Singin' In the Rain (1952)

What I want from cinema is fabulousness. You know, the feeling that the world is hyper-glamourous and I can be a part of that.

Classic Hollywood delivers – especially when it is in charge of it’s own myth-making. Hollywood on Hollywood provides a raft of danger, exploitation and sparkle. Stars are created through machinations and then those stories are fed back to us – a Star is Born. Hollywood isn’t just a location, it is a genre that links stories of greed, talent and scandal, all wrapped up in a fabulous feather boa. It is about rise and fall, often dark and doomed – Sunset Boulevard, The Bad and the Beautiful, In a Lonely Place.

And then there is Singin’ in the Rain – a technicolour marvel charting the move from the silent era to talkies. And who couldn’t love Singin’ in the Rain?! It’s got it all. Song, dance, romance, camp and… comedy.

I have watched it several times over my life and yes the dance moves take me by delight every time. The ballet with Cyd Charisse is a perfect example of what the big screen can do.

But recently I’ve really learned to love the comedic elements.

Of course there is the fabulous Donald O’Connor and the barn-storming – “Make ‘em Laugh”. This is how to do physical comedy: prat falls, dodging props, double takes. Rumour has it that because of the four pack of cigarettes a day habit, Donald O’Connor needed hospitalisation after filming the number - only to have re-film it, because some of it had been lost.

Now a rightly recognised masterpiece, the film did not garner much critical support at the time of its release. It was over-shadowed by the much more earnest American In Paris. And the Academy Awards only nominated one of its key performers – Jean Hagen as the inimitable Lina Lamont. Who else could deliver the line:

“People, I ain’t people – I’m a ‘shimmering glowing star in the cinema firmament'”

And she is so good in the part, it is hard to see how the film could have worked without her. She carries the comedy.

Jean Hagen had already demonstrated her comedic chops in the 1949 Adams Rib. The film was a star vehicle for Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. But in her few scenes, Jean stole the show as a comedic mis-step of a femme fatale. She also showed her dramatic prowess in Asphalt Jungle and Side Street (both in 1950). She could do vulnerable, funny and tough.

She won the part of Lina Lamont because of her acting range.

As Donald O’Connor said:

“They didn’t get a ditzy blonde to play the part; they got a great actress to play the ditzy blonde.”

A ditzy blonde who believed her own publicity, including the studio’s gossip fodder that her and Don Lockwood were an item.

Lina Lamont : Oh Donny! You couldn't kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy-weensy bit!

Don Lockwood : Meet the greatest actor in the world. I'd rather kiss a tarantula!

Lina Lamont : But, you don't mean that.

Don Lockwood : I don't - - Hey Joe, get me a tarantula.

Jean, as Lina, gets the tone just right between dumb star and hard-boiled ambition.

But don’t let her speak for herself. The talkies will ruin her. So, the plot unfolds to have Kathy (played by Debbie Reynolds) mime her singing and talking.

A little known fact is that , the singing was provided by Elizabeth Noyes and the voice acting – well that was Jean Hagen herself. She mimes to her own voice.

As I look at film history, far too often I notice that an Academy Award nomination does not have the cachet expected for female artistes. In my last blog, I talked about how Dorothy Dandridge was a star without star vehicles. And here we have one of the most talented comedic actors of her day, never to reach the dizzying heights of stardom again.

Jean Hagen, bar a few small parts, left the world of film behind. She became a television sitcom star as a wife and mother in The Danny Thomas Show. She left the show after three seasons and went on to make guest appearances in other TV shows.

Everything else I know about her comes from other people’s account. She struggled with alcoholism and her husband divorced her because of this. She was hospitalised following an alcohol induced coma in 1968. She went on to develop throat cancer and died in 1977 at the age of 54 (my age, gulp).

Her best friend and ex-roommate, the actress Patricia Neal, writes about Jean in her autobiography. And it is from that, that I know when she was diagnosed with cancer she went to Germany to source new treatments. She obviously still had a thirst for life.

Like Lina Lamont, her own voice is missing.

But she really did reach cinematic heights.

As Lina says: “It ain’t been in vain for nothing.”