SCREEN-TEST AUDIENCE AS ARTIST?
SCREEN-TEST AUDIENCE AS ARTIST?

Summary/Abstract: In a pivotal scene in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), whose tagline reads, “a silent film star falls for a chorus girl as he and his delusionally jealous screen partner are trying to make the difficult transition to talking films in 1920s Hollywood,” a screen-test audience boos and heckles the quickly revised production of the Dueling Cavalier.1 The audience laughs, guffaws, and mocks the changes in the film where the machinations of silent film are revealed to be trite. At this plot point, the film within the film The Dueling Cavalier appears to be doomed. The heckling at the screen-test made it clear (within the realm of the narrative) that more needed to be done to make the transition from silent to talkie successful. While this is but one dramatic representation of the Hollywood practice of screentesting, one might argue that the screen-test audience blurs the lines between artist and audience.

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