Jean Hagen could make a performer's incompetence look painfully convincing without losing control of the joke. We value the timing, but also the conviction: Lina Lamont is funny because Hagen takes her indignation seriously.
Fi1m perspective
Lina Lamont cannot manage a microphone, and Jean Hagen treats the difficulty as a personal affront. In Singin' in the Rain (1952), her mangled diction is only part of the joke. The pleasure is in the certainty with which she objects to the business of recording her voice. We laughed aloud because Hagen makes the indignation so convincing without asking us to despise the woman.
Her film debut, as Beryl Caighn in George Cukor's Adam's Rib (1949), placed her in a comedy with plenty of sharp dialogue and marital sparring. The comical femme fatale was one use for her particular assurance. John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) gave her Doll Conovan, a loyal girlfriend played with a wistful, down-to-earth manner. That quieter work is worth keeping in mind when Lina threatens to become the whole account of what Hagen could do.
Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly give her comic precision room to work in Singin' in the Rain. Playing someone who acts badly requires Hagen to remain technically exact, however shrill the voice becomes. Harold Rosson's photography leaves space for the dancers, and Adrienne Fazan's editing gives the comic performers time for their objections. The pauses around Hagen's complaints matter: rushing to the next number would lose the pleasure of watching Lina insist on being taken seriously. The romance is slight, but her scenes need no song to keep them moving.
The recurring difficulty is the narrowness of the roles. After those early successes, Hagen was typecast in ditzy and femme-fatale parts. Television gave her the long-suffering wife and mother Margaret Williams in Make Room for Daddy (1953–56), opposite Danny Thomas. Three seasons as a sitcom wife offered a narrower prospect than the move from Huston's crime drama to Donen and Kelly's musical. Start with Lina, then try The Asphalt Jungle before deciding Hagen was only a comic actress.
Biography
Jean Hagen (born Jean Shirley Verhagen) was an American actress. She trained at Northwestern University and began her career in radio and on the stage before making her film debut in Adam's Rib (1949).
Hagen is best known for her performance as Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain (1952), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and played Margaret Williams in the television series Make Room for Daddy (1953–56), earning three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Her other credits include Dead Ringer (1964), The Shaggy Dog (1959) and guest roles in series such as Starsky & Hutch (1975) and The Streets of San Francisco (1972). Hagen died in 1977.
