Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, in addition to Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, Rita Moreno and Cyd Charisse in supporting roles. It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to "talkies".
Arthur Freed conceived the idea of the film based on the back catalogs of songs written by himself and Nacio Herb Brown. Because many of the songs had been written during the transition from silent films to "talkies", writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green decided that was when the story should be set. When the story morphed into that of a romantic hero with a vaudevillian background surviving the transition period in Hollywood and falling back onto his old song-and-dance habits, Kelly, who was chosen for the lead along with Donen, responded enthusiastically to it. After a premiere at the Radio City Music Hall, the film was released nationwide on April 11, 1952. Film historians note that Singin' in the Rain was not initially expected to become a classic, as MGM treated it as a routine musical project during production.
