STACK #167 Sept 2018

EXTRAS FEATURE

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Director Stanley Donen discusses the next scene with co-director Gene Kelly

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) Directed by Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly

on the MGM set of Singin’ in the Rain.

would be Singin’ in the Rain . With a stockpile of some 100 songs and the title, the two writers struggled for months to come up with a whole new modern story, with characters and situations that fitted the already existing songs; all they really had was that someone would be out in the rain, and singing about it. Finally, they realised that the songs would fit best in the time period for which they had been written – the late 1920s. This in turn fit the transition period between silent movies and the Talkies, which not only caused dramatic upheavals for the film studios, but totally destroyed great movie careers when the silent star’s voice did not match the fabled face. They now had their storyline: a musical satire on the movie industry’s change from the silent to the sound era. The film begins with a Monumental Pictures premiere of the silent movie begin to scream when the film’s two stars, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), arrive. A rotund lady commentator (an obvious take-off of gossip columnist Louella Parsons) invites Don to say a few words to his legion of fans. He then proceeds to give an account of his rise to movie fame, which is totally at odds with the flashbacks being shown on screen. “The Royal Rascal” at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Crowds of fans

T hroughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, Metro Goldwyn Mayer produced the most opulent and innovative screen musicals that every other Hollywood film studio tried to imitate. But MGM reigned supreme, and the man responsible for delivering 40 of the studio’s celebrated musicals was the uncontested master of the genre, Arthur Freed.  A former lyricist, Freed, with his partner Nacio Herb Brown, had been writing songs for Metro musicals for a decade before he turned to producing in 1939. Early Hollywood musicals were all filmed in monochrome and were either in operatic style or the more usual putting-on-a-show type productions. Freed changed all that, reinventing the movie musical by filming them in colour and allowing the musical numbers to flow with the story rather than being just interludes in the plot. This resulted in MGM classics such as Meet Me in St Louis,

within a studio, comprising directors Vincent Minnelli and Stanley Donen; cinematographers, Harold Rosson and Harry Stradling; and star actor-performers, Fred Astaire, Oscar Levant, Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Ann Miller, Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly. The whole Freed team of actors, writers, directors, choreographers, composers and set designers had an abundance of energy, imagination and sophistication that created an outstanding series of musical motion pictures the likes of which had never been seen on screen before.  In late 1950, with An American in Paris in the final throes of completion, Freed contacted screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who had provided the screenplay for his hit musical On the Town (1949). He told them that their next project was to write a concept based on his backlog of songs that he had composed with Herb Brown and, inspired by their most popular song written in 1929, the film’s title

Arthur Freed insisted on quality in every department, which was reflected in his set-up at the MGM studios

Easter Parade, The Pirate, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat and An American in Paris . Freed insisted on quality in every department, which was reflected in his set-up at the MGM studios. His unit practically became a studio

Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lamont (Jean Hagen) are interviewed at the premiere of "The Royal Rascal", whilst Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) looks on.

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SEPTEMBER 2018

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