ABSTRACT
In his book chronicling the transition from silent to sound cinema, Donald Crafton writes thus of Singin’ in the Rain (dir. Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1952), the film that for decades represented the ‘official’ cinematic version of events:
This is the story of sound told the way Hollywood wanted it told—a crisis with a happy ending. Of course, in Singin’ in the Rain there are no pesky trade unions, no Actors Equity strikes, no mention of William Fox’s ruin, nor of a thousand lawsuits.
(Crafton 1999: 3) Although Crafton elects in his book to focus more on “end-use rather than production,” his passage constitutes an effective starting point for this chapter and its aims.