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The ultimate Hollywood Hollywood movie ends this year's SUNDAY SILVERS!  Movies, stars, movie-stars, songs, dance, Technicolor, comedy and romance in one of MGM's finest musicals.  Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse and Jean Hagen star, and oh boy - what a glorious feeling!

Come dressed as your favourite classic Hollywood movie star or character and get in for £1 (50p concs) less!

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SOME FACTS ABOUT SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN:

- A plot had to be constructed around the songs as the songs came first!

- Gene Kelly was such a tyrant that both O’Connor and Reynolds didn’t enjoy making this film.  Kelly criticised the then newcomer Debbie Reynolds’ dancing so much that he made her cry.  Luckily for her, Fred Astaire found her in tears and coached her.

- Donald O’Connor had to perform a vaudeville trick from his youth – running up a wall to do a summersault.  However, he wasn’t as young as he once was and also smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day, so after shooting this number he was bedridden for a week through exhaustion.  Unfortunately, the original footage was ruined in an accident and he had to do it all over again!

- This film was the sixth time that the song ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ was used. In fact only two songs were written especially for the film (‘Make ‘em Laugh’ and ‘Moses Supposes’), the rest were recycled from other films.

- Kelly dubbed Reynolds’ tap sounds for ‘Good Morning’; choreography assistants Carol Haney and Gwen Verdon dubbed Kelly’s tap sounds in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’; singer Betty Noyles dubbed Reynolds’ singing voice in ‘Would You’ and ‘You are my lucky star’; Hagen dubs Reynolds’ voice in the speaking parts of Reynolds’ dubbing Lina Lamont in ‘Would You’ (Hagen dubbing Reynolds dubbing Hagen!).

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Other important little facts

- The title number was shot in one take due to Gene Kelly suffering a high-fever.  That’s all it took.

- Jean Hagen was nominated for an Oscar for her fantastic roll as the screeching Lina Lemont.

- Cyd Charisse had to be taught how to smoke for her scene as a vampish gangster’s moll.

- The rain in the title number was a mix of water and milk so that it would show up on film.

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Based on silent movie stars

A lot of the characters were based on real-life silent movie stars and incidents:  the loudly tapping hand-fan on film – Rio Rita (1929);  ‘The Zip Girl’ in the beginning scene could be the ‘It-Girl’, Clara Bow; Olga Mara as Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson; Roscoe Dexter as Eric von Stromheim; R.F. Simpson as Louis B. Mayer and Arthur Freed; Lockwood’s dialogue in ‘The Duelling Cavalier’ based on John Gilbert; Lamont’s dilemma based on Norma Talmadge.

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