Aside from his moral values, Gene did not wish to take their relationship to the next level until he was certain he had a reliable income in New York. Betsy may have thought he had completely forgotten Hollywood, but he could not help wondering if he had been hasty in his decision to reject it a second time. He mulled over missed opportunities and Judy Garland’s words, “It’d be great if we could make a picture together!” He did not have to ruminate for long; only weeks after Gene turned Mayer down, the mogul’s son-in-law and rival, David O. Selznick, paid the dancer a visit.59 “Your father-in-law is a son-of-a-bitch because he lied to me,” was Gene’s greeting to the producer. Unfazed, Selznick chuckled and admitted he had a strong dislike for Mayer, too. Selznick offered him a contract—no screen test required. He added that Gene would be committed only to five pictures, with the option of returning to Broadway for several months per year. Gene softened, especially after Selznick concluded his visit by telling Gene he would receive $750 a week beginning in October 1941. This would give Gene financial security and allow the producers of Pal Joey time to find a replacement for the rest of the season (the appropriately named Georgie Tapps took over the part).60
Before Gene headed west, he was in talks with William Saroyan to possibly star with Betsy in a play entitled Sweeney in the Trees. Saroyan stated that he had written it with the couple in mind. Though they never did the play (and it never made it to Broadway), Gene adopted the nickname “Sweeney” for Betsy. Betsy retaliated, calling him “Geney.”
As he prepared to move to Hollywood, Gene completed one last gig in New York—one that, at last, fulfilled his first, true ambition—to be a choreographer. The production, George Abbott’s musical Best Foot Forward, was no small show. Gene, who in later years spoke of what a lucky man he considered himself, was already aware of his unusual blessings at the age of twenty-nine. A reporter for the Hartford Courant recorded that Gene, though he “considers himself too intelligent to be superstitious . . . still touches wood when he talks about the good fortune that has come to him.”61
“I want little guys, a new fresh team of songwriters on this show,” George Abbott announced as Best Foot Forward went into production. Van Johnson, who was still rooming in the same apartment house as Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, suggested that the two musicians “be a team.” Martin and Blane heeded Van’s suggestion with superior results, although they drove the fellow tenants mad by endlessly pounding out what became the production’s theme song, “Buckle Down, Winsocki,” on the piano.62
It was Martin’s suggestion that Gene be considered as choreographer. With only five weeks remaining before the show premiered, Abbott was panicking that he still had no dance director. When Martin told Blane of his idea to suggest Gene, Blane told his partner he was “off his rocker. . . . Gene Kelly’s appearing eight times a week at the Shubert Theatre two blocks away. How can he do both?”
Martin took a chance and visited his old colleague during an intermission of Pal Joey.
“Hugh, you old stinker, come ona my dressing room. Want a Coke?” Gene asked the songwriter.
Martin, ignoring his question, blurted out: “Will you do the choreography for Best Foot Forward?”
Gene, perplexed, asked Martin how he knew he had wanted to work as a choreographer since his arrival in New York.
Martin, feigning omniscience, claimed, “I just know.”
“Hmm. Clairvoyant,” Gene said, smirking. “Well, I have a four-week vacation coming up. I could stage your show then. That’d be better than a vacation for me.”
Martin “raced” to tell Richard Rodgers, a silent partner and music advisor for the show, of the news. Rodgers approved, but Abbott bellowed, “Can’t this show be first class without robbing me of my star? Joey is our biggest hit yet! How do you know this man has any gift for choreography?”
Abbott went to see Gene himself, and whatever words they exchanged succeeded in convincing the producer to give his star the job. Gene was in his element choreographing Best Foot Forward. He saw to it that the cast was composed of real teenagers, seven of whom were from the Gene Kelly School of Dance. Martin recalled that by the end of Gene’s first day on the set, he had already begun to remedy the problematic show. The songwriter explained that Gene had the pivotal gift of adding “life and humor” to a number, which made the difference between it being well received or “laying an egg.” Even more than his directorial talent, Gene’s rapport with dancers impressed Martin. There was always “more than a little laughter” when Gene was present during the rehearsals, and the dancers’ limbs seemed “supercharged” with energy.63
Gene’s friendly relationship with the performers made him better able to create dances suited to them, for he took the time to know their personalities. Gene’s technique was to “build a number around the particular talents of a performer, then match the individual movements to the music for maximum effect.”64 The cast boasted unique talents who needed special dances; among the performers were June Allyson; Nancy Walker, a sassy “black Irish” girl; and Pal Joey alum Stanley Donen.
Gene enlisted Donen’s help in his efforts. Gene and the young dancer were well matched, sharing determination, precision in their work, and a strong, if at times “put-down” style of humor. As much as they shared, Donen did not have Gene’s brooding quality. “He was not totally serious, far from it. When you’re with Stanley, be prepared to fall to the floor giggling,” actress Audrey Hepburn later said.65
Gene may have been pleased with Donen’s help, but Abbott grew weary of the enterprising youth. Several weeks before the show premiered, Abbott ordered his stage manager to dismiss Donen. Gene turned to his brother Fred to assist him in the remaining time before the show opened. Best Foot Forward was ready for its tryout period in September 1941.
Gene had accomplished all he had set out to do upon his arrival in New York three years earlier. Once Best Foot Forward opened, he could leave for Hollywood with no regrets in his professional life. But he felt more than a little regret at the thought of leaving Betsy Blair. Never before had he been involved with a girl he could not envision living without. Now, with a film contract signed and impressive Broadway credits to his name, marriage seemed a viable—and appealing—option. “I am glad we waited,” Gene later wrote. “I do not believe in hasty marriages. Nothing so vital, so important, so for-all-your-life, should be a quickie.”66
In Betsy’s memoir, she recalled that Gene’s proposal came “one moonlit night” when they were sitting on the edge of a fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. “He said he wanted me to be the mother of his children, and besides he couldn’t leave me alone at the mercy of New York. . . . I said ‘Yes yes yes yes yes yes.’”67 They planned to marry in September after The Beautiful People closed and while Best Foot Forward was in its tryout period. Because Betsy had not yet turned eighteen, Gene needed her father’s permission for marriage. Mr. Boger consented. Betsy and Gene initially planned to be married by a justice of the peace, but after they agreed that the ceremony would take place in Philadelphia with Gene’s family in attendance, he decided they should be wed in a Catholic church. Betsy, who still harbored Marxist political convictions, was hesitant. “It has to be in a church. Do you want to kill my mother?” Gene asked, only half joking. Before the ceremony, Betsy (with her fingers crossed behind her back) saw the local priest, promising to convert to Catholicism and raise her children as Catholics. On September 24, 1941, seventeen-year-old Betsy and twenty-nine-year-old Gene wed, with both their families present. The Bogers gave the couple an elaborate breakfast afterward.68
The newlyweds spent two weeks in Philadelphia while Best Foot Forward was trying out. They enjoyed room service, sightseeing, and visiting museums, although they looked more at each other than the paintings on the walls.
After Best Foot Forward wrapped, Betsy and Gene returned to New York for its Broadway premiere. On October 1, 1941, the show opened to rave reviews—even from Brooks Atkinson. Atkinson deemed the play “fresh” and “good
-humored,” with “none of the sleazy nightlife of Broadway” (one can assume he directed this last comment at Pal Joey). Atkinson lauded Gene’s dance direction for the production as “droll and whirling.”69 The play ultimately outran Pal Joey by more than fifty performances. Hugh Martin claimed that without Gene, “the show would have failed and I would have had no career whatsoever.”70 Martin hardly exaggerated; based on the success of the play, he and Ralph Blane received an offer from MGM for a seven-year contract. Their first assignment? A film adaptation of Best Foot Forward produced by Arthur Freed with dance direction by Charles Walters. Stanley Donen traveled to Hollywood as well and snagged a spot as a chorus boy in the film.
At Louie Bergen’s, Gene and Betsy’s friends arranged a gathering that served as a farewell party, a celebration of Best Foot Forward’s success, and a toast to Gene and Betsy’s marriage. They ate a chocolate devil’s food wedding cake amid “riotous . . . love and laughter.”71 Lloyd Gough made Betsy promise that, once in Hollywood, she would not buy a house with a swimming pool. The most difficult person to whom they bade farewell was Dick Dwenger. He, Gene, and Betsy had become like the Three Musketeers over the past year and a half, and now they wondered if they would ever see each other again. Dick waved good-bye to Betsy and Gene, watching their car embark on a long honeymoon journey to New Orleans and points beyond before proceeding to Hollywood.
Now that he was leaving Broadway, Gene was seized with sudden anxiety that he was making the wrong decision in pursuing films. However, because Selznick’s contract allowed him to accept Broadway roles if he so wished, his departure from New York theater did not have to be permanent. Over a decade later, Gene expressed his enduring fondness for life on the stage. “It is one of the strange and wonderful qualities of the theater that once you have been part of it, once you have known it intimately, it always stays the same,” Gene reflected. “Coming back to the theater is coming back to reality, to human contacts. . . . These are the things that instantly make the prodigal feel at home when he returns.”72
No matter what doubts Gene had about his move to Hollywood, he assured himself he had done everything he could in theater for the time being. Indeed, in Pal Joey, dance critic John Martin credited him as “surreptitiously” forcing the “high brow columns” to view a musical as a work of art that was “considerably better than most of the works that frankly admit to being art.”73 Now was the time to bring the same transformation to the Hollywood musical. Gene’s goals for his life on the West Coast went beyond changing the look of film; he wanted to change the entire idea of Hollywood society, bringing to it the intellectualism he and Betsy had found so fulfilling in New York. With Betsy’s support and the collaboration of fellow New York transplants, Gene emerged as one of the first of a new order working to redefine Hollywood moviemaking.
Part 2
Riding on a Rocket
1941–1957
7
At the MGM University
After Gene Kelly proved he was a triple threat—dancer, actor, and singer—in Pal Joey, Broadway critic John Martin opined that the “only fear one has for the future is that a young man who can act as well as Kelly can will gradually be weaned away from dancing.”1 Martin’s fear almost became a reality. As Gene discussed his future in films with David O. Selznick in the fall of 1941, the producer informed his new star that he intended to make him the next Fredric March. Gene was surprised but intrigued by the prospect. Thirty years later, he reflected: “Selznick only wanted me to be a legitimate actor; he wasn’t interested in making musicals—he said he didn’t know how to do them!”2 But Selznick did not intend to pull Gene away from dancing forever. Because of Selznick International’s lofty reputation, rival studios often requested “loan-out” services of the actors employed there. Consequently, Gene could be asked to perform in an MGM or Twentieth Century-Fox musical. Selznick International had very few actors under contract but was responsible for introducing such screen legends as Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn to filmgoers. Among the male stars who regularly worked for Selznick were Fredric March and later Joseph Cotten. If Metro did request Gene’s services, he would find far more competition there than at Selznick International. Under contract to MGM were reigning musical actors like George Murphy and Mickey Rooney.
Given the customary breathless pace of Gene’s work, MGM would have been a better fit for him. Indeed, beginning in 1940, the studio released more than twenty-six films a year while Selznick produced only two to three “prestige pictures.” MGM had the distinction of releasing both prestige pictures and low-budget films (think of the quickly made yet highly entertaining Andy Hardy or Thin Man serials versus meticulous masterpieces like The Wizard of Oz or 1940’s The Philadelphia Story).
By 1940, Selznick International was the highest-grossing studio in Hollywood, thanks largely to Gone with the Wind. The following year, however, the studio fell from grace as precipitously as it had risen. Without a major studio in which to reinvest his profits, Selznick and his partners encountered major tax issues that ultimately led to a deal with the Internal Revenue Service to liquidate the studio within three years via dividing and selling the company’s assets among the partners. At a profit, Selznick and his partners resold the rights to the studio’s most valuable property, Gone with the Wind, to MGM. Selznick, who despised Louis B. Mayer, could not have been pleased.
At the time, Gene was unaware of Selznick International’s financial woes. At every overnight stop during his and Betsy’s trip west, he compulsively telephoned his new employer. “Am I going to be late for an assignment? Am I missing any casting calls?”
Selznick’s casual reaction only intensified Gene’s anxiety. “There’s no hurry. Just enjoy yourself,” the producer told him.
Gene had no idea what, if any, definite assignments awaited him in Hollywood—nor, it seemed, did Selznick.
Gene, though riddled with apprehension and anxiety, enjoyed his honeymoon. “We were happy and rich,” Betsy reminisced. “We stopped when we wanted to, we ate when we were hungry, we made love wherever we were, we drove through the night if we felt like it . . . [but nothing] could stop us on our appointed way.” The newlyweds spent hours on the road playing endless word games, keeping score over the course of each week. “Since we were both such competitive game players, it was a real contest, and the result was usually very close,” Betsy remembered.3
The couple spent ten days in New Orleans, dining on Cajun food in the French Quarter and enjoying jazz music and dance. Then they took a banana boat to Mexico, where they would spend a few weeks before proceeding to San Francisco for a week-long stop. From there, they would drive down to Hollywood, arriving in mid-November 1941. Photographs from the honeymoon reveal that Betsy was still wearing the plaid skirts, bobby socks, and saddle shoes of a schoolgirl and Gene was still wearing his uniform of khakis, sweatshirt, and loafers. Both looked like freewheeling teenagers on a post-graduation road trip. Like typical fun-loving teens, they allowed their imaginations to run wild when observing their fellow passengers en route to Mexico. They were particularly fascinated with the “gigantic Chinese cook” on board who seemed to speak every language on the planet. “He was the first of the hundreds of strangers Gene and I invented stories about for the next sixteen years,” Betsy wrote.4
On one occasion in Mexico, as Gene and Betsy drove in the car, drinking thermoses of tea and snacking on Oreo cookies, they ran out of gas. Gene went to get help while Betsy slept on the floor of the car. Awakened by the sound of horse hooves and slowly turning wooden wheels, Betsy looked out the window to see Gene riding in a donkey cart beside a farmer in a sombrero. Gene jumped from the cart and held out his hand in an ornate gesture reminiscent of Douglas Fairbanks in The Three Musketeers (1921). From behind the farmer, a somber eight-year-old girl with long black braids appeared. She took Gene’s hand and he twirled her in a circle, set her down, and danced around her, ending with a bow. She watched with a “grave little smile” and curtsied to him. The
farmer then handed Gene a can of gas before he and the girl rolled away down the street. Gene filed the image of the serious little girl away in his memory as a source of future inspiration.5
In Mexico, the newlyweds gazed at Mayan temples, swam in the Gulf and Acapulco Bay, and visited museums, churches, bars, and dance halls. When they moved on to San Francisco, they enjoyed the luxury of the Fairmont Hotel. The establishment was an opulent treat after camping in the car or sleeping at roadside inns. “I could see how easy it is to get used to luxury,” Betsy admitted. In the bayside city, Gene and Betsy caught up with their friend William Saroyan, who took them on a day trip to his hometown of Fresno. Amid the flurry of activity and new experiences, Betsy later reflected that Gene must have “been aware of what was going on. It was the start of what was to be his life—his career—and he’d chosen me to share it. For me, it was just life itself with colored ribbons on it.”6
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 13