Singin' In The Rain

In 1949, the writing team of Betty Comden & Adolph Green walked into the MGM offices of Arthur Freed. Freed, a lyricist and renowned film producer, specialized in movie musicals. He told Comden & Green, "Kids, your next movie is going to be Singin' In The Rain and it's going to have all my songs in it." There was no plot. No characters. Just a bunch of unrelated songs and the notion that one scene would have someone singing while it was raining. Somehow this became the greatest movie musical ever made.

Singin' In The Rain debuted in 1952. The film offers a comedic depiction of Hollywood's transition from silents to talkies. Choreographed and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the film stars Kelly, Donald O'Connor and 18-year old beauty pageant winner Debbie Reynolds. Reynolds was a gymnast with no dance experience.  Kelly was a harsh taskmaster who criticized her dancing skills. One day, Fred Astaire visited the set and found Reynolds crying beneath a piano. He agreed to give her dance lessons. By the time she filmed the "Good Morning" scene, she was able to keep up with Kelly and O'Connor. The 14-hour shooting days caused burst blood vessels in Reynolds' feet. Years later she said, "The two hardest things I ever did in my life are childbirth and Singin' In The Rain."

O'Connor also succumbed to the stress of production. During the "Make 'Em Laugh" number, he resurrected an old vaudeville routine of running up a wall and completing a somersault. A four-pack-a-day smoker, O'Connor was so debilitated he had to be hospitalized for exhaustion and severe carpet burns. When an accident destroyed the footage, O'Connor gamely agreed to re-shoot the scene from scratch.

The iconic "Singin' In The Rain" number was filmed while Gene Kelly had a 103-degree temperature. The scene took 2-3 days to shoot and Kelly was constantly soaked causing his wool suit to shrink. Technicians covered two city blocks on the MGM backlot with tarp to create darkness for the night scene. Overhead sprays were installed, a potential problem since there was a water shortage in Culver City. During dailies, it was determined the rain did not show up properly on screen.  Milk was added to make the rain more visible.

The song "Singin' In The Rain" appeared six previous times on the big screen. It debuted in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Jimmy Durante sang the song in Speak Easily (1932) while Judy Garland sang it in Little Nellie Kelly (1940). The song also appeared as a musical sequence in The Babe Ruth Story (1948). In Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), Malcolm McDowell performs "Singin' In The Rain" during a controversial rape scene. Gene Kelly was so incensed, he deliberately ignored McDowell at the 1972 Academy Awards.

O'Connor respected Kelly but dreaded making a mistake for fear Kelly would yell at him.  Reynolds wrote that Kelly "was a perfectionist and a disciplinarian" but he was also "the most exciting director I've ever worked for."  Kelly later admitted he'd been ill mannered on set but he claimed it was all an act to get the studio to release him from his contract.  MGM obliged in 1954.

Singin' In The Rain was initially released in 1951 but pulled from theaters so it didn't compete with An American In Paris, also starring Gene Kelly. The film did modest box office at the time, though it was not nominated for Best Picture. Over the years, the film became influential among modern filmmakers. Francois Truffaut and Alain Resnais both listed the movie as their favorite. The 2011 Best Picture The Artist was clearly influenced by Singin' In The Rain as was La La Land. Ryan Gosling acknowledged, "We watched Singin' In The Rain everyday for inspiration."

The network television premiere of the film was scheduled for November 23, 1963. It had to be postponed two weeks due to the assassination of President Kennedy. The original negative of the film was destroyed in a fire. In 2007, the American Film Institute rated the movie the "#5 Greatest Film of all time." (7" x 9", black ink print)

The Ventriloquist Dummy

Recently I was teaching a printmaking class at a senior home when I encountered a woman named Phoebe who'd lost her right arm.  We began talking and she shared her story. She'd been a ventriloquist of some renown in the early 70's. She and her puppet Rudy appeared on television programs like Captain Kangaroo and Hobo Kelly.  By 1980 her career slowed and the tv appearances stopped.  Her husband convinced her to give up ventriloquism and she found a job as a secretary.

"I put Rudy in a big wood box and stored him in the back of the closet.  At night I could hear him screaming, 'let me out, let me out.'  After a few weeks Rudy started threatening me, saying things like, 'you'll be sorry,' or 'if you don't let me out, I'm going to hurt you.'  I cried every night.  I told him how sorry I was.  But I never let him out."

In 1981, Phoebe felt pain in her right arm, her puppet arm.  She was diagnosed with advanced bone cancer.  She had emergency surgery and her arm was removed at the shoulder.  Her life was saved, but her performing career effectively ended.  "I killed Rudy," Phoebe said.  "He tried to kill me."

Ventriloquism, the art of throwing one's voice so it appears to emanate from somewhere else, dates back to Classical Greece.  Early ventriloquists were called "engastrimyths" (gaster for stomach, mythos for speech).  Onlookers believed ventriloquists had demons in their stomach belching forth language from the host's mouth.

In the book I Can See Your Lips Moving: The History and Art of Ventriloquism, author Valentine Vox writes that the roots of ventriloquism lay in necromancy. It was believed that ventriloquists channeled the spirit of the dead through holes in their body via nostrils, ears, mouth and anus.  Biblical law specifically forbids necromancy as is written in Deuteronomy: "To seek truth from the dead is abhorred by God" and punishable by death (Leviticus).

Early ventriloquists sought to convince people their practice was religious in nature.  At the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the Pythia (high priestess) translated the strange utterances from her mouth as if the sounds were prophecies from the gods.  Centuries later, ventriloquists were consulted as a means of speaking with lost love ones.  People paid good money to converse with a recently deceased husband or long dead mother.

In 16th Century France, a nun named Elizabeth Barton uttered worldly predictions via ventriloquism.  She openly stated that King Henry VIII should not marry Anne Boleyn.  She was hanged and the king was married.

In 17th Century Europe, ventriloquism transformed from a medium of divination and prophecy to that of entertainment.  Ventriloquists appeared at traveling fairs and local markets.  In 1753, Englishman Sir John Parnell gained fame as a ventriloquist speaking through his hand.  The first known use of a ventriloquist puppet came in 1757 when Austrian Baron de Mengen incorporated a small doll into his show.

The first ventriloquist in America was James Rannie, a Scotsman who arrived in Boston in 1801.  He performed with a doll named Tommy that resembled a man but was the size of a small child.  Rannie engaged in ventriloquist pranks like the time he asked a female fishmonger about the freshness of her fish. She told him the batch had been caught the previous day.  One of the fish suddenly spoke, "It is false, I am a week older."  The woman was forced to throw away all her catch.

The 19th Century was the golden age of ventriloquism.  Early practitioners imitated animals, birds and the voices of young children.  They became adept at throwing their voices and causing sounds to emanate from men's snuffboxes and women's handbags.  Fred Russell is known as the father of modern ventriloquism.  His puppet "Coster Joe" sat on his lap and engaged him in cheeky dialogue.  He became a vaudeville hit in America and Canada.

By the 1930's, one of the biggest stars on radio was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd.  Bergen popularized the comedic ventriloquist routine with rapid-fire wisecracks and one-liners.  In her autobiography Knock Wood, Bergen's daughter Candice Bergen wrote that she was raised as Charlie McCarthy's kid sister.  She recalled sitting on her father's lap and being urged to talk with her wooden brother who sat across from her.  "For me as a child," Candice Bergen wrote, "Charlie McCarthy had semi-human status.  He wasn't flesh and blood and he wasn't a doll.  He was a sacred calf.  He brought home the bacon."

Ventriloquism has always had an element of creepiness.  The dummy has wild, rabid eyes, arched eyebrows and a crude, hinged mouth that clicks open like a mousetrap.  When draped across a table or chair, away from the performer, the doll's floppy limbs resemble that of a dead body.  But the eyes remain open and the mouth is fixed with a terrifying smile as if the body is a poorly embalmed child corpse.  Adding to the creepiness is the performance itself.  The ventriloquist is often an older man with his hand up the backside of a young puppet boy sitting innocently on the man's lap.  The specter of pedophilia is unavoidable.

Many people are terrified of ventriloquist dummies.  The condition is called automatonophobia.  Hollywood has taken advantage of this fear, making films like Devil Doll (1964) where a possessed dummy possesses his master and Magic (1978) where ventriloquist Anthony Hopkins commits murder under the guidance of his deranged puppet "Fats."

Ventriloquism remains a subversive entertainment medium.  Performers utter their darkest most obscene thoughts and blame it on the puppet.  British ventriloquist Nina Conti says ventriloquism is a "sort of licensed tourettes.  I'm shocked by what the puppet can get away with, things I could never say myself." (6" x 8", black ink print)