A film about a talented newcomer secretly dubbing the voice of a screechy silent star was itself built on the same deception: Debbie Reynolds was dubbed by Jean Hagen, the very actress playing the star she was supposedly dubbing. This episode explores the making, myths, and legacy of the 1952 MGM musical, starting with producer Arthur Freed handing writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green a catalog of old songs he had written with Nacio Herb Brown and telling them to build a movie around them.

The conversation covers the writers’ near-resignation, the singing-cowboy idea they abandoned, the 1927 sound transition that finally gave the story its spine, Gene Kelly filming the title number with a 103-degree fever in a shrinking wool suit, Reynolds sobbing under a piano before Fred Astaire found her, and Donald O’Connor’s hospitalization after Moses Supposes. It also traces the film’s slow rise from tenth-highest grosser of its year to the National Film Registry’s first class and its influence on the French New Wave, La La Land, and Babylon.

• Why the rumor about milk in the rainwater is false, and the backlighting that actually made rain visible
• The 15-hour Good Morning shoot that left Reynolds with bleeding feet
• How Make ‘Em Laugh mirrored Cole Porter’s Be a Clown without a lawsuit
• Betty Noyes, the uncredited singer behind Would You and You Are My Lucky Star
• Truffaut and Resnais watching the film for months in a small Paris cinema