The mood in the theater was a little somber as a memorial to Debbie Reynolds flashed across the screen before the start to a special theater showing of “Singin’ in the Rain” to celebrate the 65th anniversary of it’s first theatrical release.

It’s hard to believe she’s gone.  It almost feels like we are here to honor her memory.

And her legacy was what lifted our mood as the opening title credits with Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Conner in their yellow slickers flashed in front of us. I took a little picture with my iPhone and then put it away for the rest of the showing.  Because this was about showing my daughters, 6 and 12, what a truly great musical is about.

We have seen “La La Land” and it’s fantastic to see the revival of musicals in our times, but I don’t think it can hold a candle to the spectacle that is “Singin’ in the Rain – all the athleticism those song-and-dance numbers.  Mind-blowing.  I would love to see a revival of tap dancing too.  Heck, I would love to learn tap dancing myself.  La La Land is being honored for far more awards than “Singin’ in the Rain was.”  Maybe because La La Land stands out as being so different from movies today. Although today it’s considered one of the best musicals of all time, the film earned no Oscar nomination for Best Picture (it was considered artistically inferior to Kelly’s 1951 Best Picture winner, “An American in Paris”). It did earn a Best Supporting Actress nod for Jean Hagen, and Best Original Score for instrumental composer Lennie Hayton.

As the movie flickered before us, I couldn’t help remembering some fascinating things about this movie that I read in Debbie Reynolds’ book “Unsinkable” Of course my husband was bombarded by these facts as we drove home.

Here’s some little known facts about the movie:

•  Most of the songs were from Arthur Freed’s songbook that needed a movie – so they made one.  Freed is the MGM producer who made many of the MGM movies we loved and he drove careers of many players like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Jane Powell, Esther Williams and Kathryn Grayson.
  • As Betty Comden recalled, she and co-screenwriter Adolph Green were told by Freed, “‘Kids, you’re going to write a movie called “Singin’ in the Rain”. Just put all of my songs in it.’ All we knew was there would be some scene where someone would be singing, and it would be raining.”

• Here’s a video of Judy Garland singing the title song in 1940, well before the movie came out in 1951.  The song we know begins at 1:23.   The title song originally appeared in “The Hollywood Revue of 1929.” It was be sung in four more movies before Freed had Comden and Green build a movie around it.

• To create the role of Lina Lamont, the silent star with the horrible voice, Comden and Green thought of Judy Holliday, their old sketch comedy partner, and even revived some bits from their old act. But then Holliday won the Oscar for 1950’s “Born Yesterday,” they realized they’d probably not be able to afford her.  For her audition, Hagen did a drop-dead impression of Holliday and won the role.  Check out how Holliday’s voice in this clip.

• Hagen was actually a very good singer and had done some dubbing for other actresses in her career.  Her real voice can be heard here in this video as the line that Kathy (Reynolds) “supposedly” dubbed.  It was the only line that Hagen did in her real voice.  What’s funny too is that Reynolds was dubbed by another singer for the “Would You” number in that scene.  But that’s her real voice in “Good Mornin'”

• Debbie Reynolds was a teenage starlet when she was chosen for this role.  She had no dance training, and she said that Gene Kelly was a bit of a jerk (to put it mildly) and a brutal taskmaster. One day, she was so upset that she curled up beneath a piano in another rehearsal studio and started to cry — only to be discovered there by Fred Astaire, who gave her a little dance coaching – from the best. What a great guy he was!  His lessons definitely helped her get through the 14-hour shoot of “Good Mornin'” Reynolds said, “The two hardest things I ever did in my life are childbirth and “Singin’ in the Rain’.”  Personally, I have a hard time enjoying Gene Kelly’s pictures because of what his co-stars have said about his demands.  Thank God for Fred Astaire.

• O’Connor also worked himself to exhaustion (real exhaustion and not that fake stuff actresses today get) on the “Make ‘Em Laugh” number, which had him bringing back his vaudeville numbers like that technique of running up a wall and flipping into a somersault. Unfortunately, O’Connor was a four-pack-a-day smoker, and after filming the number, he was bedridden for several days, only to learn that the footage had been accidentally destroyed. So he did it all again. And my kids were grateful! They loved it.

• The “Make ‘Em Laugh” number remains a mountain aspiring musical stars still try to scale. Like on Glee here.  In 2009, Joseph Gordon-Levitt recreated the entire number, live, during his opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live.”

• The movie cost $2.5 million, running more than $600,000 over budget.  What’s interesting is that the epic number: the “Broadway Melody Ballet,” which ran nearly 17 minutes and was highlighted by the silent, performance of the then-unknown Cyd Charisse as a vampy femme fatale in a Louise Brooks wig was always my least favorite part of the movie as a child.  I just didn’t get it.  I still felt that way when I saw it today.  Maybe Kelly should have cut this scene to stay on budget.  But what do I know, right?

• The title number, filmed on a street set two blocks long on the MGM backlot, took seven days to film, with six hours of fake rain each day. The water was mixed with milk to make it show better on camera.

• The initial ending would have included a premiere for Lina’s film “Jungle Princess,” in which her dialogue would consist solely of grunts. Also, Lina and Cosmo would have married.  There’s a reason we give an Oscar for film editing.  🙂

Show “Singin’ In the Rain” to your kids if you have the chance.