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

by Cynthia Brideson

  Gene kept his mind and social life active during his lull in employment, but nothing made him feel as fulfilled as work. As luck would have it, by September 1939, Johnny Darrow had a possible job for him. The Theatre Guild was staging William Saroyan’s new play, The Time of Your Life. The action of the play takes place at a San Francisco bar owned by an Italian American, Nick. His establishment is a gathering place for those who “can’t feel at home anywhere else.” Among the outcasts are a Greek newspaper boy who sings Irish ballads, a black piano player, an Arab harmonica player, and an Assyrian pinball wizard. Finally, there is an American vaudevillian, Harry, who delivers unfunny comic sketches, performing interpretive dances to express the point he is trying to make. In Saroyan’s words, Harry is “a dumb young fellow whose philosophy is that the world is full of sorrow and needs laughter.”46 Darrow thought the character would be perfect for Gene.

  Gene was not the first or even the second choice for Harry the Hoofer. Before him, Martin Ritt landed the role, but Saroyan ultimately found him wrong for the part. Saroyan needed someone who could make people laugh. Before suggesting Gene, Darrow brought choreographer and dancer Charles Walters to Saroyan’s attention. However, Walters deemed the $175 a week salary too low. Now Gene’s name came up as a possibility. Lawrence Langner, head of the Theatre Guild, recalled Gene’s polished performance in white tie and tails at the Westport Playhouse and declared: “He’s too clean cut, too posh to play Harry the Hoofer.” Apparently, Gene’s diction lessons had worked too well. Saroyan, not having seen Gene act at Westport, had no preconceived notions. When Gene appeared for an audition, Saroyan wanted to sign him immediately. He looked precisely like Harry: he wore pants that were “too long, a coat too large and too loose,” and he was unshaven. What finally clinched the role for Gene was the fact that he could speak loudly. In the text of the play, Harry is described as having “great energy, both in power of voice and in force and speed of physical gesture.”47 Out of the crowd of aspiring dancers who came to audition, Gene yelled, “I can shout!” Langner found Gene’s assertiveness off-putting, but Saroyan saw it as an attribute perfectly attuned with the character of Harry.

  Gene found in Saroyan both a cheerleader and a friend. A reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recorded: “Ever since Time of Your Life, Gene Kelly and William Saroyan have been bosom pals. When Gene speaks of him, there’s idolatry in his voice. ‘That guy’s writing gets you down here. . . . That Saroyan is out of the world.’”48 Harry the Hoofer was in many ways like Saroyan. Because Gene became such close friends with the author, he was able to better mimic the characteristics Saroyan took from his own personality and put into Harry. Gene saw himself in certain aspects of the character as well; Harry was struggling to gain recognition in a world that placed too much emphasis on wealth rather than integrity. In one scene, Harry declares: “I’ve been poor all right, but don’t forget that some things count more than some other things . . . talent for instance counts more than money. . . . And I’ve got talent. I get new ideas night and day.”49

  What Gene found most fulfilling in his work in the play was returning to his first love, choreography. He devised his own dance numbers as well as those of the other characters in the show. He explained the evolution of his seemingly impromptu routines for The Time of Your Life as “an accident.” In 1980, he stated: “Bill Saroyan had an Armenian mouth organ player do some of the music. I said, ‘Americans can’t dance to Armenian music.’ And he said, ‘Go ahead, you can do it.’ And then he had a black pianist playing a 12-bar blues and I wondered how you could relate these styles. One day it hit me, because I learned you can do anything with dance if you do it through the character.”50

  The Time of Your Life premiered at the Booth Theatre on October 25, 1939. Audiences and critics readily accepted its characters as believable, flesh-and-blood people. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson penned what could have been the production’s tagline: “It is innocent at heart and creative in art.” Despite Gene’s conspicuous role in the play, Atkinson gave him only a cursory mention, including him among the list of cast members who added to “memorable scenes.”51 Theatergoers, however, took more notice of the young dancer. In a 1950 article for the Saturday Evening Post recounting Gene’s theater days, one writer recorded that Gene made Harry’s improvised dances “so convincing that, although he had worked the dance out down to the last clean tap and never varied it, seasoned playgoers who saw the show not once but several times marveled at his ability to ‘create a new dance for every performance.’”52

  The play spoke to Depression-era audiences, who related to its “undistinguished characters” who have “rubbed their elbows in life without soiling [their] spirits.”53 Saroyan’s work won both the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. The show enjoyed a long run, closing on April 6, 1940. As part of the most lauded production of the season, Gene was now firmly removed from “smalltime” show business.

  During the run of The Time of Your Life, Gene received an unexpected visit from the lyricist of such classic tunes as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Broadway Melody,” who also happened to be MGM’s most influential producer of musical films: Arthur Freed. On one of his yearly “scouting expeditions” to Broadway, Freed caught a performance of the play and wanted Gene to join the ranks of Hollywood’s greatest “dream factory.” Such an offer was tempting; according to writer Alan Jay Lerner, Freed was “the producer who had taken the studio [MGM] by the hand and guided it through the bustles and breeches of operetta into the modern world of screen musicals.”54

  Though Freed was a true artist, he was unremarkable from the outside. Journalist Murray Schumach described him as a “tidy, conservatively dressed man with thinning gray hair and a voice that is a chronic growl, ranging from the gentle to the ominous.”55 Ironically, this somber, nondescript man gave audiences more to smile about than any other producer of film musicals. Indeed, his first (albeit uncredited) producing effort was The Wizard of Oz (1939). With Oz, he began to create his own brand of musical in which plot and character are dependent on songs and musical numbers. Freed’s films were lavish glorifications of the American Dream, American music, and the American family. If ever there was a film producer who could artfully utilize Gene’s all-American, Everyman persona and dance techniques on screen, it was Freed.

  After a performance of The Time of Your Life, Freed came backstage and tried to convince Gene of his film potential.

  “You want to test me? ’Cause I’m not a handsome guy,” Gene stated.

  “No tests. You’re not going to look any different if you do one,” Freed replied.56

  Gene mulled over Freed’s offer. He had not forgotten his humiliating experience at RKO in the summer of 1936. He did not want to repeat it and was certainly not ready to leave Broadway just as he was earning a name there. “I’m not ready to try pictures. My place is here in New York,” he told the producer.

  Freed accepted Gene’s rejection, but he was not about to admit defeat. He felt he could persuade Gene to come to Hollywood—eventually.

  Arthur Freed was not the only influential producer to take notice of Gene after the success of The Time of Your Life. Billy Rose saw possibilities in him, too. Like Freed, Rose had begun as a songwriter. But unlike Freed, he looked and played the part of a flamboyant producer to the hilt. Betsy Blair described him as “short, with slick black hair, his stubby body encased in a very expensive suit with matching silk polka dot tie and handkerchief. Rose radiated energy and power.”57

  Simultaneous with the run of The Time of Your Life, Rose was preparing a new show for his luxurious nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. The club was located in the basement of the Edison Hotel on 47th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue. Near the entrance “across the whole width of the room was a Gay Nineties–type bar, brass railed and mirrored. The walls were red velvet, there were crystal chandeliers.” Protruding from the stage was a horseshoe-shaped runway; the inside of
the horseshoe lowered between shows and transformed into a dance floor. Enough tables to accommodate four hundred people flanked the stage.58

  Rose originally wished to engage Robert Alton as choreographer of his show; however, Alton was otherwise committed, so Rose turned to his director, John Murray Anderson, for suggestions. Anderson recalled his work with Gene at Westport and immediately recommended him. Though he respected Anderson’s suggestion, Rose was doubtful about Gene’s ability to choreograph the show, especially given that he was performing on Broadway at the same time. Gene could hear the dubiousness in Rose’s voice when the producer called him to offer him the job.

  “I can handle it,” Gene declared defensively.

  Rose asked Gene for a complete description of how he would stage each part of the show. Gene spoke without pausing for breath for over an hour, then waited for Rose’s reaction. All he heard was silence at the other end of the line. Gene assumed he had either walked away from the phone or hung up the receiver.

  Just as he was about to hang up himself, Gene heard Rose’s voice: “Great. That’s exactly what I want. I’ll give you $100 a week.” Gene balked. He had been paid more for his last two shows. “So I swore at him,” Gene recalled years later. “‘Don’t you talk to me that way,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t work for you anyway!’ I said.”

  At the peak of their argument, Rose suddenly burst into laughter and said, “Okay, $115 a week.”

  “I won’t work for that,” Gene said.

  Rose laughed again. “Okay, $135,” he conceded.

  “I’ll take it.”59

  The choreographer from Pittsburgh whom no one had previously wanted had won a plum assignment—and exceptional pay—from one of the most renowned producers in New York. As well as Rose and John Murray Anderson, Gene would be working with an acquaintance he had met at Louie Bergen’s, art director Raoul Pene Du Bois. Before Gene, Du Bois, Rose, and Anderson could execute the show, they had to complete one last but crucial task: auditioning six hundred girls Rose had personally invited to try out.

  The day before the marathon of auditions, Gene was alone in the club, moving chairs and tables to make room for the girls. He heard a light step behind him and turned to see a sixteen-year-old redheaded girl with long legs and wide blue eyes standing in the entrance. He froze, if only for an instant. The Irish American girl had an attractively cocky way of holding herself. Yet there was a vulnerable naïveté about her that struck Gene. It was clear she had dressed to appear older, in a lavender four-gore flair skirt, polka-dot blouse, gray squirrel coat, pillbox hat, and high-heeled shoes that accentuated her long legs. Raising her chin high, she looked past Gene, who was dressed in “an open-necked white shirt, a dark long-sleeved sweater, dark trousers, and moccasins.” Assuming he was a busboy, she approached him and asked about the auditions for dancers.

  “You’re in the right place, but you’re a day early,” Gene explained. The girl frowned and turned to leave. Gene called after her: “Are you a dancer?”

  “Yes,” she replied with a haughty air, as if she were speaking to an underling.

  “Are you a good dancer?”

  “Very,” she replied, and left hastily.60 Gene smiled after her.

  The next day, the red-haired girl returned, but she came without her previous self-assurance. Six hundred girls were competing with her, and they all had the same personal card from Billy Rose that she thought had been given to her alone. After the stage manager corralled the girls into groups of twenty, he introduced them to Rose, Anderson, Du Bois, and “our choreographer, Gene Kelly.” The girl suppressed a gasp. The “busboy” was the choreographer. “I felt the blush begin in the pit of my stomach. [But] when I happened to catch his eye, he grinned at me,” the teenager, whose invitation bore the name Betsy Blair, later recalled. Through her mortification, she felt previously untouched emotions stir within her. “The combination of sensitive Irish face and slim muscular body was spectacular enough, but he was also the only one . . . who looked at us as individuals,” Betsy explained. Despite Gene’s encouraging grin, she felt certain she had no chance of securing a job. As she showed her dancing abilities to the four men, Betsy heard the stage manager mutter: “She’s got no tits. She looks twelve years old.” Rose argued that her “long stems” made up for her flat chest. Gene ultimately convinced Rose to hire her: “She can dance. We need good dancers.”61

  Betsy was thrilled to be under Gene’s care. Billy Rose was known to make inappropriate advances toward chorines, but she had no fears in that direction working at the Diamond Horseshoe with the choreographer, who urged the girls to “just call him Gene.” He was a strict professional, concerned only with how hard the girls were willing to work.62

  Gene worked as hard as Betsy and the other chorus girls in trying to make real the ideas he had explained to Rose over the telephone. For the first show, which Gene named Nights of Gladness, he devised an Irish number that blended swing and traditional Irish clog dance. Gene deemed the number “the most tangle-footed to direct, and the most rhythm-wrecking to score.”63

  In Betsy Blair’s 2003 memoir, she described other numbers Gene designed. Striving toward his goal of creating balletic dance that was accessible to everyday Americans, he planned a football-themed number and a schoolyard ballet that included “identifiable characters” such as a boy, a girl, a bookworm, and a bully. However, Rose vetoed the rather unglamorous schoolyard number and instead demanded “almost obligatory can-can and South American numbers.” “They don’t come to the Diamond Horseshoe to see a fucking ballet!” Rose shouted.64

  Gene obeyed Rose’s orders. He enjoyed his work for Rose in spite of the producer’s less refined taste. After all, he was among friends at the Horseshoe. He had secured his roommate Dick Dwenger a job as a rehearsal pianist at the club.

  It did not take long after the revue’s opening for the nightclub to reach capacity each evening. According to syndicated columnist Walter Winchell, the crowds were drawn more by Gene’s numbers with the chorus than the club’s various headliners. Winchell stated that Billy Rose’s “American Beauties” were the “youngest, prettiest, chorus line in New York—and some swell numbers they do. Go see them!”65

  Gene was dazzled by the great Winchell’s praise of his numbers, but the columnist’s words did not cloud his vision: not everything and everyone involved with the Diamond Horseshoe was perfect. He was becoming swiftly disillusioned with his mentor, John Murray Anderson, who was making Betsy Blair the target of vicious humor. Noting the girl’s infatuation with Gene, he nicknamed her “teacher’s pet” and made her, as she recalled, “his chosen scapegoat.” Betsy had a habit of tossing her head when she danced, which prompted Anderson to shout: “Teacher’s Pet, come here! Your head was bobbing like a cork in the ocean again. Kneel down before me and apologize!” Rather than give way to tears, Betsy made an elaborate, medieval curtsy and murmured, “I’m sorry, Sire.” Several chorines began clapping, but Gene clapped the loudest.66

  Betsy felt victorious where Anderson was concerned, but she was still confused as to where she stood with Gene. She did not wish him to view her as merely amusing. She realized she was in love with him one night during the can-can finale, when she spotted Gene with a beautiful brunette at the bar watching the show. The woman was, as she later learned, Helene Marlowe. Betsy recalled that as she high-kicked and smiled through the number, tears streamed down her face.

  Little did Betsy know that she need not have worried about the brunette. Though Gene did not immediately intend to woo Betsy, he could not ignore the fact that he felt something for her deeper than a teacher’s appreciation of an apt pupil. She was markedly different from Helene Marlowe; she was a girl who needed him, one to whom he could offer guidance. And he was a man who needed to feel useful.

  Gene realized his relationship with Helene Marlowe had been in a state of limbo for too long and showed little promise of moving forward. They parted amicably. Back in Pittsburgh, Harriet was relieved to learn of Gene’s
severed ties with Helene—especially after she discovered that the girl refused to convert to Catholicism as a condition of marriage. One journalist, visiting Helene in 2011, wrote, “I’ve tried to get her talking about Gene but have not been very successful, except for memories of Michael, the dog. . . . Helene Marlowe did not go on to laugh and be teased about her serious relationship with Gene. She went on to marriage and a child and a happy life, but the heartbreak about Gene is still with her at ninety-five, some seventy years later.”67

  Gene buried any sorrow he felt over finally ending his relationship with Helene in his work. While still employed at the Horseshoe, Gene took jobs on two smaller shows that were in closer alignment to his proletariat sensibilities. Two Weeks with Pay, a musical revue, opened in June 1940 at the Ridgeway Summer Theatre in White Plains, New York, before an audience of five hundred. Gene staged all dances for the revue, which had “vacation merrymaking” as its theme. Fred Kelly was in the cast, though a reporter for the New York Times, oddly, referred to him as “Maurice.”68 The show included contributions from twenty renowned writers and composers, including Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Ira Gershwin, Johnny Green, and Johnny Mercer. Intended to reach Broadway in September, it never progressed past the summer theater season. In July, Gene appeared in The Royal Roost, a show penned by Dick Dwenger about a group of indigents who inhabit an abandoned mansion. It opened at the Stamford Connecticut Community Playhouse. Both shows garnered mention in the New York Times, tangible proof that Gene’s rise in New York theater, as one Times reporter stated, “has assumed meteoric proportions.”69 The reporter had ample reason to make such a claim. By the end of the summer, Johnny Darrow came to Gene with the news that he was the front runner to play the most coveted role of the upcoming theater season, and arguably, the entire decade: Joey Evans in Pal Joey.