Singin' In The Rain
in Movie Talk
The internet's a funny thing, a link here a click there (a whoops, didn't mean to click that) and suddenly you find an article published by our latest member @movieman1962 first publised on http://www.blu-ray.com/ some four years ago, republished here today with due acknowledgements.
Posted July 15, 2012 10:01 PM by Rob
60th Anniversary: MGM's Singin' in the Rain |
  Hollywood, during its frantic transition from silent films to pictures that "talked," furnishes the locale and period of M-G-M's star, laugh and song-loaded Technicolor musical, "Singin' in the Rain, a musical that is today considered one of the best musicals ever made. While I did not have a copy of the box set on hand while writing this column, I did some research into what was going to be included. What I present here in text and graphics are probably not included in the set, though certain accolades might be mentioned. I have searched for graphics that are very rare that may not be on the disc release. This, in my humble opinion, is the main attraction of this column, though some of the stories are quite fascinating. Remember, you can always left click on most graphics to enlarge them. So get out your raincoats and enjoy the Making of Singin' in the Rain, a brand new release on Blu-ray from Warner Brothers that has been completely restored and a must for any Blu-ray collection. To order, click on the title anywhere in the column.  Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds forming as merry a trio of leads as you have seen in some time. Kelly and O'Connor enact a vaudeville song-and-dance team who crash Hollywood in the Twenties, when the Charleston was the rage and silent-film directors dressed as though they were riding masters. Starting as a "mood musician," indispensable in putting a star in the right mood in those days, Kelly becomes in turn a stunt man and then the swashbuckling hero of costume action pictures opposite the beautiful Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen). Unfortunately, the alluring Lina's beauty is confined to her face. With the thinking apparatus of a four-year-old and a rasping voice, she is frankly a dumb bunny, so dumb, in fact, that she believes the fan magazines when they say she is Kelly's sweetheart off-screen as well as on. This leads to a number of heated repercussions when Kelly falls in love with pert, young singer, Debbie Reynolds. But the real crisis occurs when the success of "The Jazz Singer," the first talkie, revolutionizes the old silent-film technique. It looks as though Lina, with her frightening voice, is a goner. How she plots to save her career at the expense of her rival, Debbie, who has been employed to "dub" her voice in place of Lina's in a musical, and how this plot is thwarted by Kelly and O'Connor, makes for an hilarious tale studded with memorable song hits from the pen of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown and felicitous hoofing upon the part of all three principals.  Original newspaper advertisement In the impressive musical score are such nostalgic heart-warmers as "All I Do Is Dream of You," "You Were Meant For Me," "You Are My lucky Star,' "Wonderful You," "Good Morning," "Beautiful Girl," "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'," "The Wedding of the Painted Doll," the title song and a number of others. An elaborate fashion show revealing the now-hilarious fashions of the flapper era is a highlight. Kelly and O'Connor prove themselves an adroit hoofing team in song-and-dance routines done respectively to "Fit as a Fiddle" and "Moses," while the film is brought to a climax with the brilliant fifteen-minute "Broadway Melody Ballet," featuring Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the dance drama of a young hoofer who achieves fame on Broadway.  Pre-release trade magazine advertisement from MGM (best quality available) Comden and Green, Story and Screenplay Betty Comden was born May 3, 1917 while Adolph Green was born three years earlier (1914). Betty Comden and Adolph Green went to Hollywood from New York, where as two-fifths of a group called "The Revuers" they wrote and performed songs and sketches in a series of night club, radio, and theater productions in the early 1940s. When the group disbanded, Comden and Green wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway "On the Town" in which they also acted and later adapted for the screen, their roles played by Ann Miller and Jules Munshin. The experience gained and associations formedduring their early partnership influenced their writing. They prepared their own material because The Revuers were just too poor to hire writers, while the group's gradual word-of-mouth success at a Greenwich Village cellar nightclub developed proportions of its own and influenced plot developments in some of Comden-Green screenplays. The writing team played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray in "The Band Wagon" provided some of the wittiest testimony to that practice.  Screenwriters Adolph Green with Betty Comden and Gene Kelly The episodic nature of the sketch and Comden and Green's ability to incorporate it with satiric songs proved adaptable to the more extended requirements of musical comedy, whose heyday at MGM they helped shape. Their original screenplays for Singin' in the Rain and "The Band Wagon ," emerged from sets of songs they were told to incorporate into each film's story line, not an uncommon process in the making of a musical. Betty Comden and Adolph Green arrived at MGM May of 1950 to write the score for the new musical. In their contract for all their shows, it stated that unless the music was by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and a few others, they were to always write their own lyrics. They stood firm with MGM and their new agent, Irving Lazar, re-read their old contract and it turned out they they were wrong. Green had always been a film buff, so he knew plenty about the earlier history of film for this project. But their first idea was a singing cowboy plot revolving around Howard Keel before they knew that Gene Kelly would be the lead.  Original comic book. The two writers were working with the possibility of three openings to the film. One was the premiere of the new silent film in New York City; the second was a magazine interview where he's telling lies about his past; and the third was a sequence from the silent movie that was being premiered, The Royal Rascal. None of them worked and they were ready to give up and go back to New York. Green has said, "We loved it from the very beginning, but we had no idea it would reach such epic proportions as it grew older. Initially, it was pretty much brushed off since it came out right after An American in Paris. Comden's husband, Steve, read the openings and suggested they use all three together. Green said, "All three ideas ended up in there, intertwined ,and it worked. And Gene sure looked great in that white hat and the white coat at the premiere."  Posters for theater inserts Comden and Green began meeting with Gene Kelly at his home in the evenings. They read parts out loud or turned to certain pages and said, Hey, I think we need to do this here. Green said, "It was mostly patching things up, discussing costumes, sometimes deciding to rewrite two scenes into one—those kinds of things. We had a great shorthand with both Gene and Stanley because we were all old friends, going back to our nightclub days. So we didn't have to explain things to t hem. Another director might have said, What is this craziness? What do you think you're doing?" Or How the hell are we going to do that?" But Gene and Stanley were used to the way our minds worked."  On the set Early on, Gene brought Donald O'Conner to the studio to see what he could do, and he had him do every single dance step that Donald knew, and every joke, and every pratfall. They were satisfied that he could handle the role. Of course, Debbie Reynolds just sang a few songs, did a few dances, and made the cut immediately..Arthur Freed wrote the song "Make 'Em Laugh" the night before rehearsals. They invited Irving Berlin the hear the piece. They were afraid he would recognize the similarities between Cole Porter's "Be a Clown"and the new song. He was actually surprised when he asked, "Who wrote that song." Freed mumbled something and they moved on.   (top)Various cartoons commissioned by MGM for promotion; (bottom) MGM's suggestion for theater front design. In the early 1950s Comden and Green broadened their Broadway career with the revue "Two on the Isle" (1951), the first of many collaborations with their most frequent composer, Jule Styne. Their next Broadway project, "Wonderful Town" (1953), reunited them with Leonard Bernstein which won the Tony Award as Best Musical. Their next seven musicals were collaborations with Styne, including additional songs for "Peter Pan" (1954), "Say Darling" (1958), "Do Re Mi" (1960), "Subways are for Sleeping," (1961), "Fade Out Fade In" (1964) and Best Musical Tony Award winner, "Hallelujah, Baby!" (1968). The most successful show from Comden and Green's collaboration with Jule Styne was Bells Are Ringing (1956), which was written as a vehicle for Comden and Green's old friend, Judy Holliday, who became an Academy Award winning actress. I own all of these original score compact discs, and there is some fantastic show music to be had on them. Most of these were released on the Columbia Masterworks label, who actually financed some of the shows. I recommend these Broadway Cast compact discs to anyone who likes the old-fashioned style show tune. Comden and Green also continued their performing careers in 1959, with the first version of their successful revue, A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which they performed several times on Broadway and around the country over the following thirty years.  Spanish poster During this period of popularity on Broadway, Comden and Green also continued work on various film projects, adapting "Bells Are Ringing" for the screen in 1960. They also did the 1958 screen adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's play "Auntie Mame." Though their last produced film was the comedy with songs, What A Way To Go! (1964), they continued to work on screenplays for the rest of their careers. Comden and Green also continued their performing careers in 1959, with the first version of their successful revue, A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which they performed several times on Broadway and around the country over the following thirty years.   Merchandising advertisement from merchant tie-ins. In 1970 Comden and Green provided the book for Charles Strouse and Lee Adams' score for "Applause," a musical version of the classic film, "All About Eve," (1950) which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Throughout their career as writers, Comden and Green continued to work as performers in such films as "My Favorite Year" (1982), "I Want to Go Home" (1989) and "Garbo Talks." They also appeared in many tributes and concerts including "Follies in Concert," performed at Avery Fisher Hall in 1985 and Green appeared as Dr. Pangloss in the London Symphony Orchestra's "Candide," conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1989. Betty Comden was married to artist Steven Kyle from 1942, until his death in 1979. They had two children, Alan Kyle and Suzanne Kyle. Adolph Green's first marriage in 1941, to actress/painter Elizabeth Reitell ended in divorce, as did his second marriage to actress Allyn Ann McLerie from 1945-1953. In 1960 he married actress Phyllis Newman, with whom he had two children, Amanda Green and Adam Green, and to whom he remained married until his death on October 23, 2002.  German style B poster The Score: Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown One of the highlights of the film is the musical score. Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown composed the famous and Broadway-type score to the picture. Born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina, he was raised in Seattle, Washington. After graduating high school, he moved to Illinois and worked as a pianist for a Chicago music publisher. During his time in Chicago, he met Minnie Marx, the mother of the Marx Brothers. She introduced Arthur to her sons, which led to his teaming with them and touring the vaudeville circuit as a singer and writer of musical material for the brothers. In 1921, he collaborated for the first time with composer Nacio Herb Brown on the song "When Buddha Smiles." In 1923, Freed's first major success came when he wrote "I Cried For You" with Gus Arnheim and Abe Lyman. After a few years of touring the nightclub circuit, Freed joined MGM in 1928 as a lyricist, and was assigned to work with his former collaborator, Nacio Herb Brown.  Arthur Freed The bones of days gone by rattled at the M-G-M studios when that hectic period, the 1927 transition from silent films to sound pictures went before the modern Technicolor cameras in Singin' in the Rain. It was produced by Arthur Freed in a string musical offering in a list of pictures which included such hits as "Show Boat," "An American in Paris," "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Meet Me in St. Louis." His first Hollywood job was as collaborator with Nacio Herb Brown on "Broadway Melody of 1929," the first sound musical made at the studio. "The diction coaches ran the place," said Freed. "Silent picture stars were walking around in a trance, mumbling such tongue-twisters as 'Around the rugged rocks the raucous rascal ran.' Ours was the only sound company on the M-G-M lot at the time. Our microphones were usually suspended from the rafters, dangling from the arms of prop men. We also had an extra mike hanging from the end of a bamboo fishpole, this one to follow the actors around. That fishpole was the forerunner of the modern boom."  Various music releases of the popular musical score. The audience for the film while it was shooting on the lot was as distinguished as that which attended its world premiere. "All of the silent stars under contract to the studio were in the bleachers," Freed recalled. In the audience were John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman, Renee Adoree, Sally O'Neill, Aileen Pringle, Lew Cody, Conrad Nagel (the one star who never had mike fright because he had come from the stage), and even the elusive Garbo." The stars of that early musical were Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King and Ukulele Ike. "It was the day of the ukulele craze," continued Freed. "We deliberately wrote our music so that it could easily be adapted to accompaniments by the most amateurish amateur. That isn't possible with today's Hit Paraders. There is too much transposition of keys."  Magazine advertisement Singin' in the Rain" brought back some of the tunes written by Freed and Brown during their days as one of the country's top composing' teams. In addition is a number entitled "Beautiful Girl." 'That song was originally sung in a picture called "Stage Mother." The singer was a comparative unknown, a young fellow from Seattle, by the name of Bing Crosby. After which he began his second career as a film producer. Freed was a staunch proponent of the "integrated" musical, wherein the songs became integral in the storyline rather than their being mere highlights. MGM's legendary 'Freed Unit' produced nearly 50 movies, and helped elevate MGM as the studio of the musical.  Magazine covers. After leaving MGM in 1961, Freed served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1963 to 1966. In 1951, he was presented the Irving G. Thalberg Award for "Creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production." In 1967 a special honorary Academy Award was presented for his distinguished service to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Freed also produced five highly rated Academy Award telecasts, and one pre-Oscar special. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. Arthur died on April 12, 1973 at the age of 78.  Boxoffice Barometer from 1952. This was published in the weekly magazine "Boxoffice." This will show what other films were showing at the time and how they were doing financially. Nacio Herb Brown was born in Deming, New Mexico February 22, 1896. He attended Musical Arts High School in L.A., California and graduated with a bachelor's degree from UCLA. Brown then started his own tailoring business. A few years later he became a realtor accruing quite a bit of money in Beverly Hills real estate. None of these paths fit the creative composer and he began his finest career in songwriting in the early 1920's. In the early days of film soundtracks, Brown was under contract with MGM in 1928 and produced some of the greatest Motion Picture scores. He wrote complete scores for films such as Broadway Melody of 1929, 1936 and 1937, Going Hollywood, Sadie McKee, Student Tour, Greenwich Village and The Kissing Bandit. Other films with Brown songs are Hollywood Revue, A Night At the Opera, San Francisco and Babes in Arms. His greatest success would come with the score and title song for Singin' in the Rain.  Nacio Herb Brown (left) with Arthur Freed The Brown catalog holds some of the greatest standards from his era. Including "Singin' in the Rain", he also wrote "Temptation", "The Wedding of the Painted Doll", "Eadie Was a Lady", "Pagan Love Song", "All I Do is Dream of You", "You Are My Lucky Star", "I've Got A Feelin' You're Foolin'", "Broadway Melody", "Our Big Love Scene", "A New Moon Is Over My Shoulder", "You Stepped Out of a Dream", "Love Is Where You Find It" and "Make 'Em Laugh". Brown also composed serious music such as "Doll Dance" and "American Bolero". His Stage productions included the Los Angeles production of Hollywood Music Box Revue plus the Broadway production "Take a Chance." Other than Freed, Brown collaborated with Buddy DeSylva, Gus Kahn, Leo Robin and Gordon Clifford. Nacio Brown passed away on September 28, 1964, in San Francisco, CA.  Belgian poster Fashions and Wardrobe If 1952's smart girls wanted to beat the fashion trend, they went back to the family album and dug out some pictures of their mothers. According to Screen Designer Walter Plunkett, the shape of things to come was shapeless. "We've been gradually drifting back to that low flapper waistline in our vogue for Sloppy Joe sweaters," Plunkett declared. "And while I'll hardly go so far as to advocate the above-the-knee skirt, I will get out on a limb concerning several other fashionable fancies of the roaring '20's."  Original costumes When Mr. Plnnkett was assigned the task of designing 1927 wardrobes for Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen, he accepted the job with some foreboding. "In retrospect, it was strictly a comedy era," he says. "Waistlines were just above where the knees ought to be. Skirts consisted of a slightly over-sized ruffle. However, I drew up the designs and we put the sketches into work. After the first fittings, I realized that many of the attributes of this flapper era were worth hanging onto fashion -wise. I don't mean to infer that we were going back one-hundred percent, but I am convinced that the lowered waistline, the all-over beaded evening dress, the pasted-dyed fox furs, the cloche hats and the hose tinted to match shoe tones are ripe for a comeback."  Publicity still Reynolds and Kelly Plunkett entered the business of film costume designing in 1927, the very period recalled in the new musical. At that time he whipped up snappy creations for such early-day stars as Lilyan Tashman, Olive Borden, Evelyn Brent, Bebe Daniels, Viola Dana and Alberta Vaughn, to mention just a few. "One gown worn by Jean Hagen in 'Singin' in the Rain' is, as nearly as I can remember, the duplicate of a frock designed for Lilyan Tashman," declares Plunkett. "At that time it was in the best tradition of Vogue and Harper's." Plunkett was correct when he predicted a comeback of the fashions. Athough flappers didn't come back with a vengeance, many of the styles used in the film finally did make a comeback in the early 1960's, in the new form of Art Nouveau (French for "New Art)." Many of the Nouveau styles were updates of 1920's fashion and decorative arts.  Costumes from the MGM costume department. Plunkett spent almost a year working on the pre-design and production of the costumes from the film. Models were hired to strut in front of the director, costume people and several of the actors. Thousands of styles were studied, drawn, and discussed before the final selection. Since the film was going to be a Technicolor production, Gene Kelly was adamant that all of the scenery and costumes "shine with brightness and strong color." Indeed, the art direction department helped to make that happen, but also the costumes, dozens and dozens of specially-made colorful clothes hand-made by the Costume department at MGM.  Spanish poster Production Seven separate sequences make up the spectacular "Broadway Melody Ballet," danced by Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse and a large chorus ensemble was an outstanding highlight of Singin' in the Rain. Running a full fifteen minutes and staged on a scale equal to that of the much-discussed Kelly-Leslie Caron ballet in"An American in Paris," the lavish production number depicts the rise of a young hoofer of New York's Roaring '20's from burlesque shows and cheap nightclubs to stardom on the Great White Way. The sets vary from the nightclub, to speakeasies, theater interiors, Fifth Avenue on a crowded afternoon and an imaginative depiction of Times Square at night, with the familiar signs of Broadway suspended in mid-air against an impressionistic background of the famous street. Fifty-five hundred light bulbs were required to illuminate the scene, which starts at floor level with the cameras focusing on Kelly. The camera and boom then move backward until the camera is shooting from a height of sixty feet in the air.  On the set ( For the Fifth Avenue sequence, showing the crowds sauntering (and dancing) along the town's most fashionable thoroughfare, M-G-M constructed the largest treadmill ever used on the Culver City sound stages. Kelly had a number of quick changes ranging from a striped blazer, an outsized check suit, a dinner jacket with straw hat and the formal white tie and tails, and Miss Charisse sporting an elaborate costume fashioned entirely of sequins and feathers. The ballet utilizes a medley of the great songs written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown.  Wardrobe tests. For the first time in more than twenty years, the lock turned on an almost unforgotten underground vault at the M-G-M studios to reveal a priceless collection of silent and early-talkies equipment once used by the studio. Together with several old Bell and Howell silent cameras, the "loot" included wooden booms and bamboo fish-poles, rigged to hold the clumsy microphones that recorded some of the first sound ever heard on film. The antiquated equipment played an important part in filming Singin' in the Rain. Incidentally, the prop man assigned to the production was Tony Ordoqui, who was at the studio during the transition from silent to sound. The silent-picture era came to life again on the M-G-M lot when one of the studio's oldest stages was reactivated for the sequence, part of the story of Hollywood's transition from silent pictures to talkies in the Twenties, four separate companies are pictured snooting a silent film, one in each corner of the stage. "It really happened that way," an old-timer observed. "As a matter of fact, the so-called 'silents' were so noisy that we had to shoot the first 'talkies' at night!"  Original lobby cards A replica of the forecourt and facade of the celebrated Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood was constructed on M-G-M's big Lot II for a silent-day movie premiere sequence. It was decided to build the set rather than shoot at the actual location because filming the scenes at the studio made it possible to control the traffic (1927 vintage) and to gain speed by the elimination of confusion stemming from sightseers. The famed theatre background is used in opening sequences of the plot, depicting Hollywood's transition from silent films to "talkies," with Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen enacting an idolized acting team of silent-picture days. For the first time in fifteen years, four members of the early "Our Gang" comedies appear together bef | ||
0
Get In Touch
Comments