Gene Kelly: A Brief Biography
Gene Kelly
Through the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, musicals were all the rage. Thousands of people would pour into the theatres to see movies with lavish sets, expensive costumes and songs and dances. Stars such as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell, and Shirley Temple graced the screen and brought entertainment to a time when the Great Depression sapped the hope out of many people. In this land of musicals and escape, Gene Kelly was the king. The audience loved him, and every film he starred in brought new innovations that left everyone on the edge of their seats. He had mass appeal. Why? Because he was an everyday man. No top hats and coattails for him. Usually, Gene would perform in everyday clothes, the uniform of the working middle class and the blue-collar workers. He was someone people could relate to. This was something that was true both on the silver screen and off. Gene Kelly started out life in the thick of trials and tribulations, just like many of us. This is why his story still fascinates us today.
Eugene Curran Kelly was born on August 23, 1912, to James Kelly and his wife, Harriet Curran. He was the third child of this Irish couple, raised in the Roman Catholic Church. There were five Kelly children in total, and all of them were taught to appreciate the value of hard work. Harriet believed that idleness was the tool of the devil, and every spare moment could be used to occupy yourself with something, whether it was homework, games, and practicing new dance moves. This deep-seated value of hard work stayed with Gene all his life. He never resented his mother for this, but always referred to his mother as “My saintly mother.”
Life was difficult in the Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Highland Park was known as an Irish slum in a city whose main industry was steel factories and other low-paying jobs. Violence was frequently met with violence, and with Irish tempers, any slight altercation could be met with a fight. Gene and his brothers knew this very well. Gene had a temper of his own, and when their mother would send them across town to their dance lessons all dressed up in frilly shirts, he always leapt to the occasion when the neighborhood boys would taunt them and call them “sissies.”
Gene’s father, James, was a traveling salesman, selling phonographs and Victrola records around the region, staying away for days at a time. By the time Gene was 6 years old, the phonograph business was slumping. The invent of radio had made it possible for every house to be filled with free music. There was no way to compete. So Harriet, being resourceful, found her children a source of income. Her children became the Five Kellys, performing in weekly talent shows in order to win prizes. The star of this show was Gene’s youngest sibling, Fred, whom his mother had decided would be the child that would rise to stardom. For Gene, she had other ideas. Ever since Gene battled a bout with pneumonia, she was determined that her frail Gene would not become involved with physical work, but devote his brilliant mind to law, one day becoming a Supreme Court Justice. And that was just fine with Gene. He didn’t care at all for dancing. It was hard work and he was tired of the teasing that he would get from the other neighborhood children.
Despite his mother’s complaints about his weak health, Gene became very active in sports in high school, but never to the detriment of his grades. He played hockey and various other sports, always excelling. He even performed in several school plays and musicals. As he grew older, he began to notice that his dancing skills were attracting the teenage girls, and by the time he turned 15, he decided that dancing was worthwhile, after all. He was never short of a date to the school dance.
His renewed dedication to dance was well timed. The country was plunged into the Great Depression and Gene’s father, being without work, had taken to drinking and moping around the house. It was up to Gene and Fred to make the income. With the spurring of their mother Harriet, they held small shows for the entertainment of the neighborhood children in their basement. They also spent the weekends scrounging up gigs in seedy bars and clubs in downtown Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. At these bars, the patrons would frequently ignore their performances or crudely throw money at them as if they were trained monkeys. Unruly guests would shout derogatory comments at them, using terms such as “queer” and “faggot.” Though Fred was able to smile and bear it, these comments would incite Gene and in his great anger he would rush off the stage and beat up the drunk patrons, much to the dismay of the barkeep.
These experiences stuck with Gene all his life, and it was in these situations where Gene became convinced that if he were to be a dancer, that he would be a dancer people would respect and appreciate. It became his life-long mission to prove that men could dance and still be masculine. You didn’t have to be a gay man in order to dance. Years later, he even went so far as to air a special on television called “Dancing is a Man’s Game” where he enlisted the help of Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, and other athletes to show how many moves in sports were similar to dance moves. Alas, despite his best efforts, the stigma that was attached to male dancers was never completely removed.
Gene graduated from high school at the age of 16 years old and went on to attend Penn State University in order to study law. When it became too difficult for him to juggle school and work for his family, he transferred closer to home to the University of Pittsburgh. In order to make ends meet and provide money for his family, Gene frequently held two part time jobs in addition to his rigorous courses, although this never seemed to affect his grades. It was there he became involved with the Cap and Gown Club, becoming its director and staging the choreography for their productions for four years.
Around the same time, Gene’s old dance school had gone bankrupt, and Harriet Kelly decided that it was worth the investment to buy out the business and start a dance school of their own, calling it The Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance. Although it was touch and go at first, Gene’s easy teaching style and the recent introduction of Shirley Temple in the movie theatres led many children to be enrolled in classes. Harriet rented another space in a nearby town, Johnstown, insisting that Gene be able to teach at both locations. For a period of time, Gene managed to juggle his own courses, two part time jobs, and extracurricular activities, all while spending his weekends teaching at the two locations of the Gene Kelly School of Dance.
As time went on, Gene found himself spending more time thinking about the stage than he did about law. On trips to the library, more books on ballet and dance history were checked out than law books, and Gene could imagine himself choreographing on Broadway. He knew that show business was a difficult pathway to take, but that didn’t squash his enthusiasm. Much to the delight of his siblings, he would find new ways to incorporate dance in his everyday movements, dancing around the dinner table while serving up mashed potatoes. Despite being very active in teaching dance and performing at the university, hardly any of his friends knew just how obsessed he was. He would discuss philosophy and sports at the bar, but it was only when he was drunk that he would start pirouetting in the streets.
Finally, Gene decided that he no longer wanted to be a lawyer. He intended to drop out of university, but he was deathly afraid of what his mother would say. He rehearsed over and over what he planned to say to her. When he got around to stating his intentions, he was surprised to hear his mother say that she fine with the idea, that they should instead focus on founding a national chain of Gene Kelly dance schools. He refused this notion, and set out instead to New York City to pursue fame and fortune on Broadway.
After some fruitless searching, Gene finally broke his way into the musical scene. Along the way, he met his future first wife, Betsy Blair, who was a fellow cast member in the production of Diamond Horseshoe. Within two years, he was starring in the lead role in a musical called Pal Joey, and everybody was talking about his star quality. 1941 was a big year for Gene. He and Betsy were married, and David Selznick, a famous producer in Hollywood, offered Gene a contract that he simply couldn’t refuse.
His first movie role was a starring role, opposite Judy Garland in the film For Me and My Gal. Due to its popularity, MGM bought out Gene’s contract and he continued making movies with them. They noticed his talent in choreography, and by the fourth film, Thousands Cheer, he was able to devise one of his own dance sequences with a mop. A couple of films later, they gave him even more liberty with the choreography, letting him design the entire choreography of the movie Anchors Away. The result was the legendary tap dance where Gene danced with an animated Jerry from the cartoon Tom & Jerry, the first time any movie had integrated animation with live action. The audience was so impressed that he was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards of 1945. Even Fred Astaire, a dancer that Kelly himself looked up to, invited Gene to dance with him, and together they performed a dance-off in the movie Ziegfeld Follies.
It was at the height of his movie career that he decided to enlist in the U.S. Naval Air Service in order to do his part during World War II. During this time, he was stationed in Washington D.C., where he helped to write and direct educational films and documentaries. This involvement sparked his interest in producing and directing, and by the time the war was over and he returned to Hollywood in 1946, Gene was brimming with ideas.
Raring to go and with the backing of the studio, Gene took his ideas about production design and used them to innovate how musical scenes were shot for films. As popular as ever, his movies were released in quick succession: The Pirate, The Three Musketeers, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, On the Town, and Summer Stock. In the next film, An American in Paris, Gene felt truly able to spread his wings in choreography. With one of the largest budgets of the time, Kelly designed a dance sequence in the movie that lasted 18 and a half minutes long (A record that still has not been broken) that showcased modern ballet. The film was critically acclaimed, receiving six Academy Awards in 1951. Gene also received an honorary award for his contributions to musicals and choreography up to that point.
People didn’t think that Gene Kelly was capable of outdoing the spectacle of An American in Paris, but he managed to do it the very next year; In 1952, he starred in the movie Singin’ in the Rain. In what has been considered the greatest musical of all time, Gene danced some of the most iconic dances of his career. Even those who have never seen the movie are familiar with his famous tap dance in the rain.
Many stories circulated about the filming of this movie. For instance, during the filming of the rain scene, Kelly was burning up with a fever, but insisted on continuing the shoot. He was as hard on himself as he was on the people he taught. Everyone knew that Gene was a strict, albeit good, teacher. Sometimes, though, the pressure was too great for people. Donald Connor, one of Gene’s co-stars, claimed that working with him was one of the hardest things he had ever done, calling him a “tyrant.” Debbie Reynolds, the other co-star, was new to the whole thing. At the age of 19, this was the first movie she had ever shot. Unable to keep up with Gene’s rigorous step routine and slow to learn the steps, Gene, out of his hot Irish temper, yelled at her for not being able to dance. Rumor has it that Fred Astaire, upon visiting the set, found Debbie crying under a piano and offered to help her learn her steps. This was a prime example of his childhood indoctrination of hard work creeping into Gene Kelly’s professional life. He was never satisfied with his own work, and by extension he was never satisfied with anyone else’s. Freud would call this a classic case of projection: seeing his own flaws in other people.
In 1951, Gene signed a contract with MGM to spend several years in Europe shooting films with funds that had been frozen in Europe. The movies, beset with technical problems, ultimately flopped, and Kelly headed back to Hollywood in 1953. He was dismayed to find that the demand for musicals had declined rapidly, and MGM was cutting the budgets on the musicals they had planned to shoot. The result was a lackluster Brigadoon, where the lack of budget forced the entire movie to be shot on constructed set. At this point, Gene Kelly negotiated for an exit from his contract with MGM. The next movie, It’s Always Fair Weather, did moderately well, known for a scene in which Gene danced in roller skates, a routine that he had come up with when he was still performing with his brother Fred. This movie was followed up by his last musical with MGM, Les Girls. Finally, having complete control over his final project, Kelly produced and directed his first film, a B-movie called The Happy Road.
When his contract with MGM ended in 1957, Gene was 45 years old and unsure of where his next step should be. His midlife crisis resulted in his divorcing his wife, Betsy, with whom he had one child, Kerry. For a time, Gene went back to the stage, directing a production of Flower Drum Song. He also traveled to France at the invitation of the French government to write and produce a ballet for the Opera Populaire. The result was Pas de Dieux, a Gershwin-inspired ballet based on Greek mythology. The ballet became wildly popular and he was awarded a special commendation from the French government.
After returning from France, he remarried in 1960 to his choreographic assistant Jeanne Coyne. He had two children with her, Bridget and Tim, and they remained married until she died in 1973. Gene continued to star in various movie roles, dabbling in non-musical movies and putting on specials on television, such as Dancing Is a Man’s Game and many other revues. Some of the highlights of his later career included his first opportunity to produce and direct his first big budget musical film, Hello Dolly, in 1969 starring Barbara Streisand. Despite the elaborate sequences and the big names associated with the film, it was a flop. The age of musicals was officially dead. After several more minor roles, his last major film appearance was on Xanadu, a roller-disco extravaganza where he was convinced to dance for the silver screen one more time. Even in his old age, his dancing partnership with Olivia Newton John proved that he was still lively and as good a dancer as he was in his youth. Sadly, the film was a major flop, although it gained cult classic status in later years.
Gene, admired though he was, was not without his quirks and flaws. His Irish temper was always with him and no one was ever quite certain when he would be incited. He was an outspoken liberal, which brought him grief during the McCarthy trials. But he stood up for what he believed in, even when Hollywood threatened to remove his first wife Betsy from her starring role in Marty for having communist connections. His ultimatum was that if they didn’t restore her role, that he would pull out of filming It’s Always Fair Weather. A struggle with his faith left him a devout atheist for the majority of his life. He couldn’t reconcile the idea that the Roman Catholic Church supported the Spanish dictator General Franco. In the end, he settled for living his life to the best of his ability and was always reaching toward the next big thing.
Gene entered his third marriage at the age of 78 to Patricia Ward. He was married to her until he died of a massive stroke in 1996 at the age of 84. He left behind him three children and an extensive list of accomplishments: 12 awards, 24 musical movies, 9 stage productions, and a large list of directing accomplishments. He is considered one of Hollywood’s greatest legends. It’s a sure thing to assume that his mother and the rest of the world were certainly glad that he decided to become a dancer instead of a lawyer!