8pm Thursday SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN - (1952) Musical comedy
As Hollywood transitions from silent films to talkies, a charming leading man and a talented rising star must navigate love, competition, and the upheaval of a changing film industry.
When the transition is being made from silent films to `talking pictures', everyone has trouble adapting. Don and Lina have been cast repeatedly as a romantic couple, but when their latest film is remade into a musical, only Don has the voice for the new singing part. After a lot of practice with a diction coach, Lina still sounds terrible, and Kathy, a bright young aspiring actress, is hired to record over her voice.
MOVIE TRIVIA
For the "Make 'em Laugh" number, Donald O’Connor revived a trick he had done as a young dancer: running up a wall and completing a somersault. The number was so physically taxing that O'Connor ended up in a hospital bed for a week after its completion. He suffered from exhaustion and carpet burns. After an accident ruined all of the initial footage, O'Connor agreed to do the difficult number all over again.
- 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 was a severe water shortage in Culver City the day the sequence was shot. Ironically, with the way it was then lit, for decades many people thought that the number was actually shot inside, in a street set built inside one of MGM's vast soundstages.
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