Singin’ in the Rain at 70: Hollywood’s show-stopping musical remains a winner | Singin’ in the Rain
Singin’ in the Rain was not exactly conceived as a masterpiece. Arthur Freed, head of the musicals unit at MGM, had a back catalogue of songs – not all of them classics – that he’d co-written for various films at the studio between 1929 and 1939, and had the idea of stringing them together as a song score for a single new musical. Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were hired to cobble a story around the disparate tunes; Howard Keel, a stolid bass-baritone in the MGM stable who had acquitted himself respectably…