Trivia / It's Always Fair Weather

• Acclaimed Flop: Although well received critically at the time, it was not a commercial success, possibly due to its downbeat theme and the fact that more Americans were staying at home with television than going to the movies at this time.
• Divorced Installment: Betty Comden and Adolph Green originally conceived this film as a sequel to On the Town, to reunite Gene Kelly with Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin; it was to be produced as a Broadway show. At Kelly's insistence, however, they made it into an MGM musical. MGM, under new production chief Dore Schary, did not want to hire either Sinatra or Munshin; the former due to his difficult working reputation, the latter because he was not popular with audiences anymore.
• Executive Meddling: MGM forced Gene Kelly to use the wide-screen Cinemascope process, which he felt did not suit dancing on the screen.
• Genre-Killer: This was the last major MGM dance-oriented musical.
• Hostility on the Set: Stanley Donen did not want to co-direct the movie, as he'd become an established director on his own thanks to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but Gene Kelly talked him into it. The two quarreled throughout the making of the film, and it ended up dissolving their partnership and their friendship.
• Non-Singing Voice: Cyd Charisse's singing was dubbed by Carol Richards, Michael Kidd's by Jud Conlon.

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