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Gene Kelly

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from Take Me Out to the Ball Game trailer
from Take Me Out to the Ball Game trailer

Eugene Curran “Gene” Kelly (23 August 1912–2 February 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer.

A major exponent of 20th century filmed dance, Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Although he is probably best known today for his performance in Singin' in the Rain, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until their demise in the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost singlehandedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.[1]

Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute; in 1999, the American Film Institute also named him among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.

Contents

[edit] Film career

[edit] 1941-1944: Becoming established in Hollywood

Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry in Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry in Anchors Aweigh (1945)

Selznick sold half of Kelly's contract to MGM and loaned him out to MGM for his first motion picture: For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. Kelly was "appalled at the sight of myself blown up twenty times. I had an awful feeling that I was a tremendous flop" but the picture did well and, in the face of much internal resistance, Arthur Freed of MGM picked up the other half of Kelly's contract.[2] After appearing in the B-movie drama Pilot #5 he took the male lead in Cole Porter's Du Barry Was a Lady opposite Lucille Ball. His first opportunity to dance to his own choreography came in his next picture Thousands Cheer, where he performed a mock-love dance with a mop.

He achieved his breakthrough as a dancer on film, when MGM loaned him out to Columbia to play opposite Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944), where he created a memorable routine dancing to his own reflection. In his next film Anchors Aweigh (1945), MGM virtually gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines, including the celebrated and much imitated animated dances with Jerry Mouse of Tom and Jerry, and his duets with co-star Frank Sinatra. Later examples of this human/animated character pas de deux include Paula Abdul opposite an animated cat in her "Opposites Attract" video, and Kelly dancing with Stewie Griffin in the episode " Road to Rupert" from the Family Guy. Anchors Aweigh became one of the most successful films of 1945 and it garnered Kelly his first and only Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946) - which was produced in 1944 but not released until 1946 - Kelly teamed up with Fred Astaire - for whom he had the greatest admiration - in the famous "The Babbitt and the Bromide" challenge dance routine before leaving the studio for wartime service. Throughout this period Kelly was obliged to appear in straight acting roles in a series of cheap B-movies, now largely forgotten.

At the end of 1944, Kelly enlisted in the United States Naval Air Service and was commissioned as lieutenant, junior grade. He was stationed in the Photographic Section, Washington D.C., where he was involved in writing and directing a range of documentaries, and this stimulated his interest in the production side of film-making.[3][4]

[edit] 1946-1952: The glory years at MGM

An American in Paris (1951)
An American in Paris (1951)

On his return to Hollywood in the spring of 1946, MGM had nothing lined up and used him in yet another B-movie: Living in a Big Way. The film was considered so weak that Kelly was asked to design and insert a series of dance routines, and his ability to carry off such assignments was noticed. This led to his next picture with Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, the film version of Cole Porter's The Pirate, in which Kelly plays the eponymous swashbuckler. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time and was not well received. The Pirate gave full rein to Kelly's athleticism and is probably best remembered for the teaming of Kelly with The Nicholas Brothers – the leading African-American dancers of their day – in a virtuoso dance routine. Although MGM wanted Kelly to return to safer and more commercial vehicles, he ceaselessly fought for an opportunity to direct his own musical film. In the interim, he capitalised on his swashbuckling image as one of The Three Musketeers and appeared with Vera-Ellen in the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet from Words and Music (1948). There followed Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), his second film with Sinatra, where Kelly paid tribute to his Irish heritage in The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day routine. It was this musical film which persuaded Arthur Freed to allow Kelly to make On the Town, where he teamed for the third and final time with Frank Sinatra, creating a breakthrough in the musical film genre which has been described as "the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood."[2]

Stanley Donen, brought to Hollywood by Kelly to be his assistant choreographer, received co-director credit for On the Town. According to Kelly: "...when you are involved in doing choreography for film you must have expert assistants. I needed one to watch my performance, and one to work with the cameraman on the timing..without such people as Stanley, Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne I could never have done these things. When we came to do On the Town, I knew it was time for Stanley to get screen credit because we weren't boss-assistant anymore but co-creators."[2][5] Together, they opened up the musical form, taking the film musical out of the studio and into real locations, with Donen taking responsibility for the staging and Kelly handling the choreography. Kelly went much further than before in introducing modern ballet into his dance sequences, going so far in the "Day in New York" routine as to substitute four leading ballet specialists for Sinatra, Munshin, Garrett and Miller.[4]

Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)

It was now Kelly's turn to ask the studio for a straight acting role and he took the lead role in the early mafia melodrama: The Black Hand (1949). There followed Summer Stock (1950) - Judy Garland's last musical film for MGM - in which Kelly performed the celebrated "You, You Wonderful You" solo routine with a newspaper and a squeaky floorboard. In his book "Easy the Hard Way", Joe Pasternak singles out Kelly for his patience and willingness to spend as much time as necessary to enable the ailing Garland to complete her part.[2]

There followed in quick succession two musicals which have secured Kelly's reputation as a major force in the Americal musical film, An American in Paris (1951) and - probably the most popular and admired of all film musicals - Singin' in the Rain (1952). As co-director, lead star and choreographer, Kelly was the central driving force. Johnny Green, head of music at MGM at the time, described him as follows: "Gene is easygoing as long as you know exactly what you are doing when you're working with him. He's a hard taskmaster and he loves hard work. If you want to play on his team you'd better like hard work too. He isn't cruel but he is tough, and if Gene believed in something he didn't care who he was talking to, whether it was Louis B. Mayer or the gatekeeper. He wasn't awed by anybody and he had a good record of getting what he wanted".[2] An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and, in the same year, Kelly was presented with an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to film musicals and the art of choreography. The film also marked the debut of Leslie Caron, who Kelly had spotted in Paris and brought to Hollywood. Its dream ballet sequence, lasting an unprecedented thirteen minutes, was the most expensive production number ever filmed up to that point and was described by Bosley Crowther as, "whoop-de-doo ... one of the finest ever put on the screen."[4] Singin' in the Rain featured Kelly's celebrated and much imitated solo dance routine to the title song, along with the "Moses Supposes" routine with Donald O'Connor and the "Broadway Melody" finale with Cyd Charisse, and while it did not initially generate the same enthusiasm as An American in Paris, it subsequently overtook the latter film to occupy its current pre-eminent place among critics and filmgoers alike.[6]

[edit] 1953-1957: The decline of the Hollywood musical

Kelly, at the very peak of his creative powers, now made what in retrospect is seen as a serious mistake.[4] In December 1951 he signed a contract with MGM which sent him to Europe for nineteen months so that Kelly could use MGM funds frozen in Europe to make three pictures while personally benefiting from tax exemptions. Only one of these pictures was a musical, Invitation to the Dance, a pet project of Kelly's to bring modern ballet to mainstream film audiences. It was beset with delays and technical problems, and flopped when finally released in 1956. When Kelly returned to Hollywood in 1953, the film musical was already beginning to feel the pressures from television, and MGM cut the budget for his next picture Brigadoon (1954), with Cyd Charisse, forcing the film to be made on studio backlots instead of on location in Scotland. This year also saw him appear as guest star with his brother Fred in the celebrated "I Love To Go Swimmin' with Wimmen" routine in Deep in My Heart. MGM's refusal to loan him out for Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey put further strains on his relationship with the studio. He negotiated an exit to his contract which involved making three further pictures for MGM.

The first of these, It's Always Fair Weather (1956) co-directed with Donen, was a musical satire on television and advertising, and includes his famous roller skate dance routine to "I Like Myself", and a dance trio with Michael Kidd and Dan Dailey which allowed Kelly to experiment with the widescreen possibilities of Cinemascope. A modest success, it was followed by Kelly's last musical film for MGM, Les Girls (1957), in which he partnered a trio of leading ladies, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg, fittingly ending, as he had begun, with a Cole Porter musical. The third picture he completed was a co-production between MGM and himself, the B-movie The Happy Road, set in his beloved France, his first foray in his new role as producer-director-actor.

[edit] 1958-1996: Years of perseverance

Although Kelly continued to make some film appearances, most of his efforts were now concentrated on film production and directing. He directed Jackie Gleason in Gigot in Paris, but the film was subsequently drastically re-cut by Seven Arts Productions and flopped.[4] Another French effort, Jacques Demy's homage to the MGM musical: Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) in which Kelly appeared, also performed poorly. He appeared as himself in George Cukor's Let's Make Love (1960).

His first foray into television was a documentary for NBC's Omnibus, Dancing is a Man's Game (1958) where he assembled a group of America's greatest sportsmen - including Mickey Mantle, Sugar Ray Robinson and Bob Cousy - and reinterpreted their moves choreographically, as part of his lifelong quest to remove the effeminate stereotype of the art of dance, while articulating the philosophy behind his dance style.[4] It gained an Emmy nomination for choreography and now stands as the key document explaining Kelly's approach to modern dance.

Kelly also frequently appeared on television shows during the 1960s, but his one effort at a TV series: as Father O'Malley in Going My Way (1962-1963) was dropped after one season, although it subsequently enjoyed great popularity in Catholic countries outside of the US.[4] He went on to make two major TV specials: New York, New York (1966) and produced and directed Jack and the Beanstalk (1967) which again combined cartoon animation with live dance, winning him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program.

In 1963, Kelly joined Universal Pictures for a two year stint which proved to be the most unproductive of his career to date. He joined 20th Century Fox in 1965, but had little to do - partly due to his decision to decline assignments away from Los Angeles for family reasons. His perseverance finally paid off with the major box-office hit A Guide for the Married Man (1967) where he directed Walter Matthau and a major opportunity arose when Fox - buoyed by the returns from The Sound of Music (1965) - commissioned Kelly to direct Hello, Dolly! (1969), again directing Matthau along with Barbra Streisand, but which unfortunately failed to recoup the enormous production expenses.

In 1970, he made another TV special: Gene Kelly and 50 Girls and was invited to bring the show to Las Vegas, which he duly did for an eight-week stint - on condition he be paid more than any artist had hitherto been paid there.[4] He directed veteran actors James Stewart and Henry Fonda in the comedy western The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) which performed very well at the box-office. In 1973 he would work again with Frank Sinatra as part of Sinatra's Emmy nominated TV special Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back then, in 1974, he appeared as one of many special narrators in the surprise hit of the year That's Entertainment! and subsequently directed and co-starred with his friend Fred Astaire in the sequel That's Entertainment, Part II (1976). It was a measure of his powers of persuasion that he managed to coax the seventy-seven year old Astaire - who had insisted that his contract rule out any dancing, having long since retired - into performing a series of song and dance duets, evoking a powerful nostalgia for the glory days of the American musical film. He continued to make frequent TV appearances and in 1980, appeared in an acting and dancing role opposite Olivia Newton John in Xanadu (1980), a bizarre and expensive flop which has since attained a cult following.[4] In Kelly's opinion "The concept was marvelous but it just didn't come off."[2] In the same year, he was invited by Francis Ford Coppola to recruit a production staff for American Zoetrope's One from the Heart (1982). Although Coppola's ambition was for Kelly to establish a production unit to rival the legendary Freed Unit at MGM, the film's failure put an end to this idea.[4] In 1985 he served as executive producer and co-host of That's Dancing! - a celebration of the history of dance in the American musical. After his final on-screen appearance introducing That's Entertainment! III in 1994, his final film project was the animated movie Cats Don't Dance, released in 1997 and dedicated to him, on which Kelly acted as uncredited choreographic consultant.

[edit] Awards and honors

Plaque honoring Gene Kelly at his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh
Plaque honoring Gene Kelly at his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Billman, Larry (1997). Film Choreographers and Dance Directors. North Carolina: McFarland and Company, pp.374-376. ISBN 0899508685.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Thomas, Tony (1991). The Films of Gene Kelly - Song and Dance Man. New York, NY: Carol Publishing Group. ISBN 0806505435.
  3. ^ According to Blair, p.111, he directed Jocelyn Brando in a semi-documentary about war-wounded veterans.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hirschhorn, Clive (1984). Gene Kelly - a Biography. London: W.H. Allen. ISBN 0491031823.
  5. ^ Blair, p.104: "Gene was the central creative force in this initial collaboration, but he was always generous about Stanley's contribution...Unfortunately, and mysteriously for me, Stanley, over the years, had been less than gracious about Gene"
  6. ^ In 1994, Kurt Browning, in an ice skating interpretation of "Singin' in the Rain" on his television special You Must Remember This. In 2005, Kelly's widow gave permission for Volkswagen to use his likeness to promote the Golf GTi car. The advertisement, shown only outside the US, used CGI to mix footage of Gene Kelly, from Singin' in the Rain, with footage of professional breakdancer David Elsewhere.

[edit] External links

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