1945), tourist spots….In addition to directed by . The famous sporting a different setting, each and innovative sequence in which Kelly jump-cut finds the trio in various dances with an animated cartoon movements: walking, biking, character, MGM’s Jerry the mouse, was hopping on a subway. The players according to Donen, his idea, and and camera move to the occupied him for a year after the picture cacophonous melody’s driving was otherwise finished, though credit for pace while each brief shot—and the sequence went to . After there are dozens of them—starts that, during Kelly’s navy service, Donen and stops on the song’s jagged worked uncredited on a number of rhythms. The contrasting screen routine musicals for MGM and directions between shots increase Columbia. “I practiced my craft,” he told the dynamism, magic and fun of Casper, “working with music, track and the complete tour of the town in photography. I often directed the three minutes. (The niftiest sequences. I always tried to have an example involves a 360-degree original idea about how to do a musical pan of the gobs atop the RCA sequence.” Building followed by a vertical tilt Donen worked with Kelly again down…to them on the sidewalk on the interpolated numbers in Living in below.) The number hits every a Big Way (1947) and the same year was dramatic base as well: developing credited for his staging of the aquatic plot, describing the setting while extravaganza in the conveying its galvanizing vehicle . Thereafter atmosphere and manic mood, he was choreographer or “dance introducing and delineating director”—usually with credit—on Killer McCoy (1947), Big character.” City (1948), A Date with Judy (1948), and The Kissing Bandit Gabey (Kelly) falls in love with the subway poster (1948), most of them produced by Joe Pasternak. image of Ivy (Vera Ellen), the current “Miss Turnstiles,” and Together again, Donen and Kelly worked out an idea for dances out his fantasies about her, and then the intellectual Claire a musical set in 1908 and centering on two baseball players (Ann Miller) releases her Id (and Ozzie’s) in the erotic (Kelly and Frank Sinatra), who doubled out of season as “Prehistoric Man,” dancing up a bachannal in the Museum of vaudeville song and dance men. They took the story to Arthur Anthropological History.” In “Come Up to My Place,” the Freed, hoping to co-direct the film, but Freed assigned it to bashful Chip (Sinatra) is propositioned by his liberated cab driver Busby Berkley, leaving Kelly and Donen to create and direct Hildy () in the midst of a traffic jam. only Kelly’s musical numbers in this likable and high-spirited … movie released in 1949 as Take Me Out to the Ball Game. The casting of six principals who are constantly in Freed gave Donen and Kelly their chance as codirectors motion within the frame, and the prevalence of dance, creates the of On the Town (1949), the screen version of the Betty Comden- film’s effervescent pace, a hallmark of all Donen’s work…Today Adolph Green stage musical based on Leonard Bernstein’s ballet, the film is regarded as a turning point: the first bona fide musical Fancy Free. Kelly, Sinatra, and are three sailors that moved dance, as well as the musical genre out of the theater on a 24-hour shore leave in New York. Small-town boys, goggle- and captured it with and for film rather than on film: the first to eyed in the big city, they meet three women more sophisticated make the city an importsnt character; and the first to abandon the than themselves—a dancer (Vera Ellen), a wisecracking cab chorus.” Dilys Powell called it “the best musical since Forty- driver (Betty Garrett), and an anthropologist (Ann Miller)—and Second Street (1933). It won an Oscar for best scoring of a succumb rather deliriously to love before duty calls them back to musical, and to MGM’s surprise, was a hit. their ship and the war. As they go aboard, more gobs hit the Interviewed twenty years later by Jim Hillier in Movie town, beginning their own cycle of adventures. (Spring 1977), Donen maintained that this and the other In general, Donen says Kelly was “responsible for most watershed musicals he made at MGM “were really a direct of the dance movements. I was behind the camera in the dramatic continuation from the Astaire-Rogers musicals….The tradition and musical sequences.” They wanted to shoot the whole film on they came from was the Fred Astaire world, which in turn came location in New York, but the studio demurred , allowing only from René Clair and from Lubitsch….If you can put your finger one week’s location work. The cinematographer Harold Rosson on a really broad difference between the Lubitsch and Clair took full advantage of this concession, however, shooting in musicals and something like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Technicolor all over the city—sometimes without permission and Singin’ in the Rain, it is energy, which has to do mainly with a) using hidden cameras. America and b) dancing….The whole drift of the Busby Berkeley kind of musical was towards ‘realism.’ Everything Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—14 happened onstage…and you always saw where the music came shamelessly romantic “You Were Meant for Me” and “Good form. Nobody ever took off into the surrealism of the musical, Mornin’”—sung and danced by Kathy, Don and Cosmo all over the way Lubitsch or Astaire or Clair did. What we did was not Don’s Spanish stucco mansion in celebration of Cosmo’s geared toward realism but towards the unreal….Everybody inspired suggestion that the disastrous Duelling Cavalier be minimizes what extraordinary cinematic ideas Fred Astaire transformed into a musical. The interpolated “Broadway Ballet,” had….When he did ‘Bojangles’ it was an incredible piece of in which Cyd Charisse as a gangster’s moll dances a marvelously film, with shadows of Astaire behind dancing with himself in sensual pas de deux with Kelly’s high hoofer, is a tour de force front of them. I was about nine or ten years old then and I must that like the “Day in New York” ballet in On the Town, is have seen it forty times, that sequence. And it was that which nowadays regarded as something of an alien element in this made these huge impressions on me to do cinema dancing ideas; otherwise seamless production. Above all, there is the title they were surrealistic and that’s what hit me so hard.” number, with the infatuated Lockwood splashing euphorically Equipped with a new and improved seven-year contract along a rain-drenched sidewalk—the most celebrated single- at MGM, Donen was assigned by Freed to direct Astaire himself sequence in the history of the genre. and Judy Garland in Royal Wedding (1951; called Wedding Bells Singin’ in the Rain…has since found its way onto an in Great Britain). Garland was assortment of “Best Ten” lists and fired for absenteeism and made many would agree with Pauline her first suicide attempt. Filming Kael’s judgment that “this continued with Jane exuberant and malicious satire….is Powell…..Another slight comedy perhaps the most enjoyable of all followed…..Then came Singin’ movie musicals—just about the in the Rain (1952), which best Hollywood musical of all reunited Donen with Gene Kelly time.” as codirectors and After that, Kelly went off choreographers, with Betty to work in Europe, and Donen Comden and Adolph Green as found himself directing Fearless writers, Freed as producer, and Fagan (1952), based on the real Bosson as director of life adventures of a GI who took photography. Most of the songs his tame lion with him into the were oldies by Nacio Herb army…. Brown (music) and Freed Back from Europe, Gene (lyrics). Kelly rejoined Donen for It's Set in Hollywood in the late 1920s, Singin’ in the Rain Always Fair Weather (1955), a new Comden and Green script opens amid the searchlights and razzamatazz of a grand premiere that satirized, among other things, television and Madison at Grauman’s Chinese. The new movie’s two stars arrive to the Avenue. Arthur Freed produced, and André Previn was hired to roar of the crowd and the flicker of flashbulbs. In the course of a write the score. The original idea had been a sequel to On the lying interview with the Fairbanksian hero, Don Lockwood Town, picking up the stories of the three sailors ten years on. (Gene Kelly), about his lifelong pursuit of “dignity,” we flash Casting and other difficulties modified this plan, and what back to his real beginnings as a vaudeville hoofer and movie emerged was a story about three GIs who muster out of New stuntman. His idolized costar Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is an York at the end of the war, swearing to meet again ten years egomaniacal dumb broad—the product and the victim of a later. publicity machine that links her romantically with Lockwood. Their reunion is a sad one. The Gene Kelly character, Before long, Lockwood really is in love with Kathy crossed in love, has declined into a crooked prizefighter Selden (Deby Reynolds), the elusive young singer and dancer manager. The aspiring artist Dam Dailey is now the creature of who is hired to dub for Lamont when, with the arrival of talkies, an ad agency. The would-be chef runs a crummy it is observed that the “shimmering glowing star” has a voice like roadside diner called the Gordon Bleu. Their reunion is a Brooklyn corncrake. In the end, a rather cruel trick reveals characterized by mutual contempt, but they soon resurrect some which of the women has the real talent. Lockwood and Selden go of their old idealism (fostered in Kelly’s case by Cyd Charisse). on to glory, Lamont to oblivion. Shanghaied into Dailey’s ghastly TV show, they wind up As Lockwood’s buddy and fellow vaudevillian Cosmo fighting the good fight together; Brown, Donald O’Connor gives the singing-dancing-clowning During the filming, the old friendship between Donen performance of his career. Full of nostalgia for the vulgarity and and Kelly turned sour as that between their characters, and this naivety of the old Hollywood, the movie lovingly satirizes the may have contributed the malicious edgec to the movie’s whole industry—from strutting director (Douglas Fowley) to satire…. money-grubbing mogul (Millard Mitchell), from gossip In 1927, Fred Astaire had starred in the Gershwin stage columnist () to camp diction coaches (Kathleen musical Funny Face. Thirty years later he starred in a movie Freeman and Bobby Watson). using Gershwin’s title and six of his songs but equipped by High points among the brilliant musical numbers Leonard Gersche with an entirely new story based on the life of include “Make ;Em Laugh,” Cosmo’s attempt to raise the fashion photographer , who married one of Lockwood’s spirits with a frenetically acrobatic dance that runs the models he had trained. Four new songs were added, with the gamut of slapstick routines without missing a beat; the lyrics by Gersche, music by the film’s producer, . Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—15

Originally an MGM property, it moved over to Paramount because Astaire wanted to work with Paramount contractee . Avedon designed the title and served as visual consultant….

Kiss Them for Me (1957) was adapted by Julius Epstein from the stage comedy of the same name, itself based on Frederick’ Wakeman’s novel Shore Leave. , who was to star in the screen version had asked for Donen as director, presumably because the plot resembled that of On the Town and It’s Always Fair Weather.…

At thirty-three, scenting the immanent demise of the Hollywood studio system, Donen went independent. With his friend the writer , he set up Grandon Productions (releasing through Warners) and went to work on Indiscreet (1958), adapted from a slight and not very successful play of From World Film Directors, Vol II. Edited by John Kransa’s. Doen, serving as both producer and director, Wakeman. The H. w. Wilson Co., NY 1988: “KELLY, assembled a prestigious cast headed by Cary Grant and Ingrid (EU)GENE (CURRAN)” Bergman….Indiscreet was a financial and critical Americna director, choreographer, producer, director, success….There were comparisons with Lubitsch, Leisen and and actor, writes: “I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Cukor, Among others, and it was clear that Donen had third child of five, of Mr. and Mrs. James Patrick Joseph Kelly. successfully completed the transition form musical to comedy. Our home life was happy, our religious upbringing in the strict He returned once more to the former genre with Damn Yankees old-fashioned Roman Catholic tradition, the kind that has (1958), again codirecting and coproducing with George Abbott, completely disappeared today. A spinster aunt and bachelor who had written the long-runnning stage version with Douglas uncle shared the house with us. They both were continuously Wallop. and were again responsible for employed and I’m sure helped out the family financially as well the songs, for the choreography. … as spiritually. Casper devotes a dozen pages of his Donen monograph “My education was in both public and parochial to an assessment of the director’s musicals. He stresses Donen’s schools, and the colleges I attended were Penn State and the delight in camaraderie, his preference for proletarian characters . Like the rest of my brothers and sisters, who are generally “life livers and enjoyers rather than its I paid for my tuition by dancing and by teaching dancing, but I beholders and survivors.” Though he enjoys making us laugh at had no idea that I would end up by doing this as a career. hypocrisy and pretense, he is “fundamentally nonreformist.” However, two months of law school convinced me that I had Hectically paced, his musicals also show great visual variety and made a wrong turn, and for many years thereafter I concentrated invention. He devises spectacular entrances and exits, frolics solely on dancing, mainly teaching and choreography. with the film-within-the film , the split screen, and the “I went to New York in 1938 hoping to be ale to stage “Hollywood montage.” Donen was a pioneer in the use of musicals, nightclub acts, cabaret shows, etc., etc-anything I could location shooting, color, and the title design in musicals. Casper get until the world discovered that I was capable of bigger and believes that “no other musical director comes in striking better things. They not only did not discover this, but kept distance of Donen’s bracing range of technical choices…. offering me parts in Broadway shows, small ones at first, but the Essentially dance musicals [his films] realize…dance’s roles gradually grew bigger and better. Experience in summer continuity, energy, danger, and poetry….Not only does he stock mainly at the Guild Theatre in Westport, Connecticut gave understand décor, lighting, and costumes, and their contribution me excellent acting experience and then I began to receive offers to spatial depth, breadth and height….And he knows how to to go to Hollywood. I accepted a request from David O. Selznick interrelate dance, camera, cutting, and music….No musicals and went out to the coast with a contract in my pocket which before or since take our breath away as Donen’s do.”… states that I was to appear in a film as yet untitled but called ‘the Donen had “always wanted to make a movie like one of my Hitchcock Picture.’ In later years , having met Sir Alfred, he favorites, Hitchcock’s .” Finding a suitable explained to me that Selznick had no idea of such a picture but plot in a Redbook short story , he decided that the ideal vesting wanted me on his roster. It was a good roster, but I found myself would team Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn: eventually he got being paid not to work. Luckily, at this time, MGM borrowed me them too. The result was Charade (1963), produced and directed for a musical with Judy Garland (those were the days when the by Donen for Stanley Donen Productions, releasing through studios could still do this and did it on a regular basis). Universal…. “MGM persuaded Selznick to sell my contract to them Apart from a few memorable comedies, especially and like the overpaid chattel we all were at that time, I become Charade, and, more arguably, Bedazzled, Donen’s reputation the property of MGM. Being an indentured servant living in stands on his contribution to the evolution of the Hollywood luxury turned out very well for me. I started on a long list of musical. And there, as Coursodon says, “his record outshines pictures which you can find in any of several biographies-some anybody else’s including Vincent Minnelli’s.” good, some bad, some terrible (the pictures, I mean). From 1944 to 1946, I served in the United States Naval Air Force as a Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—16 photographer. This was good for me. I continued to learn about and gas station attendant, and in a variety of other jobs. When he pictures from another viewpoint and again was lucky that I was returned to college, it was as a journalism major at the University not assigned to training films, but was sent around to many of Pittsburgh, where he was much involved in college theatricals different areas to record visually what was going on. and worked up a successful song-and=-dance act, with which he “Until my leaving MGM in 1956 I had only two ‘loan- and his younger brother Fred toured local beer halls. He earned outs’—one with at Universal and one with Rita his A.B. in 1933 and, after his brief taste of law school, went into Hayworth at Columbia. partnership with his mother to found the Gene Kelly Studio of “I introduced an individual dancing style of my own the Dance in the family basement. which the public seemed to like, and since it made money for the Kelly found that he “had a penchant for teaching, that I studio, it became de rigeur for me to do several numbers in each liked it, and that I was good with children.” The school musical. Since this style of which I speak was uniquely my own, flourished and grew but was not enough to satisfy him. In 1938, I had to do my own choreography. Actually I liked this and as he says, he set off to conquer Broadway and very quickly did enjoyed the creative part of staging dances much more than I did so. He had his first success as the wistful hoofer Harry in performing them. Saroyan’s Time of Your Life and his first major hit in 1941, when “Eventually this led to my trying to integrate the he created the title role in Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey. dancing, singing, role-playing into as complete a whole as Hollywood beckoned, and Kelly made an auspicious debut as a possible, which often meant taking charge of the picture and also brash vaudevillian opposiute Judy Garland in For Me and My acting as director. Since the musical is the most difficult of all Girl (MGM,1942). It was produced, like most of Kelly’s MGM film forms, I quickly realized and musicals, by Arthur Freed and directed readily accepted the fact that I needed by the great Busby Berkeley, from whom not only assistants but collaborators, so Kelly learned “everything I know about that I could work as well in front of the moving a camera.” camera as behind it. There were many Two inferior musicals of them at Metro in those days and in followed—DuBarry Was a Lady (1943) concert we did manage some excellent and (1943)—and then pictures. Those of us who worked MGM, recognizing that Kelly could act there at that time still laugh at the as well as dance, cast him in Pilot ‘auteur’ theory. Without haranguing Number Five (1943) and Cross of that particular subject, let me simply Lorraine (19430, both routine war state that the theory can not work for dramas. His two “loan-outs” came in musicals, where the close collaboration 1944, when he had a straight dramatic of composers, arrangers, designers, role as Deanna Durbin’s murderous costumiers, writers, directors, husband in Robert Sidomark’s Christmas choreographers led to my trying to Holiday (Universal) and then appeared integrate the dancing, singing , role- as the nightclub entertainer Danny playing into as complete a ad infinitum must mesh together McGuire in the musical Cover Girl, directed by skillfully and professionally. Charles Vidor for Columbia. It was Cover Girl “that established “I guess I should state my own raison d’être as it Kelly as a first-rank Hollywood performer”—especially the applies to the film musical: whatever dancing I constructed and brilliant “Alter Ego” number in which he expresses internal did, with few exceptions, was to bring joy to an audience. For the conflict by dancing a hostile duet with his own reflection. dramaturgist, this may sound simplistic. For the dancer- Kelly had worked as a dance director at ’s choreographer, it represents a helluva lot of hard work.” Diamond Horseshoe in 1939 and had choreographed George Abbott’s Best Foot Forward on Broadway, as well as many of Gene Kelly’s Canadian-born father was a sales his own movie dances (including “Alter Ego” and the inventive executive with the Columbia Gramaphone Company; his mother, dance with a mop in Thousands Cheer). The first film he the former Harriet Curran, an actress with the Pittsburgh stock choreographed in its entirety was Anchors Away (1945), directed company. She was ambitious for her children, and it was at her by George Sidney, in which (for the first but not the last time) he insistence that they took dance lessons. Gene Kelly, for one, and Frank Sinatra play sailors on leave, and is hated both the dancing and the resultant ridicule of his peers and the singer they turn into a star. A huge financial success which dropped the lessons after a year, turning instead to athletics. At brought Kelly an Oscar nomination as best actor, it includes the high school he excelled at football, baseball, ice hockey and brilliantly achieved fantasy combining animation and live action, gymnastics. He also edited the school paper and was elected his in which he appears to dance with the cartoon mouse Jerry. There class’ social chairman. In due course he voluntarily resumed was another famous set piece in The Ziegfield Follies (1946)— dancing lessons—not because he had grown any more fond of Gershwin’s “The Babbit and the Bromide,” in which Kelly was the art, but because an ability to execute a buck-and- wing was teamed with Fred Astaire. considered nifty by the girls at Peabody High. Gene Kelly’s emergence as a male dancing star had Having graduated from Peabody at sixteen, Kelly was already provoked endless comparisons with Astaire, the reigning majoring in economics at Pennsylvania State College when the monarch of the form, and their routine in The Ziegfield Follies Depression struck. He left school to contribute to his family’s deals lightheartedly with their supposed jealous competition. In income, working as a gymnastics instructor, construction worker, fact, they enjoyed working together, and neither has ever Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—17 expressed anything but respect for the other’s professionalism using all the resources of the dance from ballet to tap, and and very different style. While Astaire was lean and lithe, elegant designed by Preston Ames and Cedric Gibbons in emulation of and apparently effortless, Kelly was stocky, muscular, virile and the work of French Impressionist and Postimpressionist painters. acrobatic. If Astaire looked as if he had been born in top hat and The film collected seven Oscars, together with a special tails, Kelly was more often than not an “ordinary Joe” in sports Academy Award for Kelly “in appreciation of his versatility as shirt, slacks, white socks and loafers. an actor, singer, director, and dancer, and especially for his Both as a dancer and a choreographer, Kelly had set out brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” quite consciously to create out of a mixture of ballet, tap, modern Some of the humor in An American in Paris has dated, dance, and his own acrobatic skills , and the long dance sequence, once called “an American style” in the dance. “one of the most striking production numbers According to Arlene Croce, he in musical history” now seems pretentious. concentrated as a choreographer On the other hand, Singin’ in the Rain mainly on his own dances, leaving the (1952), the second Kelly-Donen ensembles to an assistant. Jeanine collaboration, gains in prestige with the years Basinger says that Kelly ”wanted to and is arguably the most popular and admired create numbers in which the dancer did of all movie musicals. Again produced by with his body what the actor did with Arthur Freed, who also wrote the lyrics to words. He strove to devise a cinematic Nacio Herb Brown’s music, and scripted by language of dance which replaced Comden and Green, it is set in Hollywood at dialogue and told the audience what the the end of the silent era. Kelly plays Don character felt, thought, was.”… Lockwood, an ambitious star whose Stanley Donen and Gene continual success depends on the approval of Kelly had met when Donen made his Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), a dim and jealous debut in the chorus line of Pal Joey, movie idol. Then Lockwood rashly falls in and they had become good friends. love with Kathy (Debbie Reynolds), a Together they worked out a story talented nobody who dubs Lina’s atrocious outline about a couple of baseball voice when the talkies arrive. players at the turn of the century who Singin in the Rain has an edged and have a song-and-dance act off-season, witty script, well-observed characters, and a and sold it to Arthur Freed. He assigned Busby Berkeley to direct string of magnificent dance routines involving Donald O’Connor and cast Kelly and Sinatra as the womanizing ballplayers, Esther (“Make ‘Em Laugh” and “Moses Supposes”), Reynolds and Williams as K.C. Higgins, who inherits the team. With Kelly as Kelly (“You Were Meant for Me”). And Cyd Charisse choreographer and witty lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph (”Broadway Ballet”), but the most unforgettable sequence in the Green, Take Me Out to the Ball Game was a cheerful and high- history of screen musicals is Kelly’s own performance of the title spirited romp which, like The Pirate, deserved more attention song in a rain-drenched street, splashing through puddles and than it got. It can be seen as a preliminary sketch for On the swinging around lampposts in a downpour that cannot dampen Town (1950), which Gene Kelly codirected with Donen and his euphoric celebration of reciprocated love, until the song ends choreographed, and which launched a revolution in the screen abruptly under the cold eye of a policeman who recognizes musical…. insanity when he sees it. In this and their subsequent collaborations, Donen It was then, at the height of his career, that Kelly worked mainly on staging, while Kelly concentrated on decided for tax reasons to work for a time in Europe, where choreography. …George Sadoul called it “undoubtedly the first MGM had frozen funds. In January 1953 he went to Germany to masterpiece of the postwar musical.” star with Pier Angeli in The Devil Makes Three(1952), a MGM next cast Kelly in a straight acting role in Richard mediocre thriller, and then fulfilled his longstanding ambition to Thorpe’s excellent turn-of-the-century Mafia drama The Black direct, choreograph and star in a dance film entirely without Hand (1950), the same year reuniting him with Judy Garland in dialogue. Invitation to the Dance, filmed at Elstree Studios in an agreeable musical of the traditional sort, Summer Stock. It Britain, is made up of three unrelated episodes. In “Circus,” with includes the much-treasured sequence in which Kelly, alone on a music commissioned from Jaques Ibert, Kelly dances in classical bare stage, “thinks” his way through a dance that, gradually style as a clown hopelessly (and in the end fatally) in love with a increasing in tempo, makes endlessly inventive use of available bareback rider; “Ring Around the Rosy,” a version of La Ronde props, among them a squeaky floorboard and an old newspaper. set in contemporary America, has a score by André Previn; and Kelly’s next two films were perhaps the most “Sinbad the Sailor” is an Arabian Nights fantasy using animated prestigious in the whole history of the screen musical. In Vincent figures. When it was eventually released in 1956 Invitation to the Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), which Kelly Dance was a commercial flop and on the whole a critical one choreographed to ’s music, e plays an ex-GI also. It won the main prize in Berlin, but seemed to many painter in love with Paris and Leslie Caron. The dances range reviewers pretentious and self-consciously “arty.” … from big production numbers to the beautiful, lyrical “Our ,” danced beside the Seine, and culminates in a Realizing that the golden age of the musical had passed, spectacular $450,000 seventeen-minute sequence that is a Kelly diversified…. stylized summary of Kelly and Caron’s troubled love affair, Donen and Kelly—SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN—18

As a director, Kelly’s reputation rests above all on the dancer, and he becomes a two-dimensional figure. So you lose films he made in collaboration with Stanley Donen in the 1950s, one of the most vital aspects of the dance—the sense of kinetic which revolutionized the screen musical. It has been suggested force, and the feeling of the third dimension. To compensate for that he was always more a choreographer than a director, that I put myself and my colleagues to thinking of dances that creating great scenes rather than great films. Discussing the were purely cinematic—dancing with a cartoon, dancing with difference between stage and screen dancing, he says that “on the yourself in double exposure, dancing across interesting locations stage…the audience is in front of you and they see a three- and being tracked by the camera. You have to construct a dance dimensional image. They see with two eyes and can absorb the so that it can be cut and edited, and do it in a way that won’t environment. The one-eyed lens of the camera allows the disturb the viewer. You learn to use the camera as part of the audience to see only that portion of the scenery behind the choreography.”

COMING UP IN IN THE SPRING 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXVI March 13 , The Big City 1963 March 27 , Persona 1966 April 3 Ousman Sembène, Black Girl 1966 April 10 , 1975 April 17 Robert Bresson, L’Argent 1983 April 24 , Mulholland Drive 2001 May 1 Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017 May 8 , The Young Girls of Rochefort 1967

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