Monday Minute
No. 72 | April 12, 2010

April Showers

Last week the baseball season opened and already we have our first “rain” delay.  That’s apt to happen this time of year.  The forecast calls for more of the same the rest of the week, so you may want to pack an umbrella as we get ready for five days of rain-inspired songs from the movies.

Our theme this week
Movie songs for a “rain”-y day

“Singin’ in the Rain”

I’m singin’ in the rain
Just singin’ in the rain
What a glorious feelin’
I’m happy again
I’m laughin’ at clouds
So dark up above
The sun’s in my heart
And I’m ready for love

The classic song is so closely associated with the classic movie, it’s worth noting that the song had been around since at least the early days of sound film.  Its movie debut was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, performed by Cliff  Edwards.  Other film renditions were sung by Jimmy Durante in Speak Easy (1932) and Judy Garland in Little Nellie Kelly (1940).  Something about the Gene Kelly performance has left the other versions all but forgotten, even the Debbie Reynolds version in the same movie.

It was a wondrous time for MGM musicals.  The year before, Kelly had starred in 1951′s Best Picture, An American in Paris, directed by Vincente Minnelli.  Kelly co-directed Singin’ in the Rain with Stanley Donen, based on a story and screenplay from the great writing team of Adolph Green and Betty Comden.  Inexplicably, the 1952 musical was not nominated for Best Picture.  (Perhaps more inexplicably, the winner that year was The Greatest Show on Earth.)  Only one member of cast was nominated for an Oscar—Jean Hagen, for her role of Lina Lamont, the silent film star whose grating voice hampered her transition to talkies.

Looking back, the oversights of the Academy are puzzling, but not especially relevant.  The film has rightly earned its spot among the very best of Hollywood musicals (it ranked #1 on the AFI’s list in 2006).

Singin’ in the Rain—the song and film—are pure magic, and timeless.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Gene Kelly, singer, dancer, co-director
Arthur Freed, lyrics, and Nacio Herb Brown, music
“Singin’ in the Rain”

(If at first you don’t see Gene, click, click again—or click here to see it at YouTube.) 

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Quote of Note
“One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months.  We been through every kind of rain there is.  Little bitty stingin’ rain, and big ol’ fat rain.  Rain that flew in sideways.  And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.  Shoot, it even rained at night.”
—Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), Forrest Gump (1994)

…58…59…60.