You would think a song as popular as "Singin' in the Rain" would have a precise history. Well, it really doesn't. What is known for sure is that the music was written by Nacio Herb Brown, and the lyrics by Arthur Freed. Both have been dead for quite some time. There seems to be a bit of folklore as to when, where and how the song was first used. There's a copyright for the song that dates to 1929, but that date is disputed by a one-time Ziegfeld girl.
"He did not write it in 1929. I danced it in 1928."
Doris Eaton Travis is 96 years old, and though she says it's hard to remember everything that happened in her life more than 70 years ago, she can recall her performance in a music show called "The Hollywood Music Box Revue," a vaudeville-type show with music, comedy and dancing. She says she was the first person to ever perform the song on stage.
"It was a chorus number with me. I sang the number, and then we went into a dance with different figures with eight boys."
But just in case you don't believe her, she can always turn to her scrapbook, which has a Los Angeles Times clipping from December 23rd, 1928. It's a preview of the show that opened on Christmas Day that year and mentions two numbers written especially for Doris Eaton, including "Singin' in the Rain," a tune she hasn't sung in ages.
Even though the LA Times says the number was created for Eaton, there are other accounts that say it was written in 1929 for a new MGM musical called "The Hollywood Revue of 1929." There's so much speculation that even some who worked for MGM aren't too sure.
"I think that one of two scenarios occurred," says music historian Marilee Bradford. She co-produced the "Singin' in the Rain" soundtrack and acted as music supervisor for "That's Entertainment 3," the last of three videos celebrating MGM's musicals.
"Either they used the title "Singin' in the Rain" for a brand-new song that they wrote for "Hollywood Revue" for MGM in 1929 or else they wrote the song earlier for the stage revue of "Hollywood Music Box Revue." MGM liked it. They bought it. They put their copyright on it and announced that it was a new song.
Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed met in the early 1920s, but didn't become a songwriting team until they were both hired by MGM in late 1928. Brown grew up in New Mexico, learned piano from his mom. He later moved to Los Angeles and played piano for Vaudeville shows before heading to Louisiana for a bit to open up his own tailoring business. Brown once said composing was a hobby. Arthur Freed, as early as high school, knew he wanted to be a music composer. In the few years leading up to 1920, he worked as a piano demonstrator in Chicago. While there, he was approached by the mother of the Marx brothers, who asked if he'd like to write music material for her sons, who were putting together a Vaudeville act. So Freed spent a summer with them in New York. Brown and Freed's first project together at MGM was writing the music for what would become Hollywood's first all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing movie, "Broadway Melody," which premiered in the spring of 1929.
"Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown were a very good pair of songwriters, and they were out to write hits," says Max Wilk, author of "They're Playing Our Song: Conversations With America's Classic Songwriters." Like 'Broadway Melody' and lots of other musicals of the time, 'Hollywood Revue' was plotless. It was what the title suggested: a musical revue. 'Singin' in the Rain' was the 16th number in the movie, sung by Cliff Edwards, aka Ukulele Ike, who later became the voice of Jiminy Cricket. Max Wilk says the scene was quite a spectacle.
"There's a whole bunch of people out there hoofing with umbrellas and wearing raincoats and rain hats, and they're all hoofing to this with an artificial rain that is on the stage."
Audiences and critics loved the movie. Film Daily called it `a smash and a wow, a movie that bears all the marks of a sure-fire box office panic.' The New York Times in its review said "Singin' in the Rain" was a song that was, quote, "pleasingly delivered and charmingly staged." Variety predicted the song would become a smash, and it did. It hit number one on the pop charts in 1929 and stayed there for three weeks. Not only did Cliff Edwards' version do well, sheet music sales were pretty good, too. So MGM didn't hesitate to bring it out again in 1932's "Speak Easily" with Jimmy Durante singing the tune, and again in 1940, when Judy Garland did a swinging version in
"Little Nellie Kelly."
The song appeared in seven MGM movies. But there's one version people seem to remember the most.
Chances are, if you ask almost anyone who sang "Singin' in the Rain," they'll say Gene Kelly.
Author Max Wilk says the famous scene in the 1952 movie with Gene Kelly had a lot to do with the song becoming a classic.
"And I think that in the history of the movies, I don't think there will ever be a scene that is more familiar and historic than Gene Kelly with the umbrella singing and sloshing his way through the rain."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.