After months of hearing their daughter rhapsodize about “Mr. Kelly,” Betsy’s parents finally had the opportunity to meet him. His friendly demeanor and genuine interest in their daughter immediately won their approval.23 Though the Bogers assumed Betsy’s interests in Gene and the theater were merely summer fancies, Betsy was already planning to postpone college another year. “I couldn’t leave New York and Gene. Everything was too exciting.”24
If Betsy ever came to resent Gene for being part of her choice to forsake college, she never spoke of it. Show business was her life, just as it was Gene’s. Gene, like Betsy, was a motivated self-learner. He read two books a month, most often on history or philosophy. Gene could have become a law or economics professor, just as Betsy could have become a schoolteacher, but they both thrived on challenge—and few places offered more challenges than the theater.
“Those were wonderful days,” Gene later reflected on the period when he simultaneously worked on Pal Joey and fell in love with Betsy.25 They were equally uncertain days—depending on the failure or success of the show, it could either open or close potential new worlds for Gene and for his future with Betsy.
“I watched him rehearsing, and it seemed to me there was no possible room for improvement. Yet he wasn’t satisfied. . . . It was midnight. I could see a single lamp burning on the stage. . . . Under it a figure was dancing. He was Gene Kelly.”26 Van Johnson’s reminiscences offer proof that Gene was as invested in Pal Joey, if not more so, than its producer and composers. George Abbott, John O’Hara, Rodgers, and Hart began to see the play as representative of a troublesome rather than a wonderful time in their lives. After it went into rehearsals at the Biltmore and Longacre on November 11, 1940, both O’Hara and Hart often disappeared for days or even weeks at a time. The two artists’ absences left Rodgers and Abbott to shoulder the burdens of rewriting and last-minute casting before the premiere on Christmas Eve 1940. Though Gene admitted that on many nights after rehearsals he would go to a cloop with O’Hara and Hart (when they were in town, that is) and stay there until four in the morning, he was always up early for the next day’s work. Gene did not drink to excess and claimed to have “practically gone on the wagon” for the run of Pal Joey.27
As elated as Gene was to be part of a Rodgers and Hart production, he could not ignore the physical toll it was taking on him. During rehearsals, his weight dropped from 163 pounds to 147. Though he later claimed never to have seen a vitamin pill in his life, he consulted a doctor, who promptly gave him a course of vitamin B-1 tablets.28 The strenuousness of his role did not keep Gene from endeavoring to interpret and gain an intimate knowledge of his character, just as he had when playing Harry the Hoofer. “Joey isn’t bad—he just doesn’t know the difference. . . . By all his standards, and the standards of the people he’s been brought up with, it’s . . . an accomplishment to land a rich society dame and work her for all he can,” Gene stated in one interview.29 In another he noted with a wry grin, “When my mother comes to New York to see the show, and sees the kind of a no-good skunk I’m playing, she’ll probably yank me off the stage and drag me home by the ear.”30
After weeks of exhausting rehearsals, Gene and the rest of the cast were ready for an out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia. Gene, with a strained voice and frayed nerves, felt that the “freshness” he had originally thought he could bring to the role had left him; the part had become a “burden.” However, Gene’s sudden pessimism ended after act 1 of the tryout. Johnny Darrow rushed backstage after the curtain fell to inform Gene that his Joey was already so wonderful that “by the time you get to New York you’ll be knocking the shit out the part.”31
On December 24, 1940, Gene prepared to make his entrance on the stage of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. In the audience were the harshest of New York’s theater critics as well as Gene’s mother, who was wringing her hands with anxiety. Gene mentioned in subsequent interviews that his mother was in the audience, but he never said whether his father or siblings came to see the show. Betsy Blair was also there, with Dick Dwenger as her escort. For Gene, the performance went as if he “were in a dream.”32 By the end of the show, critics and audience members alike realized that the dancer had come forth as an actor.
The first person he saw after the curtain closed was his mother, weeping with happiness. After kissing her, Gene ran to Betsy, who had rushed backstage as the audience was still applauding. The couple went to Lorenz Hart’s to celebrate Christmas. Ordinarily, as is the custom on a show’s opening night, the group would also have been awaiting the first reviews. But the next day was a holiday—Gene would have to wait an excruciating twenty-four hours to read critics’ reactions. However, Hart and the rest of the company were sure the show was a hit and felt it was not premature to celebrate.
They were correct: on December 26, critics released almost unanimously positive reviews. “Take my tip and don’t miss Pal Joey. . . . Gene Kelly is terrific as Joey. He acts, he sings, he dances superbly,” raved Robert Morris of the Mirror. The New York Times ran an advertisement with various reviews for Pal Joey, including one by Louis Kronenberger of PM: “Pal Joey is the most unhackneyed show since Of Thee I Sing . . . superbly illiterate and full of rich and gamey spade-calling.”33 But Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, the critic notorious for the “morning after put down,” had little praise for Pal Joey.34 Atkinson did concede: “If it is possible to make an entertaining musical comedy out of an odious story, Pal Joey is it.” But his concluding statement, “Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?” has become one of the “most quoted lines in the annals of Broadway theater criticism.”35 Rather than sap theatergoers’ interest, Atkinson’s review drew audiences curious to see what made the show so loathsome. Gene later admitted that after certain scenes in the play, he “could feel the waves of hate coming from the audience.” Undaunted, he devised clever ways to defuse their revulsion. “I’d smile at them and dance and it would relax them. It was interesting to use the character to manipulate the audience,” he explained. “The audience would think ‘This jerk isn’t such a jerk after all. The jerk!’”36
The press grew more positive as the weeks passed, virtually erasing the effects of Atkinson’s words. By March, four months into the show’s run, Gene had become a regular guest at parties where he mingled with musical comedy masters including Victor Moore and George M. Cohan. In June 1941, Pal Joey was still receiving full-page spreads in the New York Times, though journalists now focused specifically on Gene’s work. John Martin, dance critic of the Times, wrote with enthusiasm: “A tap dancer who can characterize his routines and turn them into an integral element of an imaginative theatrical whole, would seem to be pretty close, indeed, to unique.”37
The importance of Pal Joey in Gene’s career cannot be overstated. In this production, he created a blueprint for all of his succeeding works. “Dancing and character are far more closely united than in the majority of ballets, and through both there runs a penetrating line of comment which makes it possible to laugh at Joey instead of shooting him forthwith,” Martin observed.38 Since his earliest days learning from the dance masters in Chicago, Gene strove to give his dances meaning and allow them to communicate more than dialogue. He had accomplished his goal in The Time of Your Life, but in Pal Joey, he took it a step further through his dream ballet. It was the first time Gene had used such a device—but in subsequent years, he would seldom fail to include one in his projects. Because Gene made the original Joey so special, he could never quite dissociate himself from the part. Indeed, in the 1952 revival of the show, the writers inserted Gene’s slang term cloop into Joey’s vocabulary.
Gene’s peers had seen the risk Pal Joey held for him early on. “My friends said ‘Don’t do it.’ They said I would get myself marked as a lousy heel,” Gene noted. “Well, if that is to be, let it.”39 In one cast member’s estimation, Gene actually absorbed some of Joey’s personality traits. Stanley Donen was “astonished” by Gene’s “cockiness” and “confidence i
n himself.” He found Gene “egotistical and very rough,” alleging that he had “a ruthlessness in the way he went about things.”40 Gene’s success could have easily bred vanity, especially given that, in Van Johnson’s recollection, each time Gene walked on the set, “the ladies and gentlemen of the ensemble . . . [prodded] each other in the ribs and [said], ‘There’s Kelly,’ with more than a little awe in their voices.”41
Though Gene’s dominating presence was off-putting to Donen, he was not the self-involved star he appeared to be. Van Johnson asserted that Gene carried “no swank, no pretense.”42 In truth, Gene held the struggling members of the chorus in high regard. He took special note of Donen, considering him the dancer with the most promise in the show. Additionally, Gene did not begrudge the production’s bit players their moments of glory. He recalled that “the kids would line up knee-deep outside the Ethel Barrymore Theatre where we were playing. The first night I thought those kids were for me, supposedly the star of the show. I learned differently. It was that red-haired chorus boy they were after.”43 Gene, rather than resent the redhead—Van Johnson—became closer friends with him. With Van, Donen, Keenan Wynn (Gene’s friend from the Westport Stock Company), and Charles Walters, Gene would often catch midnight shows of whatever Fred Astaire movie was showing at the time. Walters recalled: “We all used to go up to the balcony so we could smoke, talk, and dream out loud.”44
Gene, behind his cockiness and confidence, was still a dreamer, fantasizing about possible outcomes of his uncertain show business future. “I know I’m lucky now,” Gene said. “But what if my next show is lousy and I am shown up as being not too good? You don’t get a book and songs like [Pal Joey] every year, you know.”45
In spring 1941, Gene received a most unexpected visitor backstage after an evening performance of Pal Joey: MGM’s fastest-rising musical star, Judy Garland. Judy, like Gene, was one of producer Arthur Freed’s discoveries. He had insisted she be cast as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939) when studio head Louis B. Mayer pushed for Shirley Temple. Judy became a sensation not only in Oz but also in a subsequent string of backstage musicals in which she costarred with top box office attraction Mickey Rooney. As a result of Judy becoming (with Mickey) the nation’s first teenage idol, Mayer’s respect for Freed’s hunches increased exponentially.
Gene admired Judy’s film work, particularly The Wizard of Oz. Despite his propensity for playing streetwise, unsentimental characters, he held a reverence for childhood throughout his entire life. At his and Judy’s first meeting, he saw that she was unlike the archetypal insincere Hollywood personalities who had made him disdain the idea of ever making movies. She was earnest, down to earth, and had talent comparable to the most highly regarded Broadway singers. Like Gene, she had taken on the role of breadwinner for her family at an early age and worked her way through unsavory vaudeville houses until she attained stardom. For these reasons, Gene respected her as a true professional.
During a brief respite Judy had earned between motion pictures, she chose New York as her vacation destination. She was eager to be considered an adult; thus, her choice to see a mature show like Pal Joey did not come as a surprise. Still, Judy’s mother, Ethel, and members of the MGM press team chaperoned her to the theater. By the time the curtain closed, Gene had the nineteen-year-old actress thoroughly entranced. Judy and her entourage of press aides went backstage to see the star after the audience finally stopped applauding. Judy and Gene exchanged compliments on one another’s work.
Never missing an opportunity for publicity, the press agents suggested that Judy and Gene dine at the Copacabana together. In agreeing, Gene broke a date with Betsy. After spending an hour or two at the nightspot dining and dancing, Gene suggested he and Judy go out alone together.
“I don’t see how I could get away,” Judy said.
“Don’t you trust people or is it your press agents that don’t trust people?” Gene asked.46
Judy escaped from her minders long enough to reach East 52nd Street, where she and Gene danced at Leon and Eddie’s nightclub. The fairy-tale evening continued with a horse and buggy ride through Central Park. “It’d be great if we could make a picture together!” Judy declared.47
For the next few days, all Gene could speak of was Judy, Arthur Freed, and Hollywood. But he had yet to win Louis B. Mayer’s approval. The man whose vision of the world was defined by the apple pie world of Andy Hardy films bristled at the darkness of Pal Joey and its antihero. “Too short, too sexy, not sympathetic, not for us,” Mayer concluded after seeing Gene perform on Broadway.48
Arthur Freed had observed in his experience that performers with unconventional looks—like Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, or Judy Garland—often exuded an indefinable star quality on camera. Because of Judy’s and Freed’s relentless persistence, Mayer finally agreed to invite Gene to work at his studio.49 When Mayer told Gene he would like to have him at MGM, Gene replied: “I’ll wait until the show [Joey] is through. Then I want to take a test out here [in New York], not there.” Gene was aware that MGM was famous for its unflattering screen tests. “You don’t need to take a screen test. I’ll hire you when you’re ready,” Mayer assured him.
The mogul’s offer certainly made Gene’s future less uncertain—if he accepted it. The proposal was more tempting because he would not have to undergo a screen test—he was still smarting from the humiliation of shooting one at RKO five years before. “I was sure Arthur Freed was behind all this,” Gene reflected years later, recalling the producer’s eagerness to sign him after The Time of Your Life.50 MGM was hard to resist. Although it was the youngest of the major studios in Hollywood (it began functioning in 1924), it already enjoyed more prestige than any other production company. According to historian Peter Hay, “The world of MGM is brighter, darker, and more romantic than real life because MGM cinematographers worked with directors and the art department to enhance the mood of the scripts and increase the illusion of reality.”51
Gene accepted Mayer’s offer, but not without trepidation. As a self-proclaimed liberal and part of “the sweatshirt generation,” he was uncertain how well he would fit in the conservative, rarefied atmosphere of MGM.52 Moreover, despite the opportunities MGM presented, Gene found it painful to contemplate leaving his social circle in New York. Betsy Blair shared his hesitation. In fact, she hoped to dissuade him from accepting Mayer’s offer. She and Gene enjoyed the rich, full lives they had made for themselves in New York.
Thus Gene and Betsy were both, to varying degrees, relieved when Gene found a reason to reject Mayer. Several days after Gene agreed to work for the studio, he “got a notice from MGM . . . it said, ‘You must take a screen test.’” Gene’s temper immediately flared and he shouted over the phone at the MGM lackey that Mayer was a liar. He then proceeded to write Mayer a livid letter letting him know there would be no Gene Kelly in Hollywood for the time being. At MGM, Freed and Mayer were shaking their heads. Freed had in fact ordered stills of Gene, not a screen test. He intended to persuade Gene to come back, but such a task was more difficult than he expected.53
Gene was stubborn; he would not hear of working for Mayer, “that right wing punk who lied to me.” As Gene’s friend Jules Steinberg explained his mindset: “If he had an idea in his head about something, he wasn’t going to let anything come between it and him.”54 Gene refocused his energy on Pal Joey and Betsy Blair.
Betsy, like Gene, had continued to ascend on Broadway. She had “inherited” June Allyson’s part in Panama Hattie, which gave her one line: “Hello, sailor!” However, a far better opportunity soon came her way: one night at Louie Bergen’s during dinner with Gene and Dick Dwenger, William Saroyan offered her the chance to audition for a role in a production she came to view as her career’s Pal Joey, the ingénue in Saroyan’s new play, The Beautiful People.
When Betsy met with Saroyan and the show’s producer, Pat Duggan, Gene was with her. Betsy recalled that Gene “was being very protective—almost as if he were my agent.” Dug
gan was dubious that the seventeen-year-old Betsy could fill the part and would not cast her until he heard her project her “tiny voice” onstage. Gene took the script home and stayed up all night to prepare himself to work on two scenes with Betsy the following day. On the morning of the audition, Gene went with Betsy onstage. They had spoken only six or seven words from the scenes they had rehearsed when Saroyan rose from his seat in the auditorium and exclaimed: “Okay, that’s enough!” Gene, clenching his fists, shouted: “Give her a chance, Bill!” Saroyan laughed, defusing Gene’s anger. “I said ‘okay.’ She’s okay,” he clarified.55
When The Beautiful People premiered at the Lyceum Theatre on April 21, 1941, Betsy’s notices were positive; one writer stated, “This is one ‘mouse’ Kelly better do right by.” Betsy’s performance in the show was enough to make a talent scout from Twentieth Century-Fox offer her a contract; but, like Gene, Betsy ignored the studio’s pleas that she make a screen test. “I foolishly decided not to accept,” Betsy reflected in 2003. “I didn’t want to be a ‘starlet.’” Betsy saw her opportunities in her future stage career—and her relationship with Gene—as boundless. “Gene and I were in love . . . the horizon glowed with a golden light,” she reminisced.56
To their friends, Betsy and Gene were a puzzle. They knew she was more than a “kid sister” to him, but how much more? The two themselves were well aware that their relationship had moved beyond that of teacher and protégée or big brother and little sister. Before they became physically intimate, Betsy explained, they had developed a ritual at the close of each evening. Gene would walk her to her door, at which point she would say, “Thank you. Now I’ll walk you back to your hotel, and you can walk me back. I promise after that I’ll go in and go to bed.” By the end of summer, they often walked until dawn. One night, Betsy was too exhausted to return to her room. “I’ll lend you a toothbrush and pajamas,” Gene said, motioning for her to come inside his hotel. Betsy followed him upstairs, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms. “I don’t know what he [Gene] thought. I don’t know when he fell in love with me,” Betsy wrote. “But Gene was an honorable young man. What remained of his Catholicism manifested itself in his attitude toward women.” Though he began to invite her to spend the night at his apartment, Gene never went beyond giving her a kiss before she went to sleep. “You’re too young for more than that,” he told her. Betsy later admitted that she was impatient to be more than “looked after.”57 His “not making love to me was his way of showing me that he did love me, though at the time I didn’t understand that and wondered what the hell was wrong with him. . . . I wasn’t used to being treated with such consideration by men—particularly not men in the theater,” she reflected.58
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 12