Please find below the Critical Reading for Singin' in the Rain, Carol Clover's "Dancin' in the Rain."
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The following clips of Bill Robinson, Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and the Nicholas Brothers are intended to provide context for Clover's article about the genealogy of dance in Singin' in the Rain. Clover mentions many of these performances in her article. Viewing them will be useful for understanding her main claims in the article.
The first clip is of Bill Robinson dancing in the 1937 film Cafe Metropole. The scene was deleted from the final cut of the film. Bill Robinson (1878-1949) was the most influential American tap dancer. His career began in vaudeville and progressed through night clubs, Broadway, and film, though due to the systemic racism of Hollywood (and America more generally), he was often cast in stereotypical roles and denied the opportunities that went to the white dancers he influenced, including Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. "National Tap Dance Day" is celebrated on Bill Robinson's birthday, May 25, indicating his position as the most influential and iconic of all tap dancers.
The first clip is of Bill Robinson dancing in the 1937 film Cafe Metropole. The scene was deleted from the final cut of the film. Bill Robinson (1878-1949) was the most influential American tap dancer. His career began in vaudeville and progressed through night clubs, Broadway, and film, though due to the systemic racism of Hollywood (and America more generally), he was often cast in stereotypical roles and denied the opportunities that went to the white dancers he influenced, including Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. "National Tap Dance Day" is celebrated on Bill Robinson's birthday, May 25, indicating his position as the most influential and iconic of all tap dancers.
Compare the suave, cosmopolitan image of Bill Robinson above (in the number that was cut from Cafe Metropole) with the image of Bill Robinson in the clip below, from the 1935 film The Littlest Rebel, in which Robinson plays a slave on the plantation of Shirley Temple's character's father. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together in the 1930s, and this image of Bill Robinson was the one with which the greatest number of viewers would have been familiar.
Below is Fred Astaire's number "Bojangles of Harlem" from the film Swing Time (1936). This is Fred Astaire's "tribute" to Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. Astaire is wearing blackface make-up similar to the make-up worn by Jolson in The Jazz Singer. Recall Carol Clover's quote from Fred Astaire in "Dancin' in the Rain":
Fred Astaire once said of his style of dance, "I don't know how it all started, and I don't want to
know.... I just dance." It's a funny sentence, the second clause unbalancing the first, suggesting that he
does know (certainly his Bojangles dance in Swing Time "knows") or knows more than he would like but doesn't want to deal with the implications of that knowledge and so wilfully denies it: I don't want to know, I just do it.
So Singin' in the Rain, which on one hand denies, by whiting out, knowledge of black dance, but
which on the other hand, as if enacting the second clause of Astaire's
sentence, undercuts that denial and in so doing obliquely admits not only
that it does know but that it feels guilty about it (742).
Fred Astaire once said of his style of dance, "I don't know how it all started, and I don't want to
know.... I just dance." It's a funny sentence, the second clause unbalancing the first, suggesting that he
does know (certainly his Bojangles dance in Swing Time "knows") or knows more than he would like but doesn't want to deal with the implications of that knowledge and so wilfully denies it: I don't want to know, I just do it.
So Singin' in the Rain, which on one hand denies, by whiting out, knowledge of black dance, but
which on the other hand, as if enacting the second clause of Astaire's
sentence, undercuts that denial and in so doing obliquely admits not only
that it does know but that it feels guilty about it (742).
The Nicholas Brothers (Fayard and Harold) began as a vaudeville act and by 1932 (when they were 11 and 18 years old, respectively) were headlining at the Cotton Club in Harlem, performing for mostly white audiences. They developed a style of dance known as "flash dancing," which combined tap, acrobatics, and ballet. It was highly influential upon choreographers including George Balanchine and Gene Kelly. When you watch the clip below, pay attention to its similarities to the "Moses Supposes" number in Singin' in the Rain. Here the Nicholas Brothers are performing the finale to the musical Stormy Weather (1943). Stormy Weather was one of a very few Hollywood musicals of this period to feature an African-American cast. It was based on the life story of Bill Robinson, who starred in the film alongside Lena Horne. Another notable musical of the period featuring an African-American cast was Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky (starring Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Louis Armstrong, among others).
Here we see The Nicholas Brothers and Gene Kelly forming a trio for a specialty number called "Be a Clown" in Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate (1948). In mainstream Hollywood films, numbers featuring African-American performers were often designed as "specialty numbers," meaning that they were not essential to the plot and so could be cut when the films were screened in the South. Another notable detail is that the melody for the song "Be a Clown" by Cole Porter was borrowed almost verbatim (and uncredited) by the makers of Singin' in the Rain-- if you watch this clip, you will see that they adapted it as "Make 'em Laugh," another of the film's uncredited "borrowings."
Clover's article reads Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video (directed by John Landis, 1991) as another installment of a continuing conversation. Michael Jackson's music videos, broadcast on MTV in the 1980s and 1990s, indeed represented a return to the glamor, lavish production, and virtuosic dance of the MGM musicals of the 1930s, and also a response to its marginalization of African-American dancers. This video is also interesting for the way it draws in the aesthetics of the Western (which we'll be studying next week) and Primitivism (which we will be talking about more when we reach The Great Gatsby. There is also something about the image of Michael Jackson dancing in the lamp of the Statue of Liberty that evokes the themes of The Jazz Singer.
Four minutes of the "Black or White" video were censored by MTV because they were considered too contentious (the cut scenes included graffiti with racist language and a scene of a black panther turning into Michael Jackson). Here is the censored material, containing the dance sequences with water and a streetlight that Clover discusses as a re-visitation of Gene Kelly's title dance in Singin' in the Rain.
Charlie Chaplin on the coming of sound:
"While I was in New York, a friend told me he had witnessed the synchronization of sound in films and predicted that it would shortly revolutionize the whole film industry.
I did not think of it again until months later when the Warner Brothers produced their first talking sequence. It was a costume picture, showing a very lovely actress—who shall be nameless—emoting silently over some great sorrow, her big, soulful eyes imparting anguish beyond the eloquence of Shakespeare. Then suddenly a new element entered the film—the noise that one hears when putting a sea-shell to one’s ear. Then the lovely princess spoke as if talking through sand: “I shall marry Gregory, even at the cost of giving up the throne.” It was a terrible shock, for until then the princess had enthralled us. As the picture progressed, the story became funnier, but not as funny as the sound effects. When the handle of the boudoir door turned I thought someone had cranked up a farm tractor, and when the door closed it sounded like the collision of two lumber trucks. At the beginning they knew nothing about controlling sound: a knight-errant in armour clanged like the noise in a steel factory, a simple family dinner sounded like the rush hour in a cheap restaurant, and the pouring of water into a glass made a peculiar tone that ran up the scale to a high C. I came away from the theatre believing the days of sound were numbered (321).
But a month later M.G.M. produced The Broadway Melody, a full-length sound musical, and a cheap, dull affair it was, but a stupendous box-office success. That started it; overnight every theatre began wiring for sound. That was the twilight of silent films."
Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2003).
The disastrous early "talking picture" spoofed in Singin' in the Rain (The Dueling Cavalier) was based on this 1926 Warner Brothers film starring John Barrymore, Don Juan, which featured 191 hand kisses!
"While I was in New York, a friend told me he had witnessed the synchronization of sound in films and predicted that it would shortly revolutionize the whole film industry.
I did not think of it again until months later when the Warner Brothers produced their first talking sequence. It was a costume picture, showing a very lovely actress—who shall be nameless—emoting silently over some great sorrow, her big, soulful eyes imparting anguish beyond the eloquence of Shakespeare. Then suddenly a new element entered the film—the noise that one hears when putting a sea-shell to one’s ear. Then the lovely princess spoke as if talking through sand: “I shall marry Gregory, even at the cost of giving up the throne.” It was a terrible shock, for until then the princess had enthralled us. As the picture progressed, the story became funnier, but not as funny as the sound effects. When the handle of the boudoir door turned I thought someone had cranked up a farm tractor, and when the door closed it sounded like the collision of two lumber trucks. At the beginning they knew nothing about controlling sound: a knight-errant in armour clanged like the noise in a steel factory, a simple family dinner sounded like the rush hour in a cheap restaurant, and the pouring of water into a glass made a peculiar tone that ran up the scale to a high C. I came away from the theatre believing the days of sound were numbered (321).
But a month later M.G.M. produced The Broadway Melody, a full-length sound musical, and a cheap, dull affair it was, but a stupendous box-office success. That started it; overnight every theatre began wiring for sound. That was the twilight of silent films."
Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2003).
The disastrous early "talking picture" spoofed in Singin' in the Rain (The Dueling Cavalier) was based on this 1926 Warner Brothers film starring John Barrymore, Don Juan, which featured 191 hand kisses!
And here is the title musical number of The Broadway Melody of 1929. Perhaps Chaplin was a bit unfair to it?