Gene Kelly, Creative Genius

"My work's so important.."

Gene, BBC TV Interview 1974

It’s damned hard to make a musical, it’s as tough as digging a ditch.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. January 18^th 1985

A musical is such a pterodactyl to put together. It is the toughest thing to do in film.

Toledo Blade. March 5^th 1950. Hedda Hopper

When making a picture he never smokes or drinks, and he exercises like a mad man. “Sometimes I go in for athletics. But mostly I just dance for hours and hours.”

Hartford Courant. September 21^st 1942

Striking male newcomer to Hollywood scene is Gene Kelly…Kelly astounded makeup experts when he firmly refused to have scar on left cheek hidden by trickery.

Hartford Courant. October 20^th 1942

No newcomer to the film capital has ever had a busier baptism with pictures than young Gene Kelly…

Los Angeles Times. October 9^th 1949. Hedda Hopper.

Gene: “Pictures can’t be turned out on the assembly line like automobiles, because we’re dealing with emotions and intangibles. These qualities determine whether a film is good or bad. Money can be saved by careful preparation, but you can’t make good pictures fast.”

Movie Album December 1942

Gene Kelly, the bright-faced young Irishman with the winking eye and twinkling toes, is the latest firecracker to explode in Hollywood. First he landed in New York. That was in Pal Joey, the show he made and that made him. Before that it was Pittsburgh, where Gene bustled at odd jobs to pay college expenses. He started a dancing school that was the pride of the country. Then cracked Broadway wide open with a tap from those whirling feet. Judy Garland played godmother, caught Pal Joey and Gene hit her right. She wired MGM they ought to do something about it. They did, Gene’s first picture is Me and My Gal with Judy. Those lightning feet and that electric personality have hit celluloid – watch it burn!

Chicago Tribune January 23^rd 1944.

One of the finds of last year was Gene Kelly, a combination of Cagney – Tracy – Astaire.

Los Angeles Times. April 23^rd 1944

Kelly believes that screen musicals are still child’s play, their possibilities largely ignored. “When they’re light, they sure are light! – no depth, no characterization, no nothing. Just lightness. The way I see it, the dance can be used to express emotions phonetically – in movements that ‘speak’. It’s too soon to expect it yet, but it’ll come”

Toledo Blade. February 11^th 1966

Gene at 53 and “the only hoofer who ever studied economics” has strong views about some of the youngsters who with their “high camp” philosophy like to “denigrate a man like Busby Berkley” and run his old movies to laugh at them.

“Anybody who ever used a camera owes a debt to Berkley,” Gene said. “To laugh at his films is like laughing at Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales because it’s in Old English.”

Film Buff. February1976. Barbara Wolf. The Art Of Gene Kelly

He was, he remains, the most completely gifted artist ever to work in musical films. There were certainly others who surpassed him in one skill or another, singing or acting or clowning more brilliantly, or even directing or choreographing or dancing with an edge of something more. But no one else could do it all, or could unify and vivify so total a creative vision, or could communicate anything like the joy he seemed to take in his own creativity.

Time Magazine February 1996

There is no Ginger Rogers linked immortally to Kelly’s name, and that’s no accident….suspiciously good at playing hammy, self-serving show folks…he occasionally makes you wonder: is he exercising egocentricity or satirizing it?…But sooner rather than later, “his irresistible Irish-American charm,” and his “overwhelming, unstoppable energy” (Donen’s phrases) blew away your reservations. For there was always something disarming in the forthright way that Kelly…stated his needs and his aspirations. These transcended beyond the standard American desire to transcend one’s past and transform one’s limitations. For he was part of a generation that wanted to reinvent both the stage musical and the movie musical. It saw no reason why song and dance shouldn’t reflect the realities of everyday life – and at the same time illuminate our everynight dream life…

Photoplay May 1943

He came to Hollywood devoid of the supposed essentials of handsome looks [!!!] and personal glamour; his subordinate role in “For Me & My Gal” created such an instant sensation he was rushed into top roles in two top M.G.M. pictures and then was handed the starring part opposite Kathryn Grayson in “Private Miss Jones.”

Not bad for a young man who just has skimmed by his thirtieth birthday!

Yet Gene, in all honesty, professes to view the achievements as ordinary and himself as less.

Modern Screen. June 1943

Working within the confined space of a set gives him claustrophobia. Otherwise, he thinks the movies are fine. His body looks deceptively slight. It’s compact, muscular and inexhaustible. He did his own choreography for Dubarry and Private Miss Jones, with results that brought roof-raising cheers from bystanders. The studio rates his acting on a level with his dancing.

John Springer. All Talking All Singing All Dancing. 1976
Mostly the Kelly pictures were good, better, best - among the very top in all movie musical history.

Theatre Arts 1945

It appears probable that tomorrow’s dancer will acknowledge as great a debt to Kelly as to Astaire. For the battle between the dancer and the medium is being fought by the younger man on an ever-widening base of vitality, skill and imagination. And as he continues to compromise it appears he is doing no more than every artist is called upon to do; for all art is the product of just such compromise between the artist’s idea and the inflexible properties of his medium. And any creative man who is not in a constant state of siege is not worth his license.

Films Of The Golden Age. 1997

Gene Kelly gave us some of our most beloved musicals, stretching the boundaries of the genre. Unlike Fred Astaire, Kelly’s film roles enabled him to be brash, sexy, daring, and a bit of a scoundrel, and what woman can resist a charming scoundrel?

Rudy Behlmer. Behind The Scenes. 1982

Gene Kelly was a major talent in all departments…I never saw him give a bad performance…he was very good with kids, he knew how to extract performances from people.

John Updike. The New Yorker 1994

Kelly, who rose from the assembly line to the managerial level of choreographer and director, was ideally electric yet chaste. The musicals were about sex, but sex puritanically streamlined. They demonstrated to their public how to make love in the old sense of the phrase… few spoke the language [of film musicals] when it was a live one with more fluency than Gene Kelly, and none more thrillingly embodied American élan.

Time Magazine March 2002

In a Kelly film… the camera was more than an observer in the musical drama; it was a participant, prowling and swooping to keep up with Gene, to dance with him. In film after film, Kelly and his team met the challenges of capturing dance on film…

Kelly, a believer in artistic integration, gave just as much attention to ‘the rest of the movie.’ He acted-danced with the same concentrated energy that he danced-acted. Maybe he attended to Selznick’s advice after all. [To concentrate on acting].

Producer Joe Pasternak.

The first thing that struck me about Gene was that he was a pretty smart cookie. No bullshit. And believe me, this made a change because most actors are ignorant people who let success go to their heads…Kelly…took success in his stride. He wore it well…Right from the beginning of his Hollywood career he wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less than his best….He was never unreasonable…he was concerned about such sordid things as the budget of a film…He is one of the handful of Hollywood originals. The two dirtiest words in the English language to him are ‘second best’.

American Film magazine1985

With Kelly’s films, the songs and dances came to be so closely related to the story that neither element could be dropped without sacrificing part of the meaning of the other. Music and story were unified.

Screenland 1947

At the studio he’s Gene Kelly, under contract, and he does everything reasonable that’s asked of him. If he is averse to publicity you would never know it, and at that you can hardly blame him if he gets a little bored answering too many of the same questions six days a week. You would too!…”Actually it’s a difficult thing to drop out of the character you’re doing on the screen to answer questions about how you first started dancing or what’s your favourite book and why. But even at that you won’t find me getting temperamental, because it’s all part of the business and I’ll go along with it just as well as the next guy.”

Scott Renshaw www.apolloguide.com movie guide

If film as an entertainment medium ever had to defend its existence in some sort of trial, I’d gladly serve as defense attorney if only to present Gene Kelly’s choreography as Exhibit A. Few visions in cinema history have offered as much pure joy as Kelly’s alternately graceful and exuberant dance steps; the fact that film can preserve those steps for posterity is reason enough to cherish its existence. When Gene Kelly dances, you remember what the pure magic of the movies is all about.

American Film 1979

Expressive, dazzling, exuberant – these are some of the words, among dozens, that hard-pressed critics have turned to in an effort to describe Gene Kelly’s dancing in the movies. For the rest of us, free simply to enjoy his dancing, words have always seemed inadequate to the effort.

One reason is that the pleasure of watching Kelly on the screen is almost visceral, and the pleasure is never limited to his dance steps…our delight is in watching a graceful burst of screen personality, fulfilling itself in movement.

Gene Kelly, the Dancing Cavalier. Hollywood Then And Now. August 1991

…There is another side to Gene Kelly, a side that surfaces briefly in some of his films and totally dominates a few. This version of Gene could be every bit as elegant as Fred – not in top hat, white tie and tails – but in the costumes of the cavalier, the pirate or the musketeer. This was the fantasy persona of that beaming, sometimes brash ‘average guy’ – the man who could don a sweeping cape, a black mask or a plumed hat and become the romantic swashbuckler of his dreams. Of course it was not so much what he wore or how he wore it but his style of dancing, that strong, athletic grace that was perfectly suited to making these dreams a visual reality..

Kelly combined the elements of the musical and the swashbuckler like no one else in film history….

Watch for this side of Gene Kelly. In a gesture here, a graceful leap there, he will reveal himself. The dream cavalier is just beneath the surface of Mr. All-American…

Gene had proved his ability to blend dance with derring-do…

As long as we have his D’Artagnan, his Serafin and his other unforgettable roles we have a record of this remarkable facet of the Renaissance man of the musical film: Gene Kelly.

AFI booklet. 1985

…Gene Kelly, a man who recognised the simplest and the grandest of the world’s dreams, added a little color, song and movement and gave them back to us to carry away into our lives.

Vanity Fair. April 1996

With his handsome profile and matinee-god grin, Kelly was custom-made for the silver screen. Like Cagney he could tap, rat-a-tat, the street in his step. But Gene had romantic amplitude as well.

Article about MGM. Source unknown.

If Gene Kelly was important as a performer, he became legendary as a choreographer and director. With Stanley Donen he made Singin’ In The Rain, On The Town, and It’s Always Fair Weather, all of which were produced by Arthur Freed and based on screenplays by Comden and Green. Taken together they constitute the ultimate works of a certain kind of film, the apotheosis of the organic, unified musical developed and nurtured at MGM.

Leslie Caron, The Making of An American In Paris DVD 2008

There was no doubt Gene was a remarkable choreographer for the movies. He was the one who always placed the camera.

American Film 1979. Gene:

There are no auteurs in musical pictures. It’s impossible. You have to have music arrangements, besides a choreographer, a director and so forth.

Look Magazine 1953.

Kelly’s ‘candle’, say some of his associates, “Burns all the time…Whether you’re working with him or just being his friend, it ends up as your way of life.”

In his search for absolute artistic and technical perfection in his pictures, Kelly permits himself only a few hours’ sleep a night. At work he is said to be as ruthless with himself as with the people around him. He is, in turn, rough, provoking, gentle, charming and always the boss. Carpenters have got used to Kelly’s pointers on constructing an unsqueakable platform for a dance. Musicians, set designers, sound technicians, grip-men – all wait to hear from Kelly on every phase of their activities. As a cameraman says, “That guy’s in everything, just like Charlie Chaplin…And the hell of it is, it always turns out right!” When everybody else has gone home, Kelly stays behind to pace up and down, rehearsing himself for the next day.

The Irish In America. Edited by Michael Coffey. 1997

"...Gene was not only the quintessential
song-and-dance man, but he carried with him a sense of
class and refinement that appealed to both men and
women."

Jeanine Basinger. Gene Kelly. Pyramid Illustrated History Of The Movies. 1976
Not only did Kelly have a one-in-a-million talent, he also had a million dollar screen presence…He could crinkle up the corners of his warm, dark eyes, smile as wide as a barn door and lay on the blarney with the best of ‘em..... He elevated the musical film into an art form by pulling it down from the skies.

Gene, Introduction to John Springer. All Talking, All Singing, All Dancing 1971

There is more to movie musicals than just a series of particularly happy memories. It is one of the few peculiarly American art forms, and at its best it certainly is art.

Thomas G Aylesworth. The History Of Movie Musicals 1984

The biggest star of the era’s musicals was undoubtedly Gene Kelly.

Biography magazine March 1999.

Kelly was one of the most innovative talents in the history of movie musicals, a choreographer and director who gave himself unprecedented challenges and in so doing, changed the nature of dance on film.

John Springer All Talking All Singing All Dancing 1971

On his own, Kelly burst forth in one stunning musical after another.

Gene, quoted in Tony Thomas, The films of Gene Kelly 1974

In the theatre you can chug along for years but being a success in the movies is like suddenly being turned into a rocket.

Ray Bolger. That's Dancing, 1982

More than any other star, Gene Kelly became the symbol of the MGM musical of the 50's

Carly Millard. Society, Form, Context and the Hollywood Musical 2007

Over his career, Gene Kelly (along with his collaborators) completely changed the face of the musical; he took it away from its traditions and gave it a vital, innovative artistry that carried a socially important meaning;

Gene, magazine interview, date unknown
I've been accused of being a perfectionist so much that I guess it's true. I want to do everything as well as it can be done, even if I'm doing a bad musical.

Gene: On the stage I can walk around in rhythm…doing nothing but grin at the audience or wink at someone in the first row orchestra, and they love it. I know because I’ve done it. But on the screen that sort of thing leaves them cold…the personality is missing. You’ve got to keep plugging or before you know it your audience is out in the lobby drinking a lemonade.

Gene Kelly Day. London 1970

And still they pay money to see old Gene Kelly revivals. They flourish in cinemas, museums, libraries and on college campuses. But don’t be surprised if the next thing is how some college film student will be ‘majoring in Gene Kelly’.

New York Times 1979

No one alive today probably possesses more skill or knowledge in what it takes to do a first-rate film musical than Gene Kelly. He took to the form with passionate, boundless energy.

Los Angeles Times. September 7^th 1958

Gene Kelly likes to work 16hours a day and sleep 10. The word around Hollywood is that he can do it too.

He also likes movies. He likes to sing, dance and act in them. He likes to write them. He likes to direct them. In fact, the only thing he likes better is doing it all at once.

John Cutts. Films & Filming 1964

If he never treads another step on film…his reputation is dependably secure. Nothing short of the Apocalypse itself, can erase what has been achieved – and that, frankly, is more than enough to last us a lifetime.

In the private cinema of the mind, he dances on. As unsinkable as Molly Brown and as unstoppable as time itself.

Disney Magazine 1989. Gene:

Kissing scenes are disliked by most actors and actresses. They tend to ruin make-up and draw bad looks from the people who have to redo the lady’s hair and lipstick – and often the man’s too.

Andre Previn

I think that if he was competitive in his film work, he was competitive with himself. He always wanted every movie to do something new.

Magazine article, source unknown.

The great genius of the postwar musical – dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and director – is Gene Kelly.

FOR ME & MY GAL. 1942

That's Entertanment II . 1976.

Gene: For Me And My Gal was my first film and boy was I lucky. I was starred with Judy Garland.

That’s what I call starting at the top.

Photoplay December 1942

It’s not necessary to predict a future for Gene Kelly. His future is here. What a performance he gives as a heel with a heart.

A winner, that’s what this musical is…Judy Garland entrances and newcomer Gene Kelly answers that $64 question as to new faces. If ever a star leapt overnight to stardom it should be Kelly, discovered by Judy on the New York stage and brought to Hollywood for this role…

Time Magazine. November 1942

…The contagious little tune Ballin’ The Jack, as delivered by Miss Garland and Mr Kelly, is worth the price of admission.

In this nostalgic re-evocation of vaudeville’s golden age and the sweeter, simpler times of World War I, Miss Garland and Mr Kelly do a notable job. Kelly, who made a Broadway hit winter before last in Pal Joey, has flashes of acting intuition which should rate him a special berth, or perhaps a drawing room, in Hollywood.

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

He’s got the shoes from his first MGM picture, when he looked across the lights at a gal with a bundle of hair, Judy Garland, danced with the girl, made love to her, and put on a bit of dramatic acting that stopped cold the pop-corn crunchers in the theatres across the country. That trunk-and-injured-finger scene in Me And My Gal marked him as something rare in show business – a dancer who could jerk tears while shuffling his feet.

Review, sometime after 1945

The story is naively patriotic and sentimental, but Kelly is amazingly fresh: his grin could melt stone, and he and Garland are a magical pair.

Gene, Reflections TV Interview 1994. On the making of For Me And My Gal

Since Busby Berkeley wanted George Murphy in the part, he hated me and didn’t try to hide it. So I came onto the set with arrows pointing at me from the director and his assistant. Then Busby did a 360 and we became very good friends

Gene, on seeing the preview of For Me And My Gal 1942

I was appalled at the sight of myself blown up twenty times…but when I came outside executives started pumping my hand and Judy came up and kissed me. I went home thinking they were just being nice

Hirschhorn, Hollywood Musicals 1981

Kelly and Garland worked brilliantly together, establishing a magical rapport…they turned it into a box office smash for MGM, making at the same time, an international star of Gene Kelly.

John Springer. All Talking All Singing All Dancing 1971

It established Kelly immediately as one of the most arresting personalities.

Magazine clipping

It was a measure of Kelly’s ability as an actor that he was able to strip down his ability as a dancer to meet the requirements of the role.

British Film Institute

In this, his film debut, Kelly is charming.

Modern Screen. June 1943

Gene Kelly’s sister Harriet, who teaches school in Pittsburgh, looks forward to the release of Dubarry Was A Lady. It’s not wholly a matter of family pride. She’s grown weary of being accosted by reproachful kids. “Your brother’s a draft dodger. He crushed his hand in a trunk.”

Gene offers Irish advice. “Tell them that was the last war. Tell them I’m too old to fight now.”

DUBARRY WAS A LADY 1943

St. Petersburg Times. October 20^th 1942

Kelly…in his full dress suit. He was having his troubles giving his all. His wife was in hospital and every time the phone rang he jumped. He said a man who was about to become a father ought to be pardoned for nerves.

Hartford Courant. February 2^nd 1943

Gene Kelly all but steals Dubarry Was A Lady from lady Lucille Ball.

THOUSANDS CHEER. 1943

Hollywood Musicals 1981

The only chance Gene Kelly got to dance was when …he did what was called ‘The mop dance’ – the freshest, most inventive few minutes in the show.

Howard Barnes, NY Herald tribune 1943

Kelly dominates the film and saves the picture from being merely a parade of personalities.

Joe Pasternak. Producer

I first worked with him in Thousands Cheer, and the highest praise I can give him is that in spite of having practically every heavyweight MGM star in that picture, he is the one who made the biggest impact. I told him from the start: “You want to steal the movie? All you have to do is one dance that is new and original…you be different.”. So he came up with the mop dance, which is the best number in the picture.

Family Circle magazine.1943

…Kathryn is always very real in her maturing devotion to the rebellious Kelly. There’ll be no stopping this lad either. He has the same qualities of tender-tough appeal that endeared Jimmy Cagney to the populace – and in addition, Gene’s dancing establishes him as the only other actor in the Astaire class.

Modern Screen. June 1943

Jewelry for men he classes with the minor felonies. In “Private Miss Jones,” he had to wear a ring, and kept it on for the picture’s duration to avoid the ignominy of asking the prop man for it each morning.

ZEIGFELD FOLLIES 1946

Gene:

Anyone dancing on the screen today who doesn’t admit his debt to Astaire, is either a liar or a fool.

Fred Astaire:

This guy is good. I don’t usually like dancers, but he gives me a kick.

There is a page dedicated to Fred's relationship with Gene. A formal brawl?

Saturday Evening Post. July 1950

Arthur Freed: “A lot of sadistic characters who hoped to witness a fight to the finish with tap shoes as weapons were disappointed. Instead of infighting and gouging in the clinches, Fred and Gene staged an Alphonse and Gaston act. They threw themselves into it with so much abandon that it became fascinating to see how far they’d go. A long time before we decided to make the picture, Astaire had told me, ‘This Kelly is good. I don’t usually like dancers, but he gives me a kick.’. And Gene had sought me out to say, ‘Fred has been my idol ever since I put on dancing shoes. Fifty years from now, when they show old films, he’ll be the dancer they’ll pick to represent his era.’”

Freed suggested a number called The Babbitt And The Bromide, that Fred had once done with his sister Adele in a stage musical.

…”I put them together in a rehearsal hall and left them alone. At the end of the day Kelly came to me and said, ‘I can’t see what Fred sees in this routine. I think we’d be better off doing an Indian number.’ Like any two champions they naturally wanted to do the thing they could do best, but their respect for each other was so great that they were extremely polite when they were working together, and if they had any suggestions, they made them to me. Somehow, Fred discovered that Gene was unhappy about the routine and he came to me and said that perhaps they ought to do the Indian number after all. After that it became a kind of contest in politeness, for when Gene heard that Fred wanted him to have his own way, he did a switch and began to insist upon doing The Babbitt and the Bromide. Gene’s Alphonse finally out bowed-and-scraped Fred’s Gaston, and both of them poured it on so beautifully that folk who collect big moments in the movies…rank it well up on their lists.”

Photoplay magazine. 1945

He thinks Fred Astaire, with whom he does the Babbitt And Bromide number…is “the tops.” They rehearsed six hours a day for this number and every night when they went home each of them would try to dream up something to stump the other one on the next day. Then they’d compare notes. With much kidding.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. May 19^th 1944. Frederick C. Othman.

Hollywood. May 18^th. At 8 o’clock this morning the two greatest dancers in Hollywood…sat down on a park bench in their ice-cream pants, preparatory to going into their act….

“Let’s go,” cried Director Vincente Minnelli. “Unhuh,” said the cameraman. He pointed out that one of the wires holding one of the pigeons wasn’t invisible at all, it seemed to have a piece of cotton adhering to it. The lights went out. Kelly and Astaire relaxed on their bench. The boys brought in a long ladder. They climbed after that bit of fluff – and they broke the pigeon wire. They had to crawl into the rafters and send down a new wire. This took time…The pigeon fixers seemed to have nudged the statue out of line…An hour and a half had passed. Astaire and Kelly fingered their neckties. Again they were ready. Minnelli took a look in the lens…Four leaves on the left-hand bush were shiny, when they should have been dull. They were reflecting light….A painter showed up. He said this was his first day at work in the movies and he didn’t have his brushes with him…the property department sent the leaves to the paint shop to be sprayed. Astaire and Kelly relaxed some more…Minnelli said he guessed maybe his dancers had better try a rehearsal first.

They stood up to rehearse. And woe is us. That bench was dirty. They had black streaks on their white pants and this was Technicolor, and hey, wardrobe! The wardrobe department came up with a can of carbon tetrachloride and did a dry cleaning job on two pairs of pants with their owners still in ’em.

The cameraman looked into his lens again and, so help us, this is what he said:

“Joe, please powder the left side of Mr. Astaire’s nose; the left side only.”…by now it was noon. And another guy was working on the bench with soap…The grips were tearing up the camera tracks for reasons best known to themselves, the electricians had to put new carbons in their arcs; and the Othman had a 20-mile drive to his office.

And that’s why we can’t tell you about the dance of Hollywood’s two greatest dancers; we never did get to see it.

There was plenty of time to talk to the dancers, however, and they agreed it was first class. For three weeks they’d been rehearsing it.

“It is a dance to a song George Gershwin wrote for my sister Adele and me, way back when,” Astaire said. “I think it was for the show Funny Face…it’s about two very ordinary people meeting on the street and going through the very ordinary motions. They first meet as youngsters…then…10 years later…Finally they meet in Heaven…They’ll be old then, with white whiskers.”

The statue will be old, too, and the horse will have turned gray. So will the pigeons. For that matter, so will Director Minnelli.

LIVING IN A BIG WAY 1947

Modern Screen July 1947

MGM’s new musical will make you merrier. It may make you live in an even bigger way. Gene Kelly and Marie McDonald are the ‘Boy-meets-Girl' of this hearty, happy picture. Gene is the shiniest dancer – the best ‘timer’ of scenes – and to our and the public’s mind, one of the very top stars in pictures. He has never been better, not even in “Anchors Aweigh.” How the boy can dance!

What originality characterizes his dance plots! The scene in which he does a terpsichorean routine on the girders of an unfinished dream-house is worth your weeks’ movie allowance. He teeters on a block and tackle, totters on ladders. Sure-footed, sure-fire Gene.

…When William James, the philosopher, was asked, “Is life worth living?” he said, “It all depends on the liver”.

And if the liver is “living in a big way”, then life has its worth.

Evening Independent. June 11^th 1947

Living In A Big Way is a suitable vehicle for Gene Kelly’s return from the war. The film, which deals vaguely with war marriages and veteran’s housing, is burdened with a lame plot and much talking, a lot of it pointless. But it is a pleasant charade and it provides a backdrop for three Kelly musical numbers. Oh, how that man can dance!

Marie MacDonald offers bodily support.

St. Petersburg Times. June 4^th 1946

When Gene Kelly gets to Hollywood in two weeks, he won’t unpack his dancing shoes for The Pirate. A last minute switch puts Gene into Life’s For The Living, which is all drama and a yard wide without a single dance routine for Kelly. How do you think you’re going to like that?

I’ll say this for Gene – of all the ‘talent’ artists he strikes me as the best natural actor.

Evening Independent. July 28^th 1947

This picture was not hailed, in advance, as stupendous, but it was entertaining most of the time. Kelly does two very good dance numbers, the one with a group of children being especially pleasing. There is a moppet dog that was the best actor in the cast…one of the season’s merriest romantic comedies.

Hartford Courant June 26^th 1947

Living In A Big Way is Gene Kelly and his dancing, and that’s fun in a big way. Romance in a big way too, because Gene’s dancing is out of this world.

Silver Screen. April 1947

He was concerned, he said, about his dances for his new picture, “To Kiss And To Keep,” for which, as usual, he was doing his own choreography.

“Naturally, during my two years in the Navy I didn’t have time to dance…I hope it’s like swimming – something one doesn’t forget – and I hope audiences still think I’m okay.”

Audiences, we’ll bet our best bottle of Christmas-present perfume, will think just that. In fact, it was a public howl, registered via the United States mail, which led MGM to include Gene’s dances in “To Kiss And To Keep.” It is not a musical, in any sense, and originally Gene was to do no dancing in it. That fact, duly reported in the public prints, brought such protests from fans that it was decided to incorporate some dances, carefully fitted into the story line. Gene plays a civic-minded ex-GI, and there’s no reason why the character should not be able to dance.

After all, in real life, he dances and is a civic-minded ex-seaman…

Gene is finding plenty of mental stimulation working with director Gregory La Cava…because the director, who also does much of his own writing, has a unique system in shooting a picture. To achieve spontaneity in performance he gives his actors their script piecemeal, only a day’s pages at a time and only twenty four hours ahead. Then, even as they are doing a scene, he often changes dialogue to conform with how he feels an actor in a certain role may say a given line.

“Especially after two years away, that keeps me on my toes, and I don’t mean that as a bad pun,” says Kelly. La Cava’s method is different, but he knows what he’s doing.”

Hirschorn, Hollywood Musicals 1981

The building site number, performed with children…was quintessential Kelly in its athleticism and in the easy spontaneous way the youngsters were involved

Hirschorn. Gene Kelly. 1974

La Cava, who was one of the few directors with complete autonomy at MGM, managed to draw a cool, controlled, most accomplished performance from Gene, who, despite his misgivings, revealed a flair for comedy not many people realised he possessed.

Rudy Behlmer. Behind The Scenes. 1982

Even in a picture like Living In A Big Way which is not a very good picture, when they added numbers to it, those numbers are extremely inventive…The picture is nothing, but he gave it his all…I don’t think he ever “phoned in”.

Screenland magazine 1947. Gene.

When I’m working, I have only one thought in mind – my job. We work from a script that is being written from day to day, and each morning I have to go through my lines before we shoot. That’s a thing that requires considerable concentration and since I’m trying to do the very best job possible, I shut out anything else that might intervene. Gregory La Cava, who is directing the picture, is a top-drawer man, so I feel doubly strong on the fact that I’ve got to do my very best work for him.

In the picture I’m a returned GI, and my clothes are supposed to fit very badly. Well, when I first showed up wearing that costume which was sizes too big for me, people thought the clothes were my own. In a way I couldn’t blame them, because I have never been considered the epitome of sartorial perfection. Friends who hadn’t seen me since my 22 months in service would come up to me, give my loose-hanging clothes the once-over, and then say cheerfully, “You’re looking fine Gene, but haven’t you lost a little weight.”

When it dawned on me that everyone thought I wore sad-looking clothes like that all the time, naturally it was a blow to my ego. ….since then I’ve looked over my wardrobe very carefully, because if I look like that, I’d better do something about it.

Paul Marsh, Screenland magazine 1947

Originally Gene’s role in his newest picture was listed purely as a dramatic part, but letters from moviegoers throughout the nation soon changed that. They pleaded that a picture in which Gene Kelly doesn’t dance is hardly fair…

“So I’ll dance in the picture”, said Gene. “Somehow, somewhere a couple of dance routines will be fitted into the script."

Movie. January 1947 The Most Natural Guy.

The scene: a men’s clothing store on the set of MGM’s Life’s For The Loving. Gene Kelly is playing a recently-discharged soldier, trying to get civilian clothes. The salesman shows his complete stock – three suits.

“I don’t think this scene rings true,” says Gene to director Gregory La Cava.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because I haven’t been able to find one suit since I’ve been out of the Navy.”

So they changed the scene and shot is as Gene suggested.

We went into his dressing room to talk over old times and future plans.

The room is as casual as Gene himself. Bow-ties hanging on the walls, on the table and on the chairs. Five pork-pie hats dangling from the clothes-tree. A horseshoe of red carnations on the wall – welcome-back gift from George Sidney who directed him in Anchors Aweigh.

Gene looks better than he has in a long time. “I certainly should,” he said. “I put on eighteen pounds in the Navy…

His interest in the Veteran’s Housing Project is sincere. His enthusiasm for the project infected director Gregory La Cava, and the pros and cons of the problem form part of the plot of Gene’s new movie…

An assistant director came running to say they were ready to start the next scene. Gene went over to director La Cava. They discussed the lines and business a moment and Gene stepped into the scene to act.

Did I say act?

It was plain Gene Kelly, saying his lines as Gene would, laughing the way he would – the most natural guy in the movies.

Chicago Tribune. January 18^th 1947

Gene Kelly sprained his ankle during rehearsals for To Kiss And To Keep. He’s had to be dropped from the picture indefinitely.

Evening Independent. January 18^th 1947

Gene Kelly tore two ligaments in his dance fall and will be on crutches for a while.x

Evening Independent. January 20^th 1947

Gene Kelly sprained his ankle with but one day to go on To Kiss And To Keep. He was luckily on the ground when it happened. The number he is doing consists of flitting around on small planks of a house construction – fifty feet off the ground.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME. 1949

Silver Screen. April 1947

You’ve probably read that he has authored an original screenplay which his home studio, MGM, has bought for a musical to star him and, probably, Frank Sinatra. Tunesmiths Ralph Blane and Harry Warren are already at work on the score and Gene himself will create the choreography.

“It was simply a matter of self-defense,” he told us, trying his darndest to keep a serious mien as we lunched in the studio commissary. “An actor has to look out for his future, so I wrote my own story.”

But between bites of veal sauté he finally admitted it was an idea he conceived while he was in service, and mulled over in his mind for a good many months. After he got out of uniform and had a few weeks to spare before returning to the sound stages, he put it down on paper. What’s more, MGM grabbed it. He won’t tell, wisely, what it’s about, admitting only that the idea is novel and might be copied – if he talked.

So the chap who formerly merely sang, conceived and executed brilliant dances…and acted…now adds writing to his list of talents. What’s more, it’s such good writing that it sells.

St. Petersburg Times. November 15^th 1947

As soon as Gene Kelly is able to not only dance, but run on that busted ankle of his, the baseball story he sold to Metro In The Good Old Summertime, will go before the cameras.

Gene: Guardian Lecture, London 1980

I wrote the story in self-defence because they had a picture ready for me where Frank Sinatra and I would take over an aircraft carrier and turn it into a nightclub. I couldn’t do this, so I said what can I do, I must go to work. The song Take Me Out To The Ball Game was a big hit, so I wrote all night and in the morning I got my protégé and friend Stanley Donen and said read this and tell me if it’s any good. He said “I like it”. He was young then and I would try these things on him. So we got it made into a screenplay…and got Comden and Green out to do the songs and special material.

Magazine article after 1980

The success of Take Me Out To The Ball Game encouraged Freed to give Kelly and Donen the opportunity to direct On The Town.

St.Petersburg Times. March19th 1949

Dansational is the word for Gene Kelly’s nimble version of an Irish jig…Gene is poetry in motion.

St. Petersburg Times.April 14^th 1949

While bobby soxers may swoon at Sinatra and his songs, Gene Kelly is the man who steals the show with his nimble steps. He has some good dance numbers, one of which, a terrific dance, was applauded by the audience…

Hollywood Musicals 1981

Though the film was by no means epoch-making it had the sort of vitality that would characterize the three great Kelly musicals that would follow it. The musical numbers were delightful.

John Cutts. Films & Filming 1964

A young people’s frolic, an invigorating tonic entertainment…A musical of invention, humour, melody and energy…the dance numbers were staged with tremendous verve. Freed was delighted with Kelly and Donen’s work together.

Photoplay June 1949

Cupid is the umpire in this Technicolor triple-header with Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Esther Williams.

As boss of the ball team, Esther makes all the boys toe the mark and even lady-killer Kelly can’t sweep her off her feet. When not on the diamond, Frank and Gene are wowing the customers as a song-and-dance team.

Betty Garrett is amusing as a man-chasing female; Jules Munchin makes a comical ballplayer; Edward Arnold is the menace. Apart from his acting chore, the clever Mr. Kelly collaborated on the story and staged the musical numbers. The result is a tuneful, enjoyable movie.

SUMMER STOCK 1950

Joe Pasternak. Easy The Hard Way 1956

Gene had worked with Judy on his first film. She had been considerate, generous, helpful….and Gene Kelly, a man who knows genius when he is next to it, for he is not untouched with it himself, was more than merely grateful…it took us six months to finish the film. Gene Kelly rates a special mention…[He said] “ I’ll do anything for this girl Joe. If I have to come here and sit and wait for a year, I’d do it for her.”

Hartford Courant. August 31^st 1950

Summer Stock…is really terrific. Color, songs, dances, story, quips and Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and a large company of tip-top performers and names…You gape at Gene Kelly with open-mouthed admiration.

Daily Collegian. State College Pennsylvania. September 26^th 1950

Summer Stock, unlike the average Hollywood musical, contains some really impressive footwork performances by Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. After watching Mr. K. manipulate a newspaper page and a squeaking board into a riotous dancing routine we’re ready to nominate him for an all-time hoofing award...As long as Hollywood can get Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in one picture they can have our 55 cents anytime.

Motion Picture November 1950

…Summer Stock, a movie which rates a big green light in any season.

What makes it so super-special isn’t the story, the music or the Technicolor trimmings, but leading players Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. These two put the picture over with a bang, demonstrating again – as in the past – that they are an unbeatable combination. Loaded with personality and talent, Judy and Gene go all out to entertain you with their singing, dancing and romancing against a rural setting.

Gene, Films Illustrated 1974

I was miscast in the picture. It was a revamp of one of Judy’s films with Mickey Rooney. It needed a teenager and I was pushing 40 at the time.

John Cutts. Films & Filming 1964

The two stars worked well together, Kelly turning in an entirely unselfish performance.

Chicago Tribune. February 6^th 1950

Gene Kelly’s working himself to the bone trying to get Judy Garland’s numbers in the can for Summer Stock before she takes another rest.

American Film 1979. Gene:

Buster Keaton had a great influence on me. A lot of his moves I certainly intuitively copied in doing certain numbers. I know I was thinking of him when I did a dance with a squeaky board and a newspaper. I didn’t look like him, but I often wish I did.

Toledo Blade. September 1^st 1950

Gene Kelly, muscles rippling at every turn, does his usual spectacular dancing with ease – so much so that after some of his energetic numbers, he leaves you rather exhausted.

BRIGADOON 1954

Gene, Reflections TV interview 1994.

Poor Cyd and I had to dance on rocks and mud…in a couple of very nice pas de deux – in fact they’re my favourites. But she, in her little sandals, bless her heart, her feet were aching.

St. Petersburg Times. December 22^nd 1953

For the first time in his career, Gene Kelly won’t perform a single dance on an even floor surface in MGM’s Brigadoon. All of the start’s numbers call for him to perform in natural settings of the Scottish Highlands, which means he’ll display his nimble-footed talents over hills and along the rough dirt tracks and roads…He has been practising in ways that correspond to the roadwork of the sports contestants – but dancing along instead of just straight running. He admits it is a new sort of challenge – but then. Kelly likes to meet new challenges.

That's Entertainment. 1974. Cyd: standing in the MGM scenic backdrop building, in front of a 600ft long, 60ft high backdrop of the Scottish hills:

"Gene Kelly and I spent many hours rehearsing and filming our dance numbers in front of these heather hills.

I always had great respect for Gene, dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and director. He did it all, always brought exciting new dimensions to the musical motion picture.

It was my pleasure to dance with Gene in several films but I think this one is my favourite - Heather On The Hill."

Silver Screen June 1954

Currently in “Brigadoon” Van Johnson is doing a number with him – really the first time Van has danced since he was in “Pal Joey” on Broadway in 1941. In that show he was in the chorus and Gene was the star.

Originally, in “Brigadoon” Van wasn’t to do any dancing, but Gene decided the two of them had to do a number together. While they were rehearsing the routine, Van kept saying it had been a long long time between dances for him. Once he fluffed a couple of times and he hollered out to director Vincente Minnelli, “You’d better get Dan Dailey.”... another time he stopped in the middle and said to himself, “Holy smokes, I’m dancing along side of Kelly!”

Cyd

It was the dream of a dancer’s life to work with Gene.

Scott Renshaw www.apolloguide.com Movie guide. When Kelly and his feet take centre stage, Brigadoon offers genuine enchantment. Whether gliding through Technicolor meadows with Charisse or bounding solo in romantic intoxication, Kelly in motion is poetry. His dance sequences also provide a remarkable cinematic shorthand. In a conventional narrative, it can seem silly when two people swoon for each other after ten minutes together. When those ten minutes are spent in a Gene Kelly ballet, the emotion proves contagious. Musical romance in a Gene Kelly film isn’t just more fun to watch; it actually feels more authentically romantic.

Minelli does occasionally get in Kelly’s way, editing a sequence such that it loses its flow. Brigadoon isn’t the smoothest of narratives, tacking on a late New York-set sequence that really could have used a pre-Scotland bookend. There’s nothing groundbreaking or spectacular about Brigadoon, but there is plenty of the force of nature that is Gene Kelly. And when you’re talking about a man who makes you happy that movies exist, that’s more than enough.

Vincente Minnelli. I Remember It Well 1974

The filming went easily...helped immeasurably by Gene’s assistants, Carol Haney and Jeannie Coyne. With Gene so busy on the choreography, I depended on Carol to fill in when Gene was occupied elsewhere…Jeannie, later to marry Gene, was the perfect intermediary with the crew…Her patience was inhuman.

DEEP IN MY HEART 1955

Motion Picture magazine 1955

Gene was rather busy at the time, bicycling between the sound stage where Brigadoon was shooting and the cartoon department cutting room where Invitation To The Dance was reaching completion. But they (Gene and Fred Kelly) worked the dance sequence in. "I had reached the point where the mind kept on working - half the night sometimes - but the body had given out."

John Cutts. Films & Filming 1964

Crude, happy, vulgar stuff, a piece of dancing razzamatazz done to roaring perfection.

IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER 1955

American Film 1979. Gene, On Stanley Donen.

I thought we were a good team. I thought we complimented each other very well. On the last picture we made – It’s Always Fair Weather – we were so together, we were so used to each other, that we didn’t need each other. It was almost dull doing it together: we could have phoned the shots in. It wasn’t a bad picture, though it was a little behind its time. That’s the only picture we didn’t have fun on.

Michael Singer. A Cut Above. 50 film directors talk about their craft. 1998

Q. In Hugh Fordin’s book about Arthur Freed and the great MGM musicals, The World Of Entertainment, there is an extremely grim account of the filming of It’s Always Fair Weather…

Gene: That book is false on practically every other page. The only mistake we made on that picture was that we all believed Cinemascope to be the answer to our prayers…much of the film is framed sectionally…When the film is shown on television, they pan and scan all over the place, and that careful framing is completely lost.

From That’s Dancing 1983: It’s Always fair Weather was one of the best of the early Cinemascope musicals. Choreographed and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, it used every inch of the wide screen, filling it with some of the finest dancing talents in all Hollywood, Gene, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd.

Chicago Tribune. 12thOctober 1955

Gene Kelly has hit a terrific new high as star and co-director.

Time Magazine September 1955

It’s Always Fair Weather, despite its inclement title, is a sunny example of a Hollywood rarity – a song-and-dance movie with enough plot to justify its dialogue and enough needling satire to make some points. …For its superb dancing, inventive musical numbers…Fair Weather rates as one of the top contenders for the year’s lightweight title.

TCM Review

What a pleasure to see professional dancing on screen in long, continuous takes…It’s Always Fair Weather allows us to see, and feel, its numbers completely…it’s no surprise really, for the people behind the camera on this picture were, quite simply, pros.

New York Times 21^st May 1987. Jack Anderson

It’s Always Fair Weather recently made a welcome return to the film forum….It depicts the comic misadventures of three Army buddies who get together ten years after being discharged from the service. Since the three ex-soldiers are played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd and the film is directed and choreographed by Mr Kelly and Stanley Donen, one can easily guess that the reunion will involve lots of dancing...

Mr Kelly and Mr Donen have told film historians that they were somewhat disappointed with their movie, which employed what was then the new Cinemascope process. Yet It’s Always Fair Weather holds up very well. And its dancing is sassy and inventive…

The best and most elaborate dance sequence shows the three soldiers on a drunken spree after Mr Kelly learns he has been jilted….Even small details can be amusing and meaningful. For instance, the soldiers pass a theatrical poster that contains not only the name of Goldsmith’s most famous play – She Stoops To Conquer – but its subtitle as well: The Mistakes of a Night…

All the dances are notable for their insouciance and for the way that camera work and choreography are united so that essentially ordinary situations and locales are gradually, almost surrealistically, transformed with extravagant fantasy.

In recent years, the choreographic and cinematic accomplishments of Fred Astaire have received deserved scholarly and critical attention. Now, perhaps, it is time for someone to reappraise the choreography and dancing of another key figure in movie musicals: Gene Kelly.

LES GIRLS 1957

Picturegoer 1957

A joyous film...At last Kelly’s back.

WHAT A WAY TO GO 1964

Evening Independent.August 30^th 1963

Gene: “I’m having a ball…This kind of thing is easy to satirize. But, you know, those musicals were kind of wonderful too.”

YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT 1968

Photoplay 1967

It was after seeing the Umbrellas of Cherbourg that Kelly accepted to put his dancing shoes on again. It was also, as he explained, because, although he has plenty of money, he cannot remain idle for long that he welcomed Demy’s proposals. For more than a month, Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, Gene Kelly, George Chakiris and Gower Dale rehearsed the numbers with Mean in London, before moving to Rochefort…but no doubt all eyes will be on the magic dancing feet of Gene Kelly. It will be good to see him in a musical again.

At 54, Gene, showing little signs of the years except a few more lines on his face, displays the skill and energy that made him a hit with all musical lovers in the fifties.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT 1974. Written, produced and directed by Jack Haley Jr.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch. July 1^st 1974

Gene: The timing of That’s Entertainment seemed to be fortuitous in every way – not just for my career. Mostly for the kind of entertainment it represents. But I don’t know how much impact it will ultimately have. Every year they say we want to make those great old musicals again. This film has certainly made them more acceptable. Sociologists tell us that whenever there’s a depression in the country, a time of crisis, movies like this do well. Like the ads say; ‘boy do we need it now.’

Dallas Times Herald. June 1974

Suddenly Kelly was not only interested in returning to work, but actually at a time when he was becoming a hot property again. The advance word is that of all the stars in the film, it is the magic of Kelly that seems to come through strongest..

TV &Movie Screen. August 1975

Unlike many people in Hollywood, Gene wasn’t surprised when so many millions of teenagers flocked to see the That’s Entertainment pictures. "Everybody out here expected the pictures to attract only audiences over 40 –" he says, “they were counting on the nostalgia bit to grab audiences – but I knew that kids would want to see the musicals because they had a taste of them on television. Of course, on that medium the kinetics were lost and the persons dancing appeared only as big as your thumb. So when the kids got a chance to see the real thing, they flocked to the theaters.”

The Ledger. June 25^th 1974

Kelly says he has “mixed feelings” about the picture, which ends with a seven-minute edited version of the 17-minute American In Paris ballet.

“The thing that suffered most in the picture was the ballet,” he says unhappily.

“The best things in it are not shown. So there has to be a little sadness – it’s like if Shakespeare were alive and you gave a portion of one of the soliloquies – ‘O, what a - peasant slave – I.’ He would say, ‘What happened to ‘rougue’ and ‘am’ and the other words?’ We’re certainly not putting ourselves in the same league, but it happens that that’s part of our creation.”

The movie opens with Singin’ In The Rain, but the original version from the first ‘all singing, all talking, all dancing movie, Hollywood Revue 1929, sung jauntily by Cliff Edwards.

Then we are told:

“Over the years, under the leadership of L.B. Meyer and others, MGM produced a series of musical films whose success and artistic merit remain unsurpassed in motion picture history.

“There were literally thousands of people…artists, craftsmen and technicians who poured their talents into the creation of the great MGM musicals…this film is dedicated to them.”

There are other narrators apart from Gene, including Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Liza Minnelli, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney and Bing Crosby. Gene introduced Fred’s section, and Fred introduced Gene’s.

Gene walks down the sad remains of New York Street on the MGM back lot, and confesses that his favourite dancing partner was Fred. There follows a clip from The Babbitt and The Bromide, about which he says that when you dance with Fred you really have to be on your toes, and he would change his name to Ginger if he could do it again. Then Gene does a nice tribute section to Fred.

Fred is equally complimentary about Gene. He calls him his ‘long time friend’, and says:

“From the start Gene was constantly experimenting, from classical ballet to burlesque buck and wing. He was determined to broaden the horizons of the film musical and in doing so he became one of the most versatile performers the movies have ever known.

“Kelly was forever breaking rules. Though the studio often tried to stop him, Gene insisted on doing his own stunts. His bosses always seemed to find out about it after the scene had been shot. But audiences loved the sight of Gene himself flying through the air in film after film.”

“More than any other star, I think Gene Kelly has become the symbol of the MGM musical in the 50s.”

“The finale to the Broadway ballet from Singin' In The Rain seems to me to exemplify the genius of Gene Kelly: actor, singer, dancer, choreographer and director. He is one of those rare talents who really understood what the movie musical is all about.”

At the end, Frank Sinatra sums up:

“Through the years MGM has produced over 200 musical films and if you had to select one part from one film which would best represent the MGM musicals I have a feeling that the vote would be unanimous, especially among the people who worked here.

“That’s why we have saved the best for last. An American In Paris starred Gene Kelly…The ballet is as timeless as when we first saw it. It can only be described as MGM’s masterpiece.”

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. May 23^rd 1974

That’s Entertainment Premiere supper at the Beverley Wilshire…Sammy Davis coaxes Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire into dancing together on stage while Gene Kelly was stomping alongside Dan Dailey, Donald O’Connor, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Buddy Ebsen, Adele Astaire, Tony Martin and Sammy Davis Senior, to Singin’ In The Rain and other MGM musical gems.

Chicago Tribune. May 20^th 1974

Thousands of screaming fans packed the bleachers that lined the area between the Beverley Theater and the Beverley Wilshire Hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars after the premiere of MGM’s That’s Entertainment…Everyone was there, from Fred and Adele Astaire to Keenan Wynn; with the most applause going to Gene Kelly (escorting Shirley Maclaine) and Astaire

Spokesman Review October 5^th 1974

MGM president and vice-president led a contingent of celebrities to London for the European premiere of That’s Entertainment. Among those flying to England were Gene Kelly…

Los Angeles Times. August 29^th 1974

The best movie of the year is That’s Entertainment, which is a nonmovie. The best sequence in Entertainment is Gene Kelly, doing the title number from Singin’ In The Rain.

Daily News November 23^rd 1973

That’s Entertainment will be premiered across the country for the benefit of the Motion Picture Relief Fund while a slice of total profits will go to the fund…That’s Entertainment is a rarity these days – entertainment.

Gene Kelly couldn’t make it to the screening or the party later, because he was committed to appear at the San Fransisco Film Festival that night.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT PART 2. 1976

The new sequences were directed by Gene.

Narration written by Leonard Gershe.

Produced by Saul Chaplin and Daniel Melnick.

Music arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle, with lyrics by Saul Chaplin and Howard Dietz.

Animation by Hanna-Barbera.

DVD back panel: …hosts Astaire and Kelly gracing the screen with song-and-dance magic, that’s touching, timeless and above all, entertaining.

I love the ingenious Title sequence, starting with photographs of Fred and Gene as they grew up, then adding the names of all the stars in imaginative ‘movie credit’ ways.

Gene and Fred appear with a ladder, a clever continuation of the number That’s Entertainment, from The Band Wagon. Both look spry and smart, in fact it is difficult to realise that Gene is 63 or 64, and Fred is 76 or 77 years old! Especially when they start dancing!

Gene begins the narration: “For Me & My Gal was my first film and boy was I lucky. I was starred with Judy Garland. That’s what I call starting at the top.” We see Gene and Judy singing For Me & My Gal.

There is a section on clowns. Gene says: "I always wanted to be a clown, and in The Pirate with Judy I finally got my chance." We then see an excerpt from Be A Clown.

Following that, Gene is seen in silhouette dancing on a ‘blue’ screen. He introduces a section on Black and white films. Among the gems are a baby-faced Bing singing Temptation, and a very young Judy singing Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart which Gene says Judy did for her MGM audition.

We are next treated to the sight of Gene in huge ears, red nose, pink striped conical hat, and receiving a custard pie in the kisser! No, it is not Lina Lamont taking her revenge, it is an introduction to a section on slapstick.

There follows a section on songwriters introduced by Sammy Cahn.

Gene and Fred appear looking very dapper in top hat and tails. Why did Gene always say he looked like a truck driver when wearing formal attire? In my humble opinion he polished up beautifully! They danced round posters of some movies, then we see Good Morning, and I Got Rhythm, introduced by Fred: “I’ve always said, just put Gene with a bunch of kids and you’re bound to come up with a winner.”

A section on Frank Sinatra follows. Gene: “When he walked out on stage it was not merely the birth of a star, but the creation of a legend.” A very young and innocent looking Frank sings Old Man River. Gene introduces I Begged Her from Anchors Aweigh: “It seems only yesterday that I did this number with Frank. That’s when he taught me how to dance.”

The ladder returns, as do Gene and Fred, in smart suits: ”Movie buffs, and the rest, have a line or a scene they like best.” We see Greta Garbo uttering her famous words “I want to be alone”, and several Clark Gable clips among others.

We are then transported to Paris and the opening scene from An American In Paris. Then we see THE American in Paris, skipping along near the Arc de Triumphe and skating on the Place du Trocadero. “What can I say about Paris that wouldn’t be redundant? Even people who have never been there know its glories from songs, books, movies, even cookbooks, and thanks to the invention of film and records there is a national treasure who will live as long as all the others.” Maurice Chevalier is featured.

Gene says: “Lovers prefer the romantic shadows along the banks of the Seine.” The beautiful Our Love Is Here To Stay is shown here.

Gene skates with some kids at the Trocadero: “One of my favourite places in Paris…I always bring my kids here…Hey, y’know, A number on roller skates – might not be a bad idea.”

Fred and Gene introduce the next section using cartoons on screens, followed by part of the Magic Lamp section of Invitation To The Dance, and including part of the Singin’ In The Rain ballet with Gene in the scrummy grey and yellow outfit and Cyd in her green vamp costume.

Gene then introduces a section on Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn, who did nine films together.

After that: Fred introduces I Like Myself: “Gene, you finally did work out that number on roller skates didn’t you?”

“Yes, I guess I did, in a film dreamed up by Comden and Green called It’s Always Fair Weather”

We then have to watch the obligatory scenes with Esther Williams, which end the film clips.

We see Gene perched on a ladder in the dark, with Fred below on a smaller one. They sing: “A show, that is really a show, sends you out, with a kind of a glow. And you say, as you go on your way: ‘That’s Entertainment’. The art, that appeals to the heart, is a song, that just has to belong, or a dance that is sure to entrance, that’s entertainment.”

They end by climbing up and down ladders, reciting the names of all the stars who have appeared on the show, and then sing along with a reprise of That’s Entertainment from The Bandwagon. It is a real joy to see the two of them together, obviously enjoying what they are doing, and doing it very well.

Now that’s what I call ENTERTAINMENT.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. December 12^th 1975

I had nothing to do with the selection of sequences for the film. Fred and I didn’t even want to be consulted on that, we didn’t want the responsibility of saying what’s good and bad. I told MGM, if you want me to direct Fred Astaire I can do that.

Boca Raton News.July 30^th 1976

The world has rediscovered Gene Kelly thanks to a pair of movies consisting of clips from ancient film musicals. The older generation had forgotten how good he was. Youngsters had never seen him do his stuff on the big screen before…Kelly’s broad Irish grin reflects his feelings about his new found popularity… “A thousand letters a week have been coming in,” he said.

“A lot of mail is from kids who seem to think we made those musicals only a couple of years ago. And I’m surprised at the romantic notes I’m getting from girls who weren’t even born when I made those pictures.

“The interesting thing about Entertainment 2 is that Fred Astaire and I did some new things as hosts of the picture. Audiences can see us then and now.

“I directed those sequences. Fred was wary about dancing again. I told him we wouldn’t compete with ourselves of 20 years ago. We’d just make a few moves….The acceptance of the picture has convinced me that Fred and I are a fraternity of two. We keep in close touch with one another.”

Toledo Blade. June 27^th 1976

The year’s movie supercharger is MGM’s That’s Entertainment, Part 2. And one of the most charming things therein is the running commentary and introduction by Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire…Both have grown mellower since their heyday, but they do an amiable job of guiding us through this lengthy compendium of musical memories which opened the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and has now settled in for a happy commercial run.

Kelly says that neither he nor Astaire had been eager to take on the assignment of playing host. They were wary of introducing their own material, which could be embarrassing – “Now I’ll do a little number for you folks – but we tried to find a way of doing it without blushing.”

Most everyone will agree Messrs. Kelly and Astaire provide automatic “grace and elegance and style,” and Kelly’s unobtrusive direction deserves part of the credit.

XANADU 1980

Saturday Evening Post. July 1980

After a 20 year hiatus from acting in Hollywood musicals, he has returned to star in a major extravaganza. Why?

“Number one, because they asked me. And number two, because I like all the people connected with the project. It’s a great opportunity to do a picture with such talented young people and to be able to play a character my own age instead of one many years my junior, as has often been the case…I do only a few moves in this picture because I don’t want to do dancing that, for me, isn’t satisfactory or very exciting anymore. I’d rather play coach than be the shortstop."

Wilmington Morning Star. October 11^th 1979

“On this picture I will not touch a toe,” Kelly announced to the producers after he signed for Xanadu. At 67, he figured he’s had it as a dancer. Yet there he was, moving to the playback music with his oldtime grace…

Producer Larry Gordon watched the scene with obvious delight. “Can you imagine what a thrill it is to be working with Gene Kelly?” mused the bearded producer. “And to see him dance after he warned us…that he would not touch a toe. Gradually he agreed to do a little dancing, then more.

“Not that he’s easy. When we met with him, he said, ‘Now I want this, and this, and this.’ He knows exactly the way things should be done.”

Gene, Films Illustrated. August 1980

Don't expect to see too much of me - I'm just playing old Dad.

Los Angeles Times. August 11^th 1980

Gene Kelly is such a joy. The writers allowed him to be himself and to be his age.

Dance Magazine August 1980

Gene Kelly on roller skates is as superlatively smooth and commanding an artist as Kelly in his dancing shoes. Or any other gear for that matter.

Both Ortega and Trent (the choreographers) join in Hallelujahs for Gene Kelly’s generous encouragement.

TV Times November 1983

Gene: I only did a few moves in that picture because I don’t want to do dancing that, for me, isn’t satisfactory or very exciting any more. I’d rather be playing coach than be the short stop.

Kenny Ortega. On 'Xanadu'. Dance Magazine. August 1980.
Working with Gene is the most ultimate experience I’ve ever had in my career. Of course he has his own ideas for what he does in Xanadu, but he is always attentive to my ideas too. He’s made me feel respected.

Films Illustrated August 1980.

A glimpse of Kelly in Xanadu is better than no new Kelly film at all. It will be interesting to see how Hollywood's most celebrated hoofer fits in with the new concept of movie musicals.

Disney Magazine 1989. Gene:

It’s the last time you’ll ever see me dancing in a movie. So in that respect I guess Xanadu occupies a special place in my career.

THAT'S DANCING! 1985

The film was made by MGM in its Diamond Jubilee year, 1985. Gene was the Executive Producer, with Jack Haley Jr. as writer, director and producer, and David Niven Jr. as producer.

Taking part as narrators are: Gene; Mikhail Baryshnikov; Ray Bolger; Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli. The original music was composed by Henry Mancini.

St Petersburg Times. August 4^th 1984

I was a technical adviser really, although they call me an executive producer,” Kelly says, again showing that modest Irish grin. “I gave them a lot of what I hope was good advice, although they didn’t always agree with me.”

Introduction.

Jack Haley Jr: “I’d like the audience to walk away six inches off the ground, feeling that they have wings on their shoes….you carry away with you a respect for dancing and a sense of joy – that’s what dancing is supposed to spark in somebody.”

Gene: “I believe sincerely that this is a great dance film for kids to enjoy and learn…When I went to dancing school as a kid there weren’t any talking movies, so there was no dancing on the screen. Think what a dance teacher could do with a video cassette of this in a room, saying to her pupils: ‘Look at that man Fred Astaire. Now I can’t teach you just what he’s doing, ‘cos it’s style…but if you look at him and study him you’ll learn…’”

The Search

They spent 4000 hours viewing film scenes, Gene analysing and advising on which to use. They looked at over 800 films, and did two years' research. Included are dance scenes which have never been seen in decades and some remarkable outtakes which will be seen by the public for the very first time.

The Gathering.

As the 100^th anniversary of dance on film draws near, an historic event took place at the MGM studios, where the greatest living legends of dance met under one roof to pose for a commemorative photograph.

The film begins with a blank screen and drumbeats. Then Gene’s voice is heard: “Long before the dawn of history, long before we could sing or even speak, man danced. Moving to his own internal rhythms, the pounding of his heart, the beating of his pulse, primitive man discovered dance. It is with us always.” Then we see native dancers from all over the world.

Gene next appears on the streets of South Bronx, watching break-dancers. “They say dancing is as old as love, stepping, turning, swaying, moving in rhythm alone or with others – that’s dancing. It’s the primal art, the most physical and most personal of them all. Instead of using our hands to daub paint on a canvas or to chisel a shape from stone, dancing requires the use of the whole body, moving through the space around us. Dancing is also the most impermanent, the most fleeting of the arts. For the spectator it is often a bewildering succession of steps and turns that are difficult, if not impossible, to remember.

“Since the dawn of prehistory, countless artists have sought to capture the excitement, the fluidity, the beauty of dance, on the sides of caves and on temple walls… but no drawing, no sculpture, can ever convey the most essential element of dance – movement….

Centuries passed, civilisations came and went, and still, the art of dancing could only be handed down from one generation to the next by the teacher, the dance master. Then in the late 1800s a newfangled contraption, a novelty designed to amuse the public, gave momentum and life to the elusive art of dancing. The motion picture camera.”

There follows a selection of clips from very early dance films.

Gene: “The chorus girls looked like they spent more time at the dinner table than in the rehearsal hall.”

Then comes a tribute to Busby Berkeley.

Sammy Davis Jr. continues the narration, saying: “You have to learn the basics, and after learning them, that’s when style comes in." Fred Astaire is used as an example: “Style, elegance, charm and class personified.”

Others featured in this section include Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, Shirley Temple, Eleanor Powell, the Nicholas Brothers, and Ray Bolger.

Then it is Mikhail Baryshnikov’s turn to narrate, talking about ballet in the movies. He said: “No self-respecting ballet dancer would dance before the camera. The jerky motion of the film would make a mockery of their graceful movements. The first major artist to appear in films was an American dancer, Loie Fuller.” (A bit of trivia here. I believe Gene used to call Lois McClelland, his secretary and good friend for many, many years, ‘Loie Fuller’.)

He then talks about Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Vera Zarina who was George Balanchine’s wife, and Moira Shearer who was the star of the most popular Ballet film ever made – The Red Shoes. (I would have so loved to see Gene and Moira Shearer dance together.) He mentioned Tamara Tourmanova, who danced with Gene in Invitation To The Dance, and also Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn.

Baryshnikov: “Today we see the styles of dance overlapping, borrowing steps and movements from each other. We all learn from each other, bringing more joy and satisfaction to the audience.”

Over now to Ray Bolger, sitting in an MGM viewing room.

“Once upon a time in Hollywood at MGM there was an era in the history of dance that we will never see again…in the mid 40s MGM had assembled more creative musical artists than anywhere else at any other time. You could dive into that pool of talent and never hit bottom….Most film historians refer to the 40s and 50s at MGM as the golden years of the movie musical… The studio had the number one dancer, and the number one dancer, two gentlemen whose contribution to the screen have never been surpassed. When Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly sat in this theatre and watched their efforts up there on that screen, I don’t think they were ever entirely pleased – perfectionists rarely are. Kelly and Astaire were and are a tough act to follow, but when they’re up there on the screen they’re a great act to watch.”

Clips follow, of Royal Wedding, Moses Supposes, Three Little Words, Invitation To The Dance, Bandwagon, and It’s Always Fair Weather.

Next comes Liza Minnelli to talk about Broadway shows which were transformed into successful movies: Yankee Doodle Dandy, Kiss Me Kate, Sweet Charity, and West Side Story.

Then we see Gene near an MGM soundstage. “Dancing on film is nearing its 100^th anniversary…the music of the 80s had had a profound influence on movie dancing, and the changes we’ve seen continue to hold exciting promise for the future.” We then see clips form Saturday Night Fever, Fame, and Flashdance

“In 1983 film dancing entered a new era. Music videos began to play on TV offering audiences a stylised, exhilarating form of dancing on the screen.” Michael Jackson is showcased at this point. Gene ends with the words: “That’s dancing.”

Film Comment 1984. Interview with Gene by Ron Haver.

Gene Kelly, wearing an old pair of chinos, a green pullover shirt, and beat-up sneakers, is talking enthusiastically about That’s Dancing!, the new film for which he was executive producer, a title he feels is inaccurate. “Actually I’m a supercharged technical advisor…running about 90 hours of footage…and giving my opinion, and then influencing people like Baryshnikov to do the show. …I do confess to being a walking encyclopaedia of dance history. “

Haver:

The interview took place (in Gene’s library) in the late afternoon, and was conducted between conferences with architects, telephone calls, queries from his secretary, a dialogue with his son Tim about dinner, and his date with his 10-year-old grandson for the opening game of the World Series. Through all of this, Kelly maintained a professional calm and an enviable ability to talk intelligently and engrossingly about not only That’s Dancing! But also about his childhood, his early career, and the state of dance over the past half-century. He does this virtually non-stop: he talks easily and well, and has no need of the interviewer's prepared questions.

Gene: “One of the first rules we made was not to use anything that that was in either of the two That’s Entertainments!

“You know what’s amazing to me, and something I cannot explain? The sudden burgeoning of dance companies all over this country. When I grew up there was such a paucity of teachers, of good dancing, of dance companies….I just love it…I’m Hammersteins’ Cockeyed Optimist about the future of dance…when I was a kid, any boy who went to his father and said, ‘I want to grow up to be a dancer’, he’d get a kick in the rump.”

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT PART THREE. 1994

Written, produced, directed and edited by Bud Friedgen and Michael J Sheridan.

Executive producer Peter Fitzgerald

The movie begins with shots of the MGM studios. “Once upon a time there was a factory that created wonderful musical dreams. It happened when a special group of talented artists came together to create some of the world’s most enchanting movies…MGM was not the only studio that made musical motion pictures, but it made more than anyone else and somehow did it better. To tell us more about those remarkable days is one of MGM’s best, Mr Gene Kelly."

We then see Gene standing on the roof of one of the MGM buildings: “The 44 acres behind me was where it all began. When I first came here MGM’s dream factory was in full swing…but the success of the MGM musicals did not happen overnight. It all started when the movies learned to talk…”

He then narrates over several old clips, including part of Broadway Melody of 1929: “The studio introduced a new song that did a lot for me later on, but at the time it was so new that some of the performers had trouble remembering the lyrics!” We see a large wet company in raincoats attempting to do Singin’ In The Rain, including Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Buster Keaton and Jack Benny.

Gene then tells of the introduction of censorship – something which he often had to deal with! (That was when his Irish blarney and killer-smile came in useful, especially if the censor was female!) Following a scene with seemingly naked young ladies taking a shower, we see a man declaiming: “The vulgar, the cheap and the tawdry is out. There is no room on the screen at any time for pictures which offend against common decency.” We then cut to the wholesome sight of Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy singing fit to bust. Gene next highlights Eleanor Powell, Mickey Rooney and Judy, and Esther Williams, who takes on the next piece of narration.

June Allyson does her part too, featuring On The Town and Its Always Fair Weather, which introduces Cyd Charisse as the next narrator.

She is seen in the scenic backdrop building, where they have resurrected part of the scenery from Brigadoon. The set was 600 feet long and 60 feet high, and completely surrounded MGM stage 15.

“Gene Kelly and I spent many hours rehearsing and filming our dance numbers in front of these heather hills. I’ve always had such respect for Gene; dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and director. He did it all, always brought exciting new dimensions to the musical motion picture.”

She talks over Ballin’ The Jack. “Gene’s first big break came on Broadway, starring in Pal Joey. MGM soon grabbed him and started him off as Judy Garland’s leading man in For Me & My Gal."

Next comes the newspaper dance. “Gene had a style all his own; charming, athletic with boundless energy. In Summer Stock he created a classic number using only a squeaky floor and a newspaper as partners.”

We then see Gene in purple shirt and tight black trousers, dancing up a storm and a lot of sweat with Vera Ellen: “As a choreographer Gene staged this exciting and bittersweet ballet to Richard Rodgers Slaughter On 10^th Avenue, from Words & Music.”

Next is Chocolat: “Gene’s inventiveness seemed inexhaustible. In An American In Paris he even danced into a Toulouse L’Autrec painting to find Leslie Caron and the incomparable music of George Gershwin. The film won six Oscars and a special award for Gene, for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.”

Fit As A Fiddle follows, then Heather On The Hill: “It was my pleasure to dance with Gene in several films, but I think this is my favourite; Heather On The Hill from Brigadoon.”

After that we see Debbie Reynolds crooning to a huge poster of Gene, or should I say Don Lockwood, in an outtake from Singin’ In The Rain. “Gene inspired a whole new generation of stars. One of the brightest was Debbie Reynolds.”

Debbie does a section on the glamour of the MGM female stars. This is followed by Lena Horne, telling how she did not feel she belonged at MGM, that they did not know what to do with a black performer. She was considered for the role of Julie in Show Boat but the studios had banned inter-racial romance on screen! (A bit of trivia here. Gene and Betsys' house was always open to one and all. Lena and her husband Lenny Hayton were their friends, I believe, and Betsy and Gene were violently opposed to discrimination of any kind. Although I have read a rather unjust comment she later made about the Kellys, who showed her nothing but kindness.)

There follow sections on Judy, Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Ann Miller, Howard Keel in the MGM vault, Louis Jourdan and Gigi.

Fittingly, Gene started the movie, now he ends it. For the finale we see him walk across an empty sound stage theatre. “What a time it was. Life was simpler then and so was the movie business. MGM’s dream factory created a rich, romantic, compelling world of illusion and although we may not see anything like it again, we’re blessed with memories, and miles and miles of film.

“In the words of Irving Berlin:

‘The song has ended but the melody lingers on.’”

That is always a touching moment for me, the last time we see Gene on screen. But we will ever be grateful for those miles and miles of film, which ensure that Gene and others of his generation will live on, both on our screens and in our hearts.

He is no longer physically with us, but there is much truth in the words he quoted. The melody and joy he brought to the world will linger on.

GENE KELLY IS FOREVER

A personal celebration of his life and work

"My work's so important.."