“Fifteen minutes. That’s me within a blaze of glory!  Fifteen minutes, a shooting star among the precious few.” (Barry Manilow, 2011)

As the pandemic rages on and the nation considers a return to full isolation to stop the spread, we find ourselves spending the summer indoors quarantining with the classics.

Welcome to the August 2020 Edition: The Isolation of Fame ~~ Singin’ in the Rain

As the film opens, the audience is greeted by “those romantic lovers of the silver screen – Lockwood and Lamont.” They appear to their adoring fans as “shooting stars among the precious few.” 

However, as the story unfolds, we find that the central characters (Don, Kathy, and Lina) are isolated despite their fame.

When Don meets Kathy for the first time, he uses what sounds like  a classic “pick-up”  line:  “People think we lead lives of glamour and romance, but we’re really lonely...terribly lonely.”  However, it is the truth. The romance with Lina is “banana oil cooked up by Dora Baily and those fan magazines.”   

After a second brief encounter (when Kathy jumps out of a cake and runs away), Don is haunted by her comments about his films. (“You’ve seen one you’ve seen them all”), but at the same time, feels isolated/lonely without her. Don’s loneliness leads his friend Cosmo, to walk over furniture and up walls to “make (him) laugh.” Laughter, however, does not decrease Don’s obsession with finding Kathy. (“We’ve been looking inside every cake in town.”)

Upon finding her, he attempts to explain his feelings. Kathy interjects: “From all those columns in the newspapers and articles in the fan magazines, you and Miss Lamont do achieve a certain intimacy in all your pictures.” Based on the idea of the celebrity and the “average girl,” Kathy cannot believe  Don likes her, and Don being a self-professed “ham” cannot express himself without the “proper setting.”

Upon learning that they were meant for each other in the aptly titled song and dance, “You Were Meant for Me,”  Don’s isolation is at an end.

However, as a member of the Hollywood “studio system,” Kathy’s isolation is just beginning. (RF Simpson, Studio Head: “Don’t let Lina know she’s on the lot.”)

To save Lockwood and Lamont (after a failed attempt at a talking picture), Kathy agrees to dub Lina’s voice, thus distancing herself from a career of her own. When Lina discovers this “plot,” she threatens to ruin the studio unless Kathy continues to be her voice for “a long time.”  Kathy contractually agrees but ends a relationship with Don, which had the potential to put an end to her isolation professionally and personally.

As the story continues to unfold, perhaps the biggest victim of fame is Lina Lamont. She is an isolated star. She is perceived as the ideal woman. (“She’s so refined I think I’ll kill myself.”)

 

In reality, she is just the opposite. Her personality is brassy. She is mean and manipulative. (“They can’t make a laughingstock out of Lina Lamont!”) Her voice is unfit for talking pictures. (“Of course, we talk! Don’t everybody?”)

However, to maintain her star status, she must distance herself from the public. In so doing, she begins to believe the publicity surrounding the Lockwood-Lamont brand, and, that she is Don’s fiancée.  She must believe in all the promotion because to think otherwise would be to accept that she “can’t sing, she can’t act, and she can’t dance.” To avoid such realizations, she uses her star power to threaten the studio with a lawsuit unless her status as a “shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament” is flawless.

As the film closes, Lina’s voice is dubbed by Kathy in public. When Cosmo intercedes and sings for her, she is made to look ridiculous and forced into further isolation with the end of her career.

For Don and Kathy, the new lovers of the silver screen, “everything’s gonna be all right!”

Stay Safe and Well! Someday soon, “everything’s gonna be all right”(1) for us too!

~~Lori 

(1) Reference: Barry Manilow. 15 Minutes (Fame…Can You Take It?) Stiletto Entertainment, 2011