Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for budget of $2.54 million, released April 10, 1952 by MGM and grossed $3.6 million, Technicolor 35mm negative, 1.37:1 screen aspect ratio, mono sound, 103 mins.; Laserdisc released 1991; restored theatrical print from original 3-strip Technicolor negatives released 1992; DVD released 1997 with remastered Dolby digital sound

Production:

Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly

Written by Betty Comden, Adolph Green

Produced by Arthur Freed

Original music by Nacio Herb Brown, Lennie Hayton

Cinematography by Harold Rosson

Film Editing by Adrienne Fazan

Sound recording by Douglas Shearer

Special Effects by Warren Newcombe, Irving G. Ries

Choreography by Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen

Orchestration by Wally Heglin, Conrad Salinger, Skip Martin

Vocal arrangements by Jeff Alexander, Roger Edens

Cast:

Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood

Donald O'Connor as Cosmo Brown

Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Selden

Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont (and as the singing voice of Debbie Reynolds)

Millard Mitchell as R. F. Simpson

Cyd Charisse as Dancer

Douglas Fowley as Roscoe Dexter

Rita Moreno as Zelda Zanders

Madge Blake as Dora Bailey

Kathleen Freeman as Phoebe Dinsmore, Lina's diction coach

Bobby Watson as Don's diction coach

Betty Royce as the singing voice for "Would You?"

Notes:

Singin' in the Rain was first conceived as a "catalogue" picture by Arthur Freed for MGM in 1949. He had written the song 20 years earlier with the composer Nacio Herb Brown for the Hollywood Music Box Revue in 1927, a stage show of showgirls and songs and spectacular sets of the type made famous by the Ziegfeld Follies. After the sound revolution swept through Hollywood in the wake of the 1927 Jazz Singer, Irving Thalberg hired Freed and Brown to write music for MGM's first revue musical, Broadway Melody, in 1929. Freed had worked as a mood pianist in silent films when he first moved from New York to Hollywood in 1925 (like Cosmo) and helped Thalberg (like R. F.) and the MGM studio (like Monumental Pictures) make the transition to sound. The characters of Lina Lamont (like Judy Holliday), director Roscoe Dexter (like Busby Berkeley), Dora Bailey (like Louella Parsons) were based on real people. The song "Singin' in the Rain" and other Freed-Brown songs would be used in repeatedly in many MGM pictures, starting with Hollywood Revue of 1929. Arthur Freed became a leading producer of musicals at MGM, putting together a talented group known as the Freed Unit after it made The Wizard of Oz in 1938.