Movie Music: Singin' In The Rain (Gene Kelly)
Gene Kelly Sings & Dances Up A Storm, Launching A Host Of Imitators
Jul 22, 2009
From the moment Gene Kelly grins skyward at the 'California dew', steps out from under his umbrella and shrugs his shoulders, it's hard to find a finer movie musical moment than the title track from MGM's 1952 Technicolor classic, Singin' In The Rain. And its not just Kelly's all-singing, all-dancing, all-splashing repartee that makes this a classic either, the whole sequence is so impeccably staged, from Kelly's interactions with passers-by to the artistry of Director of Photography Harold Rosson (who was also behind the camera for The Wizard of Oz and a hundred or so other Hollywood films between 1915 and 1966).
Singin' In The Rain: A Prehistory
Written by lyricist and Hollywood producer Arthur Freed with music by Nacio Herb Brown, Singin' In The Rain was first published in 1929. And of course, the 1952 film was not the first time audiences had heard the song, which made its screen debut in the Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of a series of films during the early sound period that bundled together the great and the good of studio rosters for lengthy variety shows featuring music, dancing and comedy.
During this film an initial rendition by Cliff Edwards (aka Ukelele Ike) was followed by a reprise during the two-strip Technicolor finale, where it was performed by the entire cast (with the notable exception of Buster Keaton, who is shown in character looking particularly bemused). And even before the Singin' In The Rain film was released in 1952 starring Kelly alongside Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, the song also featured in a further six Hollywood productions, including performances by Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily (1932) and Judy Garland in Little Nellie Kelly (1940).
Tributes, Parodies and Re-Imaginings
Perhaps more than any other musical moment, Kelly's legendary performance of Singin' In The Rain has been reworked, re-imagined and revised by a whole host of characters from across the entertainment industry. The song has featured in films as diverse as North By Northwest (1959), Godzilla (1998) and Shanghai Knights (2003), and was reworked as Singin' In The Oil for the animated film Robots (2005). Although, perhaps most notorious was Malcolm McDowell's menacing rendition during a particularly brutal scene in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971).
A million miles from McDowell's version was a hysterical, rain-less tribute by legendary British comedians Morecambe & Wise, which featured one very sodden policeman (played 'wet-through' by Eric Morcambe), and topped a UKTV Gold poll in 2007 counting down the duo's finest moments.
British electronic act Mint Royale's radical reworking of Gene Kelly's version of the song accompanied an equally radical and wonderfully inventive advertisment for the Volkswagen Golf GTI in 2005, that featured Kelly himself - via some computer trickery - body popping and breakdancing his way through a series of wildly modern dance moves on the Singin' In The Rain set.
An unbeatable classic and a movie moment of pure, unadulterated joy, Gene Kelly's mesmerising performance of Singin' In The Rain in the 1952 film of the same name is movie music of the highest order and its legacy will live on for generations to come.
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