“Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!”
And, in Gene Kelly’s case, gotta act, gotta produce, gotta choreograph and gotta direct as well.
The uber-talented multi-hyphenate of so many classic films—musicals and otherwise—would have been celebrating his 100th birthday on August 23. But while he left us in 1996, the work of the charming fleet-of-foot Hollywood Everyman lives on and on.
Of late, in fact, there’s been a bit of celebration of His Gene-ius on DVD and elsewhere. The Film Society of Lincoln Center has programmed a 23-film retrospective to coincide with his 100th. The 60th anniversary of Singin’ in the Rain, his signature film along with An American in Paris, was marked by a one-night screening in theaters (with the response dictating an encore) and subsequent releases on Blu-ray. Warner Archives has feted Gene with the release of such never-before-on-video performances as The Cross of Lorraine, Black Hand, Crest of the Wave and The Happy Road.
Gene Kelly, the son of a businessman and local thespian and dancer, hailed from Pittsburgh and excelled in sports, particularly ice hockey, while growing up. He attended Penn State University for journalism, then the University of Pittsburgh for economics. Along with many other odd jobs, Gene and his brother Fred did dance routines in contests to help the family during the Depression and performed in many local musicals. Gene went to law school at Pitt, but he heard Broadway calling. However, his initial trip to get a dancer or choreographer’s job on the Great White Way was fruitless. He fared better in his second sojourn to the Big Apple, teaching dance and snagging a chorus job opposite a debuting Mary Martin in a 1937 production of Cole Porter’s “Leave It to Me.” This led to a featured role as Harry the Hoofer in William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life.
After a successful Broadway run, the show went on the road with Fred Kelly in the role of Harry, while Gene stayed in New York to pursue other opportunities. He choreographed Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, where he met a 16-year-old dancer named Betsy Blair. The two became a couple.
In 1940, Kelly got the lead in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey, playing sleazy nightclub proprietor Joey Evans. Also in the cast were Van Johnson, June Havoc (Gypsy Rose Lee’s sister) and Stanley Donen, who would, of course, later become Kelly’s directing partner for some classic films at MGM. The show was a hit, alerting Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, who signed Gene to a contract. Right before heading to the West Coast, however, Kelly married Blair in Philadelphia.
The powerful producer wasn’t quite sure how to utilize Kelly’s many talents, so he sold half of his pact to MGM and loaned him to the studio for his first big screen assignment, For Me and My Gal (1942). In the Busby Berkeley-helmed musical set prior to World War I, Kelly played a vaudeville entertainer who teams with Judy Garland but schemes to get out of the draft by intentionally injuring his hand. The song-laden film, featuring George Murphy, and boasting such tunes as “Oh, You Beautiful Doll,” “Ballin’ the Jack,” After You’re Gone” and a host of WWI-era standards, was a big hit and showcased Kelly’s ability to play a romantic musical lead as well as a heel—he was a draft dodger, after all, who eventually learns his lesson. Kelly also went on record praising Garland for helping him make the transition from theater to the screen easily.
Kelly so impressed the MGM brass in the Arthur Freed musical unit that they bought out his contract from Selznick, and, after a small part in a non-musical, made him the energetic co-star of the big-screen version of the Cole Porter fantasy DuBarry Was a Lady, along with Lucille Ball and Red Skelton. The film, partially set in the court of France’s Louis XV, was a hit, cementing Kelly’s movie star-on-the-rise status.
The star-studded revue Thousands Cheer, which mixed a romantic comedy story and WWII morale- boosting scenario, followed. The film marked the first time Kelly choreographed himself on the big screen, most notably opposite a mop in “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Gene was then loaned out to Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures where he played opposite Rita Hayworth in the hit Cover Girl. The musical showcased songs by Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, which featured the tune “Long Ago and Far Away.”
Back at MGM, Kelly’s ascending star was furthered by his performance and choreography for 1945’s Anchors Aweigh, in which he was third billed behind Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson. The film’s highlight—and, in fact, one of the great moments of movie musical and animation history—is the sight of Kelly, in white bell bottoms, striped shirt and beret with pom-pom, teaching Jerry Mouse of Tom & Jerry fame how to dance.
Not only was Anchors Aweigh a hit, but it garnered Kelly an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. It also showed that the charismatic Kelly was a multi-hyphenate, with formidable skills in front of and behind the scenes.
For 1946’s all-star salute to the Ziegfeld Follies, Gene shared the screen with dance legend Fred Astaire, singing, dancing and clowning in a park setting in the George and Ira Gershwin-penned three-part number “The Babbitt and the Bromide” (Kelly choreographed sections 1 and 3; Fred section 2). It was the first and only time they would appear together in the same feature film.
Debating who between Gene and Fred was the better screen dancer seems fruitless, but there are definitely differences that welcome comparison. Writes film critic David Thomson: “Kelly is balletic, romantic and sometimes mannered, a dancer who thinks and feels, whereas Astaire is a man who dances before he thinks.”
Following a stint in the U.S. Naval Air Service, where he applied his filmmaking instincts to making documentaries for their photographic division, Kelly returned to Hollywood for Living in a Big Way (1946) before partaking in Vincente Minnelli’s The Pirate (1948). Opposite Garland again, Kelly excels as a travelling circus performer who impersonates a buccaneer in order to win over Judy. Although it boasted a score by Cole Porter that included two versions of “Be a Clown” (with the Nicholas Brothers and Judy) and “Nina,” with Gene tearing it up among a bevy of beauties in a Caribbean quarter, appreciation for The Pirate didn’t ripen among musical fans until decades later.
Gene tried something different next, playing d’Artagnan in MGM’s all-star Technicolor version of Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1948). Under the hand of frequent director George Sidney, Kelly was able to adapt his talents for dancing to swashing and buckling in expert style.
But throughout the rest of his career at the lionized film factory, Kelly’s specialty remained musicals. With help from friend Stanley Donen, Kelly was handed the opportunity to get behind the cameras for the first time for 1949’s glorious On the Town. Translated for the screen from the stage production penned by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein, the bouncy musical showcases Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin as three swabbies on 24-hour leave in New York City, where they meet dames Ann Miller, Betty Garrett and Vera-Ellen and take in the sights. The score includes “New York, New York,” “Miss Turnstiles,” and “Come Up to My Place,” plus six other new songs written for the movie.
New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther raved about the 1949 Christmas offering at Radio City Music Hall: “The Music Hall pulled the wrappings off its Christmas show yesterday and revealed a delightful entertainment for all ages, sexes and seasonal moods. It is Metro’s crackling screen version of the musical, ‘On the Town,’ and a more appropriate all-purpose Yuletide picture would be hard to fashion or find.”
While at MGM, Kelly was given the occasional reprieve from making musicals, turning in a gangster drama (Black Hand) here and a military saga there (The Devil Makes Three), but there was no question his higher profile projects would be musicals. Among them: Summer Stock, with Garland as a New England farm gal who falls for the director (Kelly) of a travelling theater troupe; and the big screen version of Lerner and Lowe’s stage hit Brigadoon, in which Kelly and Van Johnson play Americans in Scotland who uncover a magical village that reappears hundred years, with inhabitants including frequent Kelly dance partner Cyd Charisse.
The height of Kelly’s MGM period gave audiences no less than two of the greatest musicals ever made. Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), penned by Alan Jay Lerner, showcases Kelly as an American ex-GI and struggling painter on the Left Bank, who falls in love with a young perfume clerk (played by a 19-year-old Leslie Caron). With a soundtrack that includes the Gershwins’ “S’Wonderful,” “Our Love is Here to Stay” and “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” and offers a finale that features the extended “An American Paris Ballet,” the film scored with everyone and took home six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Tough to top, one would think. But the following year, Kelly hit the stratosphere again—this time in front of the cameras, as well as behind them with help from Stanley Donen—with Singin’ in the Rain. He played silent film star Don Lockwood, trying to deal with the industry’s transition to talkies, as his studio re-rigs his latest project into a musical. Unfortunately, the screechy voice of leading lady Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) presents a problem for all involved—a problem solved when Don and pal Cosmo (Donald O’Connor) allow struggling chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) to dub Lina’s part.
Using songs dusted off from Arthur Freed’s back catalog, a script pieced together by Comden and Green, and classic song and dance routines that still exhilarate moviegoers today (“Make Em Laugh,” “Singin’ in the Rain”), the film dazzled from the get-go. But it racked up a mere two nominations come Oscar time, and its widespread recognition as perhaps the greatest screen musical of all time didn’t really surface until the 1960s.
This could be because the growth of movie culture in that era—the advent of film schools, the popularity of revival houses and the publics’ burgeoning interest in nostalgia—steered people in the direction of classic musicals again. Singin’ in the Rain, while always well-liked, was never really taken seriously as a great film to that point. The fact that Singin’ in the Rain was a movie that celebrated the movies certainly may have contributed.
But Kelly’s boldest experiment in screen terpsichore came with Invitation to the Dance, a film started in 1953 but which didn’t see a theatrical release until 1956. This anthology film without dialogue was directed by Kelly and features him in a trio of dance and music-propelled scenarios, the finale which includes animation from Hanna-Barbera. MGM had doubts about the film’s financial potential, and they were right: It flopped.
As the MGM years drew to a close and the heyday of movie musicals faded into the sunset, Kelly starred in Les Girls (1957), his last musical for the studio. He began to tackle more and more dramatic parts. There were well-reviewed performances in Marjorie Morningstar, Inherit the Wind, The Young Girls of Rochefort and as part of the all-star cast in the Shirley MacLaine farce What a Way to Go!, as well as late-career appearances in such head scratchers as Viva Knievel and Xanadu. There were TV projects, like taking on the Bing Crosby role in the short-lived series version of Going My Way; his starring turn in the live action/animation kids’ special Jack and the Beanstalk, with music by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen and guest stints in other specials and telemovies. There’d be more directing assignments, ranging from musicals (Hello, Dolly!) to dramas (the highly acclaimed but little-seen Gigot with Jackie Gleason) to westerns (The Cheyenne Social Club) to comedies (A Guide for the Married Man). In addition, Kelly served as a consultant for Francis Coppola’s American Zoetrope Studios, offering advice to the director when he was making One from the Heart and worked as a dance consultant for one of Madonna’s tours.
Kelly, who was married three times (he divorced Betsy Blair in 1957), passed away in 1996 at the age of 83. But while he will be remembered for all of his talents, it’s the ones relating to the musicals that stand out.
Some think Kelly lacked a certain characteristic on the big screen.
“People loved Kelly for his brashness and his very American brand of charm and his extraordinary virile footwork…But for some reason he was difficult to love. Perhaps his grin seemed painted on,” wrote William Bayer in his book The Great Movies.
But Kelly’s own remarks best put his career into focus as a dancing Everyman.
“Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat,” Kelly once said.
He also drew parallels to a few other Hollywood legends: “If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I’m the Marlon Brando.”