Singin' in the Rain, but Dancin' in the Club

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly hit the floor with a smoking hot dance routine

Today’s header gives us a portion of the “Broadway Melody/Gotta Dance” scene from the comedy/musical Singin’ in the Rain (1952), with a smoking dance number between Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. Smoking indeed; choreographer Kelly and Director Stanley Donen felt that a gangster’s moll should be a smoker, and Charisse had never learned to do it, so filming had to stop while they taught her. Although the only time she ever smoked was for this single scene, the cigarette and holder add to her sexy, sizzling persona (obviously this was the era before Hollywood stopped glamorizing smoking). In fact, so sizzling was this number that the censors cut a little bit of it out (check out the slight jump at 4:14 in the embedded video). With the original negatives of the film having been lost to fire, we’ll never know exactly what the censors found objectionable, but based on the movements we can surmise it was probably an embrace during a lift’s descent featuring those long, strong limbs that they found too intimate. My but they were upright back in the day.

Tall and leggy, particularly in the four-inch heels that Kelly wanted Charisse to wear to give her a lanky sex appeal, the dance routine was carefully choreographed with the actors bending towards (or away) from each other to give Kelly the illusion of height over his dance partner. This red nightclub scene, coupled with another, more ballet’esqe portion in dreamlike pastels and white, was Cyd’s only appearance in the movie, but it marked her big break: in her next movie, The Band Wagon (1953) she would play the leading role opposite Fred Astaire.

The “Broadway Melody” dream sequence was a late-addition to the SitR. Following the popularity and acclaim of the grand dream ballet dance sequence between Kelly and Leslie Caron from director Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), MGM’s influential musical producer Arthur Freed decided—even though the bulk of the scripted portion of the film had already been shot—that Singin’ in the Rain need it’s own dream ballet montage. With Rain’s young co-star Debbie Reynolds not being the professionally-trained ballet dancer required to carry out the exacting choreography that they envisioned for the sequence, the production looked to external talent. Leslie Caron was otherwise engaged, so they turned to the classically-trained Charisse. (In an interesting turn of events, Charisse had been originally slated to star with Astaire in An American in Paris, but she had to drop out after becoming pregnant.) Production, which had closed in the summer of 1951, reopened that autumn to shoot the final dance elements, meant to be a recap and reflection of main character Don’s (Kelly) career and relationship trajectories. Charisse had only given birth a few months prior to her work on in Singin’ in the Rain but she returned in top form. She appears in only about five minutes out of the 103 total running time of the flick, but what memorable minutes they are.

A TCM mini biography of Charisse includes a succinct backstory and touches on a few minutes of her time dancing in Singing in the Rain as well as on other MGM productions.

Film School Rejects: "The Glorious Dreamworld of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’" by Christina Smith, 7/13/19

New York Times: "Cyd Charisse, 86, Silken Dancer of Movies, Dies" by Robert Berkvist, 6/18/08

The Guardian: "Obituary: Cyd Charisse" by Ronald Bergan, 6/18/08

Mental Floss: "15 Facts About Singin’ in the Rain" by Eric D Snider, 2/23/19