page_title: Till the Clouds Roll By
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Till the Clouds Roll By / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot from the film Till Clouds Roll By (1946) of Lena Horne. It is part of the Show Boat segment, and she is singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".
context_page_description: Till The Clouds Roll By is a 1946 American Technicolor musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is a fictionalized biopic of composer Jerome Kern, portrayed by Robert Walker. Kern was originally involved with the production, but died before it was completed. It has a large cast of well-known musical stars of the day who appear performing Kern's songs. It was the first in a series of MGM biopics about Broadway's composers; it was followed by Words and Music, Three Little Words, and Deep in My Heart.
  The film is one of the MGM musicals that entered the public domain on their 28th anniversaries because MGM did not renew their copyrights.
context_section_description: The working title for the film was "As the Clouds Roll By".  Gene Kelly was originally intended to play Kern, with Gloria DeHaven, Jacqueline White, Imogene Carpenter, a stage actress, and Jeanette MacDonald in major parts. None appeared in the film.
  The first 15 minutes of the film consist of a condensed adaptation of Act I of Show Boat, with the order of some of the songs shifted - "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" is sung after "Life upon the Wicked Stage", and "Ol' Man River" was used as an Act I Finale, dissimilar to the show. "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" as sung by Lena Horne was filmed, like many of her other musical numbers in MGM films, so that it could be easily removed from the print by sensitive Southern distributors.
  When the film started production in the fall of 1945, Judy Garland was signed as Broadway singer-dancer Marilyn Miller, having just returned to California after a long New York honeymoon with her new husband, director Vincente Minnelli.  Soon after, Kern returned to New York towards the end of October and died in November 1945.
  During the six months that it took to shoot the film, producer Arthur Freed had to come up with one director after another. Lemuel Ayers, a set designer, was originally scheduled to make his directorial debut on the film, but was replaced by Busby Berkeley late in August 1945. Meanwhile, Minnelli – who, it was rumored at the time, would be taking over the direction of the film – was shooting Garland's sequences even before the beginning of principal photography, as she was pregnant and expected to give birth in March 1946; her shooting was completed on November 8, 1945. By the time full shooting began in the middle of December, Berkeley had been replaced by Henry Koster, who was also replaced after a short period by Richard Whorf. Whorf ended up receiving the onscreen directorial credit. There was a break in production from some time in January 1946 to the middle of March of that year.
  The film includes two versions of "Ol' Man River" - the first sung by Caleb Peterson and an African-American chorus as part of the Show Boat medley, and the second, a "crooner version" by Frank Sinatra, featured as the grand finale.
  Barbette consulted on the creation of the film's circus sequence.
caption: Lena Horne as Julie Laverne in a mini-production of Show Boat, singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".
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