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Aug 10, 2024 · "Singin' in the Rain" is not an original song. It was actually performed as early as 1928. Most of the songs in the movie are covers, making it a jukebox musical akin to Moulin Rouge!.
- It Wasn't Adapted from A Broadway Musical.
- Debbie Reynolds Had No Dance Experience Before She Made The Movie.
- Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor Had Never Worked Together before.
- Yes, Kelly Had A Fever When He Filmed The "Singin' in The Rain" number.
- The Last Shot of The "Good Morning" Number Took 40 takes.
- Cyd Charisse Owed Her Role in The Film to Debbie Reynolds's Lack of experience.
- There May Have Been Some Censorship in The Ballet number.
- Donald O'Connor Really Should Have Died Filming "Make 'Em laugh."
- The Film Was A Bit of A Letdown After An American in Paris.
Many movie musicals of the 1930s, '40s and '50s were based on stage shows, but this wasn’t one of them. Rather, it was a new script, written just for the movie, featuring old songs written for previous movies. Some 30 years later, after the film had become a beloved classic, it was reverse-engineered into a stage musical, premiering in London’s Wes...
She pointed this out when she was asked to be in Singin’ in the Rain, but Kelly said he could teach her, just as he’d done with Frank Sinatra for Anchors Aweigh. Reynolds had been a gymnast, so she wasn’t completely unfamiliar with physical movement requiring grace and stamina. Ever the trouper, she buckled down and rehearsed day and night until sh...
O’Connor, born into a vaudeville family in 1925, had been onstage since infancy and in movies since he was 12. He had 36 film credits, mostly musicals and Francis the Talking Mule pictures, under his belt when he got the Singin’ in the Rain gig. Kelly was 13 years older and came to Hollywood a bit later than O’Connor, yet still racked up 18 films b...
Contrary to legend, it wasn’t shot all in one take—or even all in one day. It lasted a couple of days, and on at least one of them, Kelly was sick with a feverof anywhere from 101 to 103 degrees, depending on who’s telling the story.
It’s the part where the three of them somersault over one couch and then tip another one over backwards before collapsing on it and laughing. Kelly was a demanding choreographer and director, and you’ll notice that most of the dancing in the film is presented without a lot of editing. The camera moves around, but it doesn’t cut to other angles very...
Charisse is only onscreen for a few minutes, in the aforementioned “Broadway Melody” dream ballet sequence. The role would logically have gone to Reynolds, but she simply didn’t have the dancing chops to pull it off. Leslie Caron, who’d danced with Kelly in An American in Paris, wasn’t available. So the job went to Cyd Charisse, an acclaimed dancer...
Watch as Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse are dancing at the 1:22:03 mark in the film, and you’ll see a jump cut. 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 h...
And not just because you could legitimately break your neck doing those run-up-the-wall flips (although that, too). The physical exertion required for the scene would have been demanding for anyone ... and O’Connor, by his own admission, was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. And after the entire sequence had been shot? He had to do it all ove...
An American in Paris—also starring Gene Kelly; also built around a particular songwriter’s work; also featuring a large-scale dream ballet sequence—was released in November of 1951. It was a hit, eventually winning six Oscars, including Best Picture. Three weeks after the Oscar ceremony, Singin’ in the Rain came out. It did well enough with audienc...
Singing in the Rain is not primarily a love film, but a light comedy marking a turning point in film, extolling the art of film and creators, in fact, one that the Hungarian author Ferenc Molnár could have written, and yet it has a mood like the pleasant afternoon of love fulfilled, it exudes a sense of wellbeing that perhaps no other film to ...
Dec 12, 1988 · This revisionist attitude toward Hollywood “escapist” films on the part of some influential critics (as opposed to “reviewers” -- and most writing about film was limited to daily reviews until the late 1950s) explains why Singin’ in the Rain was ultimately elevated to the pantheon of “great films.”
Nov 14, 2019 · Culture. Why Singin’ in the Rain Is an Almost Perfect Musical. The 1952 film exemplifies the key elements of a beloved Hollywood genre. By Jeanine Basinger. Everett Collection. November 14,...
Mar 30, 2023 · We examine the elusive elements that cause Singin' in the Rain to regularly be cited as the greatest movie musical of all time more than 70 years after its release.
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Apr 11, 2022 · Singin’ in the Rain is considered a cinema classic, due in part to Gene Kelly’s iconic song and dance performance of the movie’s titular musical number. And 70 years later, imagery from the ...
