Sometimes a Song is, as they say nowadays, “complicated.” Certainly there is some mystery surrounding our song for this week, “Make ‘em Laugh,” which Donald O’Connor performed with such acrobatically comical splendor in MGM’s 1952 Gene Kelly vehicle, “Singing in the Rain.” (That film, by the way, has my vote for best musical comedy film of all time — and has held that place in my heart ever since I saw it on the small screen (TV) as a child. I commandeered our Film of the Week a little over a year ago to write about “Singing in the Rain,” here.)
The controversy with “Make ‘em Laugh” is that it’s an almost entirely plagiarized version of Cole Porter’s song, “Be a Clown,” which was part of the set of songs Porter composed for another MGM film, also starring Gene Kelly, “The Pirate” (1948). Many people have wondered why Cole Porter’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the credits for that song in “Singing in the Rain.” Evidently at the time, people at MGM wondered how the song came to be credited to the film’s producer, erstwhile songwriter Arthur Freed and Nacio Herbert Brown, the composer of the film’s Academy-Award-nominated score. I’ve read that orders came down from on high that “Singing in the Rain” needed a song “along the lines of ‘Be a Clown’” to give Donald O’Connor a vehicle to showcase his talents, and that somehow this near-exact replica was what Freed and Brown came up with and were officially credited for. How this got by everyone’s notice is the unanswered quesion.
I’ll posit one theory about this odd circumstance, purely my own. Despite the box-office-packing cast (Kelly and Judy Garland), “The Pirate” was not well-received by critics, who specifically panned the music as “lackluster” and thoroughly unlike the great songs Cole Porter had become famous for. I agree with that assessment. “The Pirate” hasn’t held up well as a musical; and it’s my least-favorite Gene Kelly movie. My guess is that Porter didn’t care enough about the work he composed for that film to make a fuss over its one good song. And also, in 1952 Cole Porter was working on his next hit Broadway play, “Can-Can,” and was back to the sort of composing he was best known for.
"Make ‘em Laugh,” either with its revised lyrics or in the original form, did indeed provide Donald O’Connor just about the best inspiration possible for what became the dance performance of his lifetime. O’Connor worked with the film’s choreographers to create the routine, featuring his own best moves and incorporating suggestions from others. Gene Kelly himself suggested a routine of his own involving running part-way up a wall and pushing off into a back-flip somersault. This idea that was adapted for O’Connor’s grand finale, which ended in his jump through a wall.
According to Donald O’Connor, it took an entire day just to film this 3-minute routine. If you can believe it (and it pains me even to think of it!) the film of the original take of all this work was destroyed in a car accident, so they had to do it over again! And when the final take was done at last, Donald O’Connor had to be hospitalized for three days from sheer exhaustion. What a performance by a real trooper, someone who born into a Vaudeville family, who had been a performer since infancy, a child actor in some 20 films, a singer and dancer with absolutely no schooling, no formal musical or dance training. Of his dancing skill, Donald O’Connor said that it took him great great effort to learn the dance steps and routines he did with his various co-stars, especially the classically-trained Gene Kelly, known to demand perfection of his partners. Kelly, of course, worked very hard at what he did, but he built upon his years of training, whereas Donald O’Connor had to learn it all on the fly. Just think about how much hard work went into the creation of a few minutes of the most masterful and easeful film performances in Hollywood history. I am in awe of it all.
If you happen never to have seen this film, you absolutely must see it. If you’ve seen it before, be sure to see it again. And did I mention that “Make 'em Laugh” WILL make you laugh?
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well weekly podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Paid subscribers receive audio-enhanced posts, on-demand access to our full archive, and may share comments.
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I had NO idea the great Donald O’Connor was a self-taught dancer. I am gob-smacked!! I can see now that the wildly energetic, elbows-out, punish-the-floorboards (and walls!) style so typical of his work has the earmarks of a uniquely natural style, but I had always assumed that he was just carving out his own dance « signature », a personal variation on the classical style.
It would never have occurred to me that other Broadway-style hoofers might disapprove — just jealous!? He could do anything the graceful guys could do, not necessarily « better » in any sense — each man had his own admirable style, but nobody « took it home » like O’Connor. Now I’ll admire him even more.
Great film! We are big Donald O’Connor fans—I always wondered about the Be A Clown connection. I like to imagine Cole Porter being shown the scene by an indignant lawyer and saying something to the effect of “Good for him! Much more entertaining than my version”.