Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly SINGIN' in the RAIN (1952)
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March 2, 2018 (XXXVI:6) Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly 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 Betty Comden and Adolph Green Produced by Arthur Freed Non-Original Music by Nacio Herb Brown ( “Broadway Melody Ballet,”; “All I Do is Dream of You”; “Good Morning”; “You Were Meant for Me,”; “Temptation”) and Al Goodhart (“Fit as a Fiddle”) Cinematography Harold Rosson Film Editing Adrienne Fazan Art Direction by Randall Duell and Cedric Gibbons Choreography Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, Gwen Verdon (assistant choreographer) National Film Preservation Board, USA 1989 National Film Registry Academy Awards, USA 1953: Nominated Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Jean Hagen; Best Music, Scoring of a Musical found escapist sanctuary every afternoon in the local movie Picture, Lennie Hayton theaters. “I saw Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio 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: Debbie Reynolds...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 Millard Mitchell...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 Cyd Charisse...Dancer essential element in the production almost all of Hollywood’s Douglas Fowley...Roscoe Dexter (Director, Monumental critically acclaimed musicals. Donen directed his idol Fred Pictures) Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951) and Funny Face (1957), and Rita Moreno...Zelda Zanders aka Zip Girl helmed such crowd-pleasing titles as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Damn Yankees (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 On the Town 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 Lionel Richie’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 Howard Hawks. Donan’s sister of Kelly's umbrella dance. Kelly’s last movie musical was once said of his unlucky marriage streak, “Stanley keeps thinking Xanadu (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, New York City, NY—d. November 23, 2006, age 91, in New York City, 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 1930s, '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 Tony Awards for GENE KELLY (b. August 23, 1912 in Pittsburgh, PA February three of their shows: Wonderful Town, Hallelujah, Baby! and 2, 1996, age 83, in Beverly Hills, CA) lived his life like a Applause. 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’ Pennsylvania home. After a few Depression-era amateur Vanguard, in Greenwich Village. There she met Adolph Green, a contests, he conquered Broadway and then Hollywood, starring young performer called Judy Holliday 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 Paris. 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 Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. Success continued swiftly showcased Kelly as a virile heartthrob, opposite the leggy Cyd with Billion Dollar Baby (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 Spencer Tracy 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, top hat 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 1960s, the pair worked on the underrated the common man—a regular guy who looked good in a sailor’s “Hallelujah, Baby!” (1967) written with Lena Horne 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.