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Historian John Kenrick visits the University Club to tell the story behind the greatest movie musical ever made STORY AND PHOTO BY STEPHEN VRATTOS On Thursday evening, March 30, entertainment historian, author and lecturer, John Kenrick returned to North Shore Towers as the University Club’s guest speaker to discuss Singin’ in the Rain, or more pointedly “How the greatest musical in movie history almost wasn’t made.” The year was 1952. For five days, an intense fog blanketed London, trapping the exhaust from the city’s coal-mining plants and poisoning the lungs of its citizenry, resulting in the deaths of more than 4,000 Londoners. The King and I dominated the Tony Awards ceremonies. The play, The Mousetrap, based on the Agatha Christie novel, opened in London’s West End and has been continuously running ever since. The U.S. conducts the first hydrogen bomb test and Liam Neeson, Bob Costas, Roseanne Barr and John Goodman are among the celebrities born. Few suspected the arrival of THE defining movie musical. According to Kenrick, the origins of Singin’ in the Rain go back to the dawn of MGM, when Broadway musical aficionados and movie partners Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg made film musicals during the silent era, utilizing the piano employed in all film houses to play incidental music during the movies, to supply the songs to the actors’ movements. The two movie men experienced firsthand the revolutionary release of The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture (with songs, no less!) and the panic, which swept through the industry after its release and subsequent hiccups studios fought through to perfect the technology. It is the same story, which writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green used as the basis for Singin’ in the Rain. Music for the proposed film would be taken from MGM’s catalog of tunes written by Herb Nascio Brown and Arthur Freed, the latter of whom would also be serving as Producer. Years earlier, Freed moved from the music department to production, serving as assistant to Producer Mervyn LeRoy on 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. He would go on to produce many of history’s most beloved movie musicals, such as An American in Paris, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon and Singin’ in the Rain. Twelve of the fourteen songs were recycled from previous films, including the titular tune, which was introduced in the studio’s second feature-length movie, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 by Cliff Edwards, who would later voice Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. The song became a hit, recurring over the years thereafter, covered by such Hollywood luminaries as Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily (1932) and Judy Garland in Little Nellie Kelly (1940). “When you have a hit song and you own it, you keep using it,” Kenrick remarked concerning the industry’s philosophy at the time. Freed was no slouch as a singer either. It is his voice dubbing over Leon Ames in Meet Me in St. Louis, when the Smith Family Patriarch sings “You and I” with Mary Astor’s Anna Smith playing the piano. When Mrs. Smith joins in, however, it is D. Markas doing the singing to Astor’s pantomime. “Rain” Man The Musical Man, John Kenrick 12  NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER  ¢  May 2017


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