He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics)

by Cynthia Brideson

  Throughout the month of October, Gene saw less of Helene as Leave It to Me! toured in New Haven and Boston for its pre-Broadway tryouts. On November 9, 1938, the show premiered at New York’s Imperial Theatre. Brooks Atkinson, the difficult to please theater critic of the New York Times, called it “a handsome carnival” with the “wittiest score” Porter had yet penned. Gene’s work garnered no special mention in any review; the closest thing to notice he received was via Robert Alton; Atkinson deemed his staging “clever dancing.” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” which the reviewer called “a broad piece of ribaldry,” became the drawing point of the show and seldom failed to win applause from the audience.19 On April 30, 1939, during the run of the show, the New York World’s Fair opened. The event drew 44 million people and created stiff competition for Broadway plays. Leave It to Me! played for 291 performances; one can only wonder if it might have enjoyed a longer run without the diversion of the fair. The production closed on July 15, 1939—without Gene.

  During the run of the show, Johnny Darrow informed him that he had the opportunity to play a leading role in an upcoming Little Theatre musical revue entitled One for the Money. The Little Theatre Movement (which, since its beginnings in the 1910s, was a sort of precursor to the Off-Broadway Movement of the 1950s) produced intimate, noncommercial, and reform-minded shows. Though officially a “little” production, One for the Money was slated to premiere at a Shubert-owned theater, the Booth. Also, Gene’s salary was guaranteed at $115 a week, a hefty upgrade from the $75 he was currently earning in the Porter production. The producers of Leave It to Me! told him that if he quit the show, he would never work for them again. Such news gave Gene pause; if One for the Money failed, he would be back where he started. However, choosing the new show seemed judicious. After all, it was to be directed by John Murray Anderson and choreographed by Robert Alton. The show, presented by Guthrie McClintic and Stanley Gilkey, allowed Gene to meet their colleague, legendary stage star Katharine Cornell, who took an interest in his career. Gene would appear in seven different numbers, some of which required him not only to dance but to speak lines. Gene later stated: “You never get paid much for just dancing. In that second show, somebody gave me a line to say and I realized they’d have to pay me more to speak. And I thought, hey, this is easy.” What was not so simple was for Gene to lose his Pittsburgh accent. Cornell engaged a dialogue coach to help him. “In 1939 my flat Pittsburgh accent must have sounded really terrible,” Gene admitted. “This teacher would ask me to say ‘water’ and I’d say ‘wadder’ . . . just like the Jean Hagen character in Singin’ In The Rain. . . . After a few months of hard work, I felt I was ready to play Shakespeare.”20

  Even with his newly refined speech, Gene seemed out of place in One for the Money. Indeed, one number required him to be costumed à la Fred Astaire in white tie and tails. On the surface, the revue seemed a vehicle for right-wing propaganda. However, upon closer inspection, it was revealed to be a parody of elitist lifestyles. Sidney Whipple of the Pittsburgh Press observed, “There are . . . sketches that lampoon the pseudo-culture of the brainless rich.”21

  The production was light and modestly staged, but Gene approached it as if it were the most prestigious Broadway spectacle. He tirelessly rehearsed with Robert Alton on his dance numbers, hoping to find ways to bring new dimensions to them. During one practice session, Alton asked Gene to improvise a soft-shoe routine to brighten an otherwise wordy and slow-paced scene. Gene ran into the dancer’s equivalent of writer’s block, lamenting, “Nothing comes. There’s no reason for the dance, no motive. A dance is supposed to say something, and here there’s nothing to say.” Alton argued that the dance did have a purpose: “You want her [the girl in the number] to know that you have a kinship of spirit . . . that you think she is beautiful.” According to a 1946 Modern Screen article, in ten minutes, Gene created a dance “that said all those things, and more.”22

  Gene found a new teacher in the show’s director, John Murray Anderson. “No one has had as great an influence on my work as John Murray Anderson. The biggest compliment I ever had, certainly up to then, was his approval of my work on One for the Money,” Gene revealed. What Gene took from Anderson was his creative use of lighting to suggest mood and his ability to “watch a song and make one simple suggestion that would turn a good number into a hit.” Even more than Vincente Minnelli, Gene claimed, Anderson knew “how to construct a scene.” As Gene’s biographers Sheridan Morley and Ruth Leon put it, “With Minnelli . . . you could see the seams. . . . With Murray you saw all the magic and wonderment of the effect.”23

  Gene made three more contacts during the run of the show. First, he met the sensitive Hugh Martin, the vocal arranger and understudy to all the male members of the cast. Next, there was the boisterous Keenan Wynn, a chorus boy and son of the famous vaudevillian Ed Wynn. Finally, Gene befriended another member of the chorus, William Archibald. Archibald, five years Gene’s junior, was making his Broadway debut in One for the Money.

  One for the Money’s run had a rocky start. Wynn became ill with the flu and Martin was required to take his place without having gone through a single rehearsal. In one number he was required to lift leading lady Maxine Barrat gracefully upward, a feat Wynn could accomplish without effort. However, Martin, forty pounds lighter than Wynn, found it impossible. The orchestra members became so amused by “the circus” occurring on the stage that they set their instruments in their laps and watched. People began to laugh so hard that many “cried real tears.”

  “Bring down the curtain!” the harried stage manager called. Martin fled backstage, attempting to make it to the restroom before he became sick. Gene interrupted him, giving him, as Martin recalled, “that famous Kelly grin and a bear hug to go with it.”

  “Hugh!” he cried. “You were a smash. They oughta keep that in the show.”

  “Not with me,” Martin said and ran the rest of the way to the bathroom.24

  Though the embarrassment made One for the Money “a classic exercise in humiliation” for Martin, the show was a highly positive experience for Gene.25 The production, which had opened on February 4, 1939, played for 132 performances. The revue excited little critical attention, but what notices it did receive were respectable. Brooks Atkinson noted that it opened to an “extremely enthusiastic audience” but that during many stretches, the revue seemed like a “private joke” that author Nancy Hamilton wrote for her friends rather than the general public. Atkinson gave Gene his first nod in a New York review, mentioning him by name and adding that he “can dance.”26 But Gene would soon receive greater notice.

  By June, One for the Money was ready to go on tour. Robert Alton faced a dilemma; he had commitments in New York, as did several members of the troupe. Who would coach the replacements? John Murray Anderson called upon Gene to take the job. The replacements, more experienced as actors than as dancers, were eager to receive Gene’s help. Viewing Gene’s work with the new performers, Anderson was pleased to see he had added his own touch to the routines without “compromising Alton’s work.”27 On June 5, One for the Money premiered in one of Gene’s favorite cities, Chicago, where it played at the Selwyn Theatre until July 15, 1939. Gene’s hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reported of the Chicago tour: “[The show is] a glittering rib of café society, which is two-thirds first-rate and just a third dull. . . . [Gene’s] hoofing comes under the general heading of distinguished. Some of the Chicago reviews have even caught in him a combination of Fred Astaire and Georgie Tapps, and they aren’t far wrong, either.”28

  Though he enjoyed the tour, Gene desired to return to a simple lifestyle for the rest of the summer of 1939. After One for the Money closed, he and Bill Archibald drove to Orr’s Island in Maine and rented a weather-beaten cottage by the ocean. In a 1941 interview, Gene explained why he seldom saw a profit after the run of any show: “What I like to do when I have any money is to go to Maine for six weeks. I know an island there where I can do anything I want to.
It’s a swell place to be.”29 The excursions to Maine were akin to his lakeside vacations as a child. The time Gene spent in the outdoors seldom failed to replenish him after the frenetic pace of city life.

  With little to worry about for six weeks, Gene’s adolescent desire to write was reawakened. Bill Archibald was a serious author and spent several hours a day practicing his art. Gene, attempting to follow his friend’s work ethic, began to draft a three-act drama. The plot dealt with a young out-of-towner who arrives in New York and “finds himself in serious trouble.” Gene wrote one and a half acts but abandoned the project when he could find no way to proceed. Undaunted, he set to work on a comedy, which he called a “very sophisticated S. N. Behrman sort of thing.”30 However, as had happened with his drama, he was at a loss as to how he should continue the story after the second act. Gene became restless, and the sound of the wind and the waves outdoors was an endless distraction. He now remembered why he had not chosen to pursue writing: writing was a sedentary, lonely business, and he had to be in motion and in contact with fellow creatives. He later admitted: “Writing was beyond me.”31

  When their Maine idyll ended, Gene and Bill found that they did not share as much in common as they had thought. After squabbling over one too many issues, both petty and serious, they parted ways forever upon returning to New York. Bill went on to a successful writing career on Broadway, working both as a lyricist and playwright for shows such as The Innocents (1950) and Portrait of a Lady (1976).

  Before the next theater season began, Gene went to see his family in Pittsburgh. He had made a promise to himself that he would not go home until he had reached some level of success in New York. In the eyes of loyal publicists in Pittsburgh, the fact that he had appeared in two Broadway shows made him a bona fide celebrity. Louis Little, an acquaintance of Gene’s who had offered to finance him through law school, threw a party for him. Gene, who assumed it was going to be a small, informal gathering, appeared at the event in his customary T-shirt, khakis, and loafers. He was startled to find the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the mayor, and several prominent citizens in attendance. He tried to mingle for a time before settling down on the floor (his favorite spot at parties, perhaps because it freed him from circulating, requiring people to come to him). After a short while sitting there amid the festivities, he looked down at his shoes and mumbled, “Well, I think I gotta go now.” Gene’s friend Jules Steinberg later asked him why he had left so quickly. “Little was exploiting me. I don’t want to be exploited. I thought the party was just for me and my pals. If I knew strangers were going to be there, I wouldn’t have accepted.”32

  More pleasant were Gene’s visits to his family’s two dance schools, which were thriving under Fred and Louise’s direction. The studios now had over five hundred pupils and were bringing in $12,000 a year.33 The Kelly family reunion was short-lived and incomplete—Gene’s eldest brother, James, was living in Cleveland and his older sister, Jay, was busy working as a schoolteacher and was no longer involved in the dance studios at all. His father seemed more tired than Gene remembered. Only Harriet remained unchanged. She listened eagerly when Gene told her about the new job awaiting him. Johnny Darrow had contacted the stage manager of the Theatre Guild, Johnny Haggott, and suggested Gene as chief choreographer for the summer season at Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse. Though the job did not take Gene back to the New York stage, it provided him with a more important position than he had thus far won on Broadway. Harriet could not have been more pleased.

  “For a boy from the streets of Pittsburgh (and aggressively proud of it too) it was ironic that his first real break in show business happened in the ‘toniest’ of summer theatres,” author Richard Somerset Ward commented of Gene’s work at the Westport Country Playhouse.34 The Playhouse, which opened in 1931, had gained the highest of reputations and become an established stop for summer stock companies. The theater was located in a converted tannery that, nestled among red barns, bore a look of rusticity. Those involved in productions took an active part in painting scenery and sewing costumes. “It was like a musical about doing summer stock,” actress Ruth Warrick observed. “It’s like belonging to an exclusive club, to play Westport.”35

  Despite the lofty reputation of the Playhouse, Gene’s pay was less than what he had been earning on Broadway (no records exist on what the exact pay was, but it was likely between $35 and $75 a week). However, the experience of working at Westport was comparable to taking a college course. Gene was assigned one project after another at a frenetic pace. The variety of duties initially overwhelmed him, and he wondered if the job was too much for him. But he did not wish to add to his failures in 1939—failed writing endeavors, a failed friendship—so he threw himself into his multitude of tasks.

  His first assignment held the most prestige—staging Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson of Ziegfeld’s Show Boat (1927) fame. Gene had a mere three days to devise dances for an all-black theater troupe from Harlem. Gene found a firm supporter in Robeson. Robeson admired Gene’s political opinions, though his own were further left than the young choreographer’s. The week-long run of The Emperor Jones in August was considered a success.36

  Gene’s next assignment, Green Grow the Lilacs, was a rural drama utilizing traditional folk songs. The show, like The Emperor Jones, was a monumental success and was held over for a second week. The heads of the Theatre Guild, Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner, adopted the play as their pet project for the next few years. Though other guild members referred to it as “Terry’s [Theresa Helburn’s] Folly,” the play evolved into Oklahoma! the first collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

  But the production for which Gene received most recognition during his summer at Westport was a revue entitled The Magazine Page. Gene took on three assignments for the production: master of ceremonies, performer, and choreographer. The sketch in which Gene participated was essentially a satire showing a series of different types of dancers attempting to interpret the same tap routine. Gene’s personable, tongue-in-cheek send-ups won over audiences and led Armina Marshall, wife of theatre producer Lawrence Langer, to later reminisce: “I remember I told Gene Kelly he had talent. . . . I said to him, ‘Just work at it and you’ll go someplace.”37

  The revue proved to be the highlight of the season not only because of Gene but also thanks to the talents of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who acted in the show and wrote its clever lyrics and dialogue. Also in the cast was fledgling actress Judy Holliday. Comden, Green, and Holliday were the primary members of a popular theater troupe (which later included another young musical talent, Leonard Bernstein) called the Revuers. Green and Comden in particular took an immediate liking to Gene. Green explained, “There was a certain element of boyish ingenuousness along with an element of [a] worldly hard quality [in Gene].”38 “What I remember most was the effect he had on an audience. They just loved him.”39

  Gene found Comden and Green as intriguing as they found him. Gene, who had a lifelong love of word games, discovered that Comden’s and Green’s exceptional mastery of wordplay made for stimulating conversations. At this time in his life, Gene began to actively befriend bright, creative types like Comden and Green. “He was always smart enough to surround himself with wonderful exciting people,” Green stated.40 Gene’s time in Westport did more than introduce him to influential personal and professional contacts in the theater world; he said his experience in summer stock taught him “how to be an actor.” He elaborated, “I learned to do it all, some of it maybe not so well, but I learned a lot that year.”41

  As an ending to his unusually active summer, Gene decided to go to Mexico. The trip turned out to be less a vacation than a test of faith. Betsy Blair wrote that the Kelly clan “was a good Catholic family but Gene was no longer a good Catholic, or so he believed. [In] Mexico [he was] appalled by the extremes of wealth and poverty.” Gene was so riled by what he saw that when he returned home he invited his
father, who never doubted the church’s integrity, to visit the country with him. There, Gene tried to show James “the gold inside the churches and the beautiful, dignified people living in clay shacks.” He assumed that James would understand why he had lost his faith. “It didn’t work. Pop only saw the good the Church does, but they had a great trip and enjoyed the beers,” Betsy concluded.42

  Though he deemed himself an atheist during this period, Gene still essentially lived the life of a good Catholic boy. His time in Westport had been an eye-opening experience; there, he had seen much sexual freedom and experimentation among his colleagues. According to many of his fellow thespians’ accounts, he was one of the few who didn’t join in these extracurricular activities. Upon returning to New York, Helene Marlowe was still his only girl.

  After such a productive summer, Gene was perplexed to find no immediate prospects awaiting him in New York. He subsisted for nearly two months on $15 a week from Social Security. No longer able to afford his Village apartment, he relocated to a tiny room at the Woodward Hotel on West 55th Street he shared with a struggling playwright and musician, Dick Dwenger. According to Betsy Blair, Dwenger was “blond and slight with glasses. He had a quiet authority and wit about him, and he played the piano.”43 Rather than ask him to pay half the rent at the Woodward, Gene requested that his friend act as his rehearsal pianist at a “squalid, depressing, and rat-infested Masonic Hall” that he rented as a rehearsal spot for a quarter an hour.44 Dwenger was one of the many artists Gene met at his favorite haunt, Louie Bergen’s Bar on 45th Street. The clientele there were “other ambitious young actors, writers, and directors. Their group was intellectual and left-wing.”45 A few in the group were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, among them actor Lloyd Gough. Gene was open to all political ideologies, but he did not align himself with Communism, primarily due to his abhorrence of regimentation.