In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #5 Greatest Movie of All Time.
In an early version of the script, the musical number "Singin' in the Rain" was to be sung by Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly on the way back from the flop of a talkie movie. Also, the song "You Were Meant For Me" was not included in that draft. Instead, the love song was supposed to be Gene Kelly's version of "All I Do Is Dream Of You," which would take place after the party at R.F. Simpson's house, when Kelly chases after Reynolds. The song would have ended up at Kelly's house. The footage of this scene has been lost, but the prerecording is featured on the soundtrack from Rhino. Remaining in the release print is the party sequence where Debbie Reynolds and chorus sing and dance a Charleston to "All I Do Is Dream of You."
In the "Would You" number, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) is dubbing the voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) because Lina's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is really speaking, it's Jean Hagen herself, who actually had a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Debbie is supposedly dubbing Jean's singing of "Would You", the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Debbie.
In the first draft, Rita Moreno as Zelda Zanders was to sing "I Got A Feeling You're Fooling", but after script revisions the song was used in the montage before the number, "Beautiful Girl", along with "The Wedding Of The Painted Doll" and "Should I".
In the Italian version 'Make'Em Laugh' is sung in Italian and has similar, but a little different lyrics. It's the only song they did this to.
Initial budget: 1.9 million dollars
It was voted the #1 movie musical in American film history by the American Film Institute in 2006. The song "Singin' In The Rain" ranks #3 in their top songs. It also is in the Top 100 list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (#10) and AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions (#16).
Just as Gene Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen reused a huge repertoire of popular songs from earlier musicals, the duo also looted the MGM warehouses for props and vehicles. The car Debbie Reynolds drives at the beginning of the film was actually Andy Hardy's old jalopy. The mansion in which Kelly lives was decorated with tables, chairs, carpets and other items that were used for John Gilbert and Greta Garbo's passionate romantic drama, Flesh and the Devil.
Like Lina Lamont, when sound films arrived, many silent screen actors lost their careers because their voices didn't match their screen personas. The most famous example is silent star John Gilbert. However, it wasn't the sound of his voice that killed his career; it was the rumored behind-the-scenes backstabbing (speeding up of his voice by sound technicians, on direct orders from someone with an agenda) and the ridiculously florid lines he had to say. The lines that Gene Kelly's character speaks in "The Dueling Cavalier" are based on the types of lines that killed John Gilbert's career. Gilbert's actual lines as a mock Romeo in the "William Shakespeare Scene" in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is an example of this.
Like the character of Cosmo Brown, producer Arthur Freed was once employed as a mood-music pianist who played on movie sets during the silent film era.
Many real-life silent-film personalities are parodied, especially in the opening sequence. Zelda Zanders - the "Zip Girl" - is Clara Bow, the "It Girl". Olga Mara is Pola Negri, and her husband, Baron de la Bonnet de la Toulon, is a reference to Gloria Swanson's husband, the Marquis Henri de la Falaise de Coudray.
Most of the characters are based on actual people:
-R.F. Simpson, the studio head, is obviously a parody on Louis B. Mayer, with touches of Arthur Freed
-Dora Bailey is an obvious cariacature of Louella Parsons
-Zelda Zanders, the "Zip Girl" is based on Clara Bow, the "It Girl"
-Roscoe Dexter, the director is based on eccentric director Erich von Stroheim
-Olga, the vamp at the premiere, is based on Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson, both of whom landed royalty as husbands.
Only 19 when cast to play the film, Debbie Reynolds lived with her parents and commuted to the set. She had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and ride three different buses to the studio; sometimes, to avoid the commute, she would just sleep on the set.
Only two songs were written especially for the film: "Moses Supposes" was written by Roger Edens, Betty Comden and Adolph Green; "Make Em Laugh" was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown especially for Donald O'Connor. It's generally agreed that they borrowed the melody almost exactly from Cole Porter's "Be a Clown". Irving Berlin was visiting the set one day when he heard a playback of "Make 'Em Laugh". When Berlin asked whose song that was, Freed quickly changed the subject.
Originally, Kathy was to sing "You Are My Lucky Star" to a billboard of Don Lockwood after he sang to her in the studio, by way of dramatizing that she was the president of the Don Lockwood Fan Club. The number, sung by Debbie Reynolds and chorus, is restored as an extra on the DVD issued by Warner Home Video. The prerecording can be heard on Rhino's soundtrack CD. Closing the movie is the "billboard duet" of this song by Miss Reynolds and Gene Kelly with a chorus.
Studio technicians had to cover two outdoor city blocks on the backlot with tarp to make them dark for a night scene, and then equipped them with overhead sprays for Gene Kelly to perform the title number. Their efforts are all the more remarkable since there was a severe water shortage in Culver City the day the sequence was shot.
The "Singing in the Rain" number took all day to set up --and Gene Kelly was very ill (some say with a fever over 101). When it was all set up, Kelly insisted on doing a take - even though the blocking was only rudimentary (starting and ending positions only), and the director was ready to send him home. He ad-libbed most of it and it only took one take - which is what you see on film.
The Broadway ballet sequence was to feature Kelly and O'Connor but the latter had to leave because of a TV commitment. Cyd Charisse was tabbed to replace him. she was made up to look like Louise Brooks and had to diet off the extra pounds she had just gained during her recent pregnancy. Charisse had to adjust her dancing style to mesh with Kelly's, which was very different.
The film rang up a final price tag of $2,540,800, $157,000 of which went to Walter Plunkett's costumes alone. Although the final price overshot MGM's budget by $665,000, the studio quickly realized the wisdom of its investment when the film returned a $7.7-million profit upon its initial release.
The film's network television premiere, scheduled for 23 November 1963 on NBC, had to be postponed by two weeks due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its aftermath.