1. Thursday, December 4, 2014
Objective: You will learn about how talkies started.
Agenda: Notes
View: Singin’ in the Rain
Daily Question: What is a musical? Have you ever seen a live musical? Explain.
Notes: Singin’ in the Rain
Handouts: Singin’ in the Rain Packet

3. Story's Location: Hollywood, California
Story's Location: Hollywood, California.  Most of the action takes place in and around the studios of Monumental Pictures.
Story’s Time Period: The story takes place at the beginning of the Sound–Era in Hollywood, 1927 & 1928.
Synopsis: This humorous, nostalgic, original screen musical is based on the movie industry’s awkward transition from silent pictures to sound. 

4. Production Directed by Gene Kelly Stanley Donen
Produced by Arthur Freed
Written by Betty Comden Adolph Green
Music by Nacio Herb Brown (music) Arthur Freed (lyrics)
Cinematography Harold Rosson
Editing by Adrienne Fazan
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) March 27, 1952 ( )
Running time 103 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget US $2,540,800

5. Interesting Stuff!
For her role as the hilariously-voiced Lina Lamont, Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film for Best Original Music Score.
Donald O'Connor won a Golden Globe for this film.[11]
Singin' in the Rain has appeared twice on Sight and Sound's list of the ten best films of all time, in 1982 and The film has a rare 100% positive reviews on RottenTomatoes.com, based on 43 sources.[12]
In 1989, Singin' in the Rain was also deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years Movies - #10
AFI's 100 Years Laughs - #16
AFI's 100 Years Passions - #16
AFI's 100 Years Heroes and Villains:
Lina Lamont - Nominated Villain
AFI's 100 Years Songs:
"Singin' in the Rain" - #3
"Make 'em Laugh" - #49
"Good Morning" - #72
AFI's 100 Years Movie Quotes:
"What do they think I am, dumb or something? Why, I make more money than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!" - Nominated
AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - #1
AFI's 100 Years Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #5

6. Lina LaMont
Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont. Judy Holliday was strongly considered for the role of Lina, until she suggested Hagen, who had been her understudy in the Broadway production of Born Yesterday. Fresh off her role in The Asphalt Jungle, Hagen read for the part for producer Arthur Freed and did a dead-on impression of Holliday's Billie Dawn character, which won her the role. Her character was based on the silent picture star Norma Talmadge who bombed during the transition to talkies.

7. The American Film Institute’s list of “100 Years
The American Film Institute’s list of “100 Years Movies (American’s 100 Greatest Movies)” lists “Singin' in the Rain” as # the highest ranked musical.  They also list “Singin' in the Rain” #16 on their list “100 Years Laughs (America’s 100 Greatest Comedies)”; #16 on their list of “100 Years Passions (America’s 100 Greatest Love Stories)”; and nominated the songs “Good Morning”, “Make ‘Em Laugh”, and “Singing in the Rain” for inclusion in their 2004 list of “100 Years Songs (America’s 100 Greatest Songs in American Movies)”.

8. Gene Kelly in Title Song

11. HUH???
In the "Would You" number, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) is dubbing the voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) because Lina's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is really speaking, it's Jean Hagen herself, who actually had a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Debbie is supposedly dubbing Jean's singing of "Would You", the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Debbie.

12. Hard Work
Gene Kelly insulted Debbie Reynolds for not being able to dance. Fred Astaire, who was hanging around the studio, found her crying under a piano and helped her with her dancing.
Working days sometimes stretched to 19 hours.
Only 19 when cast to play the film Debbie Reynolds lived with her parents and commuted to the set. She had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and ride three different buses to the studio; sometimes, to avoid the commute, she would just sleep on the set.

13. Money, money, money!
Studio technicians had to cover two outdoor city blocks on the backlot with tarp to make them dark for a night scene, and then equipped them with overhead sprays for Gene Kelly to perform the title number. Their efforts are all the more remarkable since there w as a severe water shortage in Culver City the day the sequence was shot.
The film rang up a final price tag of $2,540,800, $157,000 of which went to costumes alone. Although the final price overshot MGM's budget by $665,000, the studio quickly realized the wisdom of its investment when the film returned a $7.7-million profit upon its initial release.

14. "Singin' in the Rain", the title song, was shot out of doors on one of the permanent streets built on the studio backlot - the East Side Street. The area was blacked out with tarpaulins and had to be lit from behind so that the rain was visible to the camera but without the lights reflecting in the shop windows. Milk was added to the water to make it more visible to the camera.

15. Debbie Reynolds had to train rigorously for her role so she could keep up with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. This meant mastering the art of tap dancing and other complicated steps. After they finished the "Good Morning" number, Reynolds had to be carried to her dressing room because she had burst some blood vessels in her feet.

16. Reynolds later stated that she "learned a lot from (Kelly)
Reynolds later stated that she "learned a lot from (Kelly). He is a perfectionist and a disciplinarian - the most exciting director I've ever worked for. And he has a good temper. Every so often he would yell at me and make me cry. But it took a lot of patience for him to work with someone who had never danced before. It's amazing that I could keep up with him and Donald O'Connor.

17. " Kelly later commented on her work, "Fortunately, Debbie was strong as an ox...also she was a great copyist, and she could pick up the most complicated routine without too much difficulty...at the university of hard work and pain." But despite her hard work on the "Good Morning" number, Kelly decided that someone should dub her tap sounds, so he went into a dubbing room to dub the sound of her feet as well as his own.

18. For the dream segment within the "Broadway Ballet" sequence, Gene Kelly choreographed a scarf dance, using an enormous fifty-foot veil of white China silk attached to Cyd Charisse's costume. A strong wind was created using airplane motors but Cyd Charisse could hardly stay on her feet because of the pressure of the wind. The "Broadway Ballet" sequence took a month to rehearse, two weeks to shoot, and cost $600,000, almost a fifth of the overall budget.