Gene’s accidents made Harriet all the more adamant that he continue attending dance classes—a pursuit she hoped would keep him out of trouble. Thrifty as ever with the household budget, she managed to set aside money to take him and his siblings to the theater whenever a Broadway show came to Pittsburgh. She had never forgotten her girlish hopes of being on the stage, and she hoped to transfer her youthful ambitions to her children. Among the luminaries Gene and his siblings saw were Billie Burke (wife of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.) and George M. Cohan, a man Gene declared to be one of his first major influences. Rather than tell stories of royalty and wealth, Cohan wrote and starred in plays focusing on middle-class characters who were plucky embodiments of the American Dream. Though Gene committed Cohan’s style to memory, he did not see himself as the next Yankee Doodle Dandy. He envisioned himself as a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
His weekly dance lessons and the long walk to and from the studio were a source of dread. The way Harriet insisted Gene look when attending lessons, dressed in a “prim” suit with an “Eton collar, hair slicked and his ears scrubbed pink,” did nothing to discourage bullies from targeting him and his brothers. “The route to [the dance] school was lined with kids whose mothers held less aesthetic views,” Gene said. “Invariably the divergent schools of thought clashed and I had to do battle on each of six corners to prove I was no sissy.”23 Because Gene was smaller than other boys his age, he felt he had to prove himself, “and the best way to do this was with my fists.”24 According to Fred, “Gene would start the fight and Jim would finish it. Jim was our protector. But it was sort of our daily routine.”25 Gene was especially angered when he was taunted by older boys with whom he played football; these boys knew he was a superb athlete and most certainly not a “sissy.”
After one too many weeks went by with Gene, James, and Fred coming home from dancing lessons with limps, bruises, and “shiners,” Harriet forgot her frugal nature and paid to have them take a taxi to and from school. “Fighting, that was the style in Pittsburgh in those days,” Fred reflected. “But aside from being a fighting town it was a real show business town.”26
Fred’s assessment was correct. Theatrical companies and acts passed through town regularly, prompting Harriet to make her children a part of the city’s show business world. By 1921, nine-year-old Gene and his siblings had become so proficient at dance that Harriet entered them in amateur night competitions under the name the Five Kellys. Harriet took inspiration from the popular family group, “Eddie Foy and the Seven Little Foys,” which had become a national sensation on vaudeville beginning in 1910.
Vaudeville reigned as arguably the most popular entertainment during Gene’s early childhood. In historian John Kenrick’s words, it was a “hodgepodge of songs, sketches and specialty acts” that could vary from family dancing troupes to performing seals.27 Unless vaudevillians made it to the “big time,” meaning they would be paid up to $1,000 a week, they were relegated to small- or medium-time theaters at whistle-stops around the country that paid only $15 a week. The epitome of a big-time venue was New York’s Palace Theatre, which opened in 1913.
The Five Kellys were not the Foys, and though audiences met their efforts with enthusiasm, it was clear they were not going to the big time. According to Michael Kelly, Gene’s nephew, “The five dancing Kellys used to replace the seven little Foys when they couldn’t get to town.”28 As the children grew older, they refused to participate any longer. James Jr. was most adamant against it, openly declaring his hatred for amateur theatricals.
Each summer, Harriet gave the Five Kellys a much-needed break from their lessons and professional engagements. Between 1916 and 1924, the family rented a vacation cabin on Lake Erie in Ripley, and later on Lake Conneaut in western Pennsylvania. Harriet took her children from school two weeks before the term came to a close and did not bring them back until two weeks after the new term began, arguing that little work was done at these times anyway. James, like Harriet, relaxed a number of his rules during these halcyon summers, most notably his insistence on formal dress.
The children thrived in the unstructured atmosphere at the lake. Gene would always run out of allowance before any of his siblings because, as the most active in the family, he spent more to rent a horse or canoe for the day. In later life, Gene recalled summers at the lake as the most idyllic periods of his youth. He retained the love of nature and recreation, and for the rest of his life always left time for camping, picnicking, and other leisure activities, even during periods of hard work.
Though far removed from the world of show business, Gene still enjoyed tastes of it while at the lake. Fred wished to put on amateur shows for the other vacationing children and enlisted Gene as director. Gene relished this more authoritative role and, after each show, tried his hand at being a businessman by offering—for a fee—to teach other children how to sing, dance, and recite.
One of Gene’s most thrilling experiences at the lake was meeting lightweight boxing champion Harry Greb, who was training at a camp nearby. Greb gave Gene a few lessons. The boy put his newly learned skills to good use on the unsuspecting bullies in East Liberty. “Boxing was a ghetto kid’s dream, for fame and easy money,” Gene explained. “But an uncle took my brother and me down to the gym and showed us guys who were punched out, talking out of the side of their head. That kept us dancing.”29
When Gene returned in the fall of 1924 to St. Raphael, the school’s nuns pressured him to continue his involvement in the theater. They placed him in several school productions, including Babes in Toyland, simply because he was the only boy his age who could tap-dance. Gene was not enthusiastic. “As a kid . . . if anyone had told me I’d grow up to be a dancer, I’d have socked him in the jaw,” he later said.30
Though the Kelly children had, for the most part, lost interest in performing, Fred remained eager, staging miniature vaudevilles in the Kelly basement. He arranged puppet and dog shows as well as a magic show that had Gene playing Houdini. Predictably, Gene suffered a head injury after falling in the chair from which he was unable to loosen himself during the routine. Still, Gene grudgingly helped his younger brother with his efforts, though he, like James Jr., disliked “small-time show biz.”31 Harriet insisted that Fred charge 3¢ admission for his neighborhood productions. However, she knew his talents were worth more, so she proceeded to book him at various venues in Pittsburgh. According to Fred, “corny comedy” was one of his specialties.32 Gene’s biographer Alvin Yudkoff asserted that Fred was Harriet’s favorite son and the one among her five children she believed had the most potential as an entertainer.33
Unbeknownst to Harriet, Gene had stopped resenting his dance lessons. In truth, he wanted to outshine Fred when they performed together, but the younger boy invariably won more applause. Gene’s boyhood friend Jules Steinberg recalled that Gene kept his dancing ambitions to himself. “We would discuss sports most of the time.”34 Not until years later did Gene confess that he hated to see dance lessons come to an end. “We [Gene and his siblings] loved the dancing,” he said. “The younger a child is when exposed to dancing the better his or her chance is to respond instinctively to the music.”35
2
A Depression-Era Kid
The period following World War I led to an explosion of creativity in show business that made the time ripe for new performers, the Kellys included. America’s isolationism in the 1920s led artists to refine uniquely American music, dance, and theatrics. Despite the postwar rise of the Ku Klux Klan, much music of the era was inspired by new forms of jazz introduced by black musicians. Jazz, like its predecessor, ragtime, was fully accepted only once audiences heard it on Broadway. One of the first examples of a modern American musical to blend “hot” jazz with “sweet” romantic tunes was Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s Sally (1920). Ziegfeld’s masterpiece used music and dance to further the plot and reflect the characters’ feelings and intentions.
Aside from Ziegfeld’s production, two of the biggest hits of the
1920s were Lady, Be Good (1924) and Funny Face (1927), both of which were typical of the decade’s light, witty musical comedies. George and Ira Gershwin’s scores distinguished the plays, as did the immaculate performances of Fred and Adele Astaire. Together, the Gershwins and the Astaires brought jazz fully into the mainstream. The new refinement found in jazz dance as exemplified by the Astaires led more and more parents to enroll their children in dancing schools.
The prosperity that defined the 1920s did not leave the Kellys unaffected; indeed, in 1924, they were able to move from Mellon Street to 7514 Kensington Street, approximately three miles south. The bachelor uncle and spinster aunt who had lived with the family on Mellon Street apparently found other lodgings, as the Kellys were now able to make ends meet without the aid of relatives. Aside from James’s income, eight-year-old Fred often brought in anywhere from $10 to $50 for performing in amateur shows in and around Pittsburgh. Nevertheless, the house was heavily mortgaged.
Kensington was only a few miles east of the city center and mere yards from the opening of Frick Park near Homewood Cemetery. Gene and many of the neighborhood children enjoyed using the cemetery as a skating venue during the winter months. The Kensington home was aesthetically pleasing, with a large porch, two stories, and a third-story attic that Gene and Fred used as their room. For the rest of his life, Gene looked upon this period of his childhood with the most nostalgia.
One of the most vivid memories of Gene’s childhood was seeing his beloved hometown team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, win four of the seven games in the 1925 World Series. “We were delirious,” Gene declared. Of all sports, he held baseball in the greatest esteem. “I loved to play in the field, that’s where I shone,” he asserted. “I was a dazzler. I remember that all the other fellas wanted to get up to hit, but I loved better being in the field. Maybe a lot of that was ego, because any ball hit near me in the infield I could get.”1
Another memory of Gene’s adolescence stands out due to its impact on his development as both an athlete and a dancer. Like most teens, Gene idolized famous figures of the time, particularly those on the silver screen. On one frigid, overcast day in 1925, Gene decided to cut school and sneak to the local movie house. In an account he gave to Parade magazine in 1957, he explained that he went into the theater, angry over an argument with his mother. But he came out
anxious to get home and say I was sorry. The picture was The Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks, and in one scene Fairbanks said something I’ll always remember—“When you are in the wrong admit it—when you are in the right, fight.” I . . . have also often thought what a power for good movies can be, and I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that had the movie I saw that day been a gangster picture or, let’s say anything other than a Doug Fairbanks picture, my life might have taken a different course. For Doug Fairbanks was my ideal from that day on and his dashing athletic prowess was what really inspired me to become a dancer.2
The Mark of Zorro was a 1920 film, so the showing Gene saw was likely a re-release. However, Fairbanks remained active in films during Gene’s formative years, starring in pictures such as The Three Musketeers (1921), The Thief of Baghdad (1924), and The Black Pirate (1926). Gene later named Buster Keaton as another of his heroes. “A lot of his moves I certainly intuitively copied in doing certain numbers.”3 Because of his dark good looks, Gene was not as convincing a comedian as Keaton, though he did possess a talent for wit and mimicry that he expanded throughout his career.
As Gene was preparing to enter high school in the fall of 1926, he endeavored to become less like Buster Keaton and more like a junior Douglas Fairbanks where his athleticism and budding romanticism were concerned. For his freshman year, Gene attended Sacred Heart School. Located at 325 Emerson Street, the school was attached to the church in which Gene had been baptized. After only one term, he transferred to the public Peabody High School on North Highland Avenue. Peabody, though not a private school, was a stately, three-story brick structure whose front was graced with Ionic pillars. There, Gene was pleased to be the only Kelly boy in attendance. Finally, he would not have to compete with Fred for center stage. He began to pursue dancing in earnest, but not because he wanted to prove he was as talented as Fred. His driving force was, in one word: “girls.” Gene elaborated: Dancing “gave me a chance to put my arm around their waists without getting my face slapped.”4
Gene possessed a reverence for women from an early age. His regard for the opposite sex began with his strong love for Harriet, whom he referred to in later life as a saint, and his close bond with his sisters. Like many a youth, however, he was still unsure of himself with girls.
Gene’s confidence grew with his success in theatrics and sports. He sealed his interest in dancing upon discovering that it helped him win substantial parts in school plays. Unlike his attitude toward St. Raphael productions and his brother’s basement vaudevilles, Gene was eager to be a part of the world of show business at Peabody High School. In his junior year, he joined the Masque and Wig Society as well as the Assembly Squad. Gene and another dancer, Jimmy Brenner, performed physically challenging dance routines in the school auditorium designed to persuade other boys to join the school shows. Although he was involved in theater throughout his three-year tenure at Peabody, most of Gene’s stage appearances took place in his senior year, at which time he joined the Senior Dramatics Society. Perhaps Gene’s most memorable—if most embarrassing—high school theatrical experience was his portrayal of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His pants fell down during the performance, sparking much laughter from the audience. Overall, however, Gene found acclaim in his stage endeavors.
At home, Harriet noted that Gene was particularly adept at playing charades, a game requiring a great deal of acting skill. Harriet acknowledged Gene’s cleverness at showmanship, but she did not foster his dancing and theatrics in the way she did Fred’s. She decided Gene would have a better future as a lawyer. Gene, loyal son that he was, did not refuse Harriet’s plans. Such a career was not entirely unsuited to Gene’s talents; a lawyer employs a certain amount of theatrics in convincing judge and jury to agree with him. Gene, though shy, lost inhibition when arguing about his convictions. His talent for persuasion was evidenced when he joined the debate team at Peabody as well as a debate society, the Toreadors. The group, composed of a dozen students of diverse backgrounds and opinions, met at the YMCA each week. “I was the only Catholic, the others were Protestants and Jews, but we could discuss the tenderest subjects and understand each other,” Gene reflected in 1962. “We could even criticize each other—the criticisms leveled at me were usually that I was conceited. We all were. We were also deeply religious, atheistic, and agnostic by turns, and pretended we knew too much about sex to even discuss it!”5
Gene’s involvement with the Toreadors began his lifelong interest in philosophy and politics. Harriet and James were greatly perturbed at one result of his broadening mind. He began to rebel against his strict Catholic upbringing. Instead of choosing “the funny papers” as his primary reading material, he would bring home tomes such as H. G. Welles’s Outline of History, in which Welles criticized religious and political figures such as Alexander the Great, Mohammed, and Woodrow Wilson for their failures to unify humanity. Gene found the book especially compelling due to national events that occurred during his sixteenth year.
In 1928, progressive New York governor Al Smith became the first Catholic to run for president. He won the support of nearly every Catholic in America, including women who had heretofore neglected to utilize their right to vote. However, Smith’s candidacy led to a surge of anti-Catholicism, especially in the South. Pittsburgh was not immune to such prejudice. Gene witnessed anti-Catholic cross burnings on the hillsides of his hometown. By Gene’s senior year, he was again a devout Catholic, perhaps because of the intolerance he witnessed against the faith he had known all his life. He even went as far as to consider becoming a man of the cloth. In 1962, he recounted to the TV Radio M
irror his fondness for “the young parish priests who had such an influence on us when we were kids in Pittsburgh. Father Tynan for example—a handsome, tough, well-educated fellow, virile and energetic, who played third base like crazy and had a way with kids, tough or otherwise.”6 He discussed the idea of entering the church with a priest, “who advised him to take his time, probably seeing that the monastic life wasn’t for Gene.”7
Gene remained alternately agnostic and religious for the rest of his life, but no matter how his spirituality changed, he never disparaged others’ belief systems. Still, he claimed that the greatest shock he received when he entered college was “not the birds and the bees or even the theory of evolution. . . . It was the discovery that some fellows could not believe in God and still be just as nice, if not nicer, than those who went to church.”8 This realization left Gene not an atheist but a “very ecumenical” Catholic. No matter how religious he was at a given time, Gene did not discount omens and superstitions. “When I was a boy I used to have troubled dreams. I dreamed one night about my dog and the next day he was dead. After all these years, I’ve never forgotten it,” Gene told an interviewer in 1944.9 In his later career, he always insisted on wearing his “lucky shirt” in at least one scene in each of his movies.
During Gene’s time of religious exploration and crisis, he funneled much of his confusion, anger, and budding philosophy into his writing. Though he did not yet break the news to Harriet, who still favored a legal career for him, he considered majoring in journalism once he entered college. He gained experience as the associate editor for his high school newspaper, the Citivan, and also served as associate editor of the Peabody yearbook. As well as writing journalistic pieces, Gene wrote poetry. Many of his verses were published in the Citivan, revealing the shy, sensitive side to his dynamic and forceful nature. His poems often described working-class people and neighborhoods—in essence, the environment and people he knew.
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 3