Among those accepted for membership in Gene’s “club” were new friends such as Saul and Ethel Chaplin, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, Lena Horne and Lennie Hayton, Phil Silvers, and Judy Garland. Old friends included Evie and Keenan Wynn, Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane, Van Johnson, and Stanley Donen. Guests usually arrived at five thirty for a game of ping-pong and a potluck dinner, but the highlight of a given evening was when Chaplin, Martin, or Hayton would sit at the piano and play while guests (most conspicuously Judy Garland) belted out Gershwin, Porter, Mercer, and Arlen tunes. Gene would perform only by request or if others were performing. With his guests, he drank wine, sang, and laughed until two in the morning, at which time those who were still awake would have a calming snack of milk and Oreos.36
As low key as Kelly soirees may have appeared, an evening at Gene’s home was certainly not an opportunity to allow one’s wits and alertness to take a vacation—especially if one wished to take part in Gene’s favorite indoor sport. Gene and his friends called it “the Game,” a complicated version of charades he had learned in New York. The Game required two teams to separate into different rooms. The team leaders would then receive a hint from the designated captain and return to their team’s room to share the hint. Then it became a matter of who was fastest at guessing and running from his or her room to receive the next clue. Betsy recalled, “We ran and screamed and shouted, tempers were lost, we occasionally collapsed on the floor laughing.”37 Gene played to win and usually succeeded. His side often won not only because of his own talent but also because of his shrewd selection of team members. British character actress Gladys Cooper’s daughter, Sally, was only nine years old, but Gene found her to be a prodigy at the Game and was always eager to have her in his group.
In her memoir, Betsy explained the comic side to her husband’s intimidating competitive nature: “There was a characteristic gesture he had—sort of a family joke. When there was an argument about a date in history or the meaning of a word, we would look it up. When the correct answer—more often than not—was found to be his, he would leap to his feet, throw his arms into the air, grin, and twirl around, crowing ‘Right again.’”38
Gene’s compulsion to be the best—the leader in any realm he entered, whether in show business or games—seemed like a primary ingredient for a temperamental star. However, on the set of For Me and My Gal, he brought only the benign dominance that, in his career thus far, had made him both admired and emulated. One columnist gushed: “There has never been anyone on the Metro lot less temperamental than the Kelly boy, who is liked by directors, writers and publicity men.”39
According to John Updike in his essay “Genial, Kinetic Gene Kelly,” it is in For Me and My Gal that “we are most fully persuaded that the Kelly character is loved by the heroine.”40 This is no easy feat; “the Kelly character,” a World War I draft-dodging and opportunistic actor, is decidedly difficult to love. The film tells the story of Jimmy Metcalfe (George Murphy) and Jo Hayden (Judy Garland)—a vaudeville team with a stale routine. In walks the brash Harry Palmer, who promptly asks Jo to team with him. Jimmy lets her go despite his feelings for her and goes on to become a success on his own. As Harry and Jo struggle to find bookings, they fall in love and plan to marry. They then work their way up to a booking at the Palace, the greatest vaudeville playhouse in America. Just when they secure their booking, Harry is drafted. Determined that nothing will stand in the way of his big break, he purposely breaks his hand by slamming it in a trunk. Jo learns her brother has been killed in action the same day she sees Harry’s broken hand. “You’ll never be big time because you’re small time in your heart,” she tells him before she leaves to entertain troops overseas. Harry, devastated, tries to enlist but is told his hand will never properly heal. He goes on to perform for army camps in France. There he runs into Jimmy, who is again friendly with Jo and waiting for her to reciprocate his affections. Harry and Jo reunite in New York after the Armistice is declared. Jo, now heralded as the sweetheart of the armed forces, is playing at the Palace. She sees Harry in the audience and runs to him. They embrace; all is forgiven. She brings him onstage and they sing “For Me and My Gal” as Jimmy looks on, jilted but content that Jo has found happiness.
When filming commenced on For Me and My Gal in April 1942, Gene became immersed in every aspect of its production. Though Busby Berkeley sat in the director’s chair, Gene, in a sense, took over his job. In Pittsburgh Gene had been dubbed “the dance doctor,” similar to Berkeley’s Broadway nickname: “the show fixer.” Both men were known for putting original twists on ordinary concepts, though their approaches were in complete contrast to one another. Berkeley’s approach was rapidly becoming a relic of the past, but Arthur Freed’s intense loyalty to the director helped keep the man employed over the next decade despite his well-known alcoholism. Berkeley and Gene shared similarities, but they did not immediately have a rapport. Berkeley still thought Murphy would be better as Harry, but the director eventually came to acknowledge Gene’s abilities.
Murphy, however, did not change his opinion of Gene. Unlike his placid character onscreen, he was upset that Gene, a “nobody,” had won the lead role over him, a veteran of such profitable Metro musicals as the Broadway Melody of 1938 and 1940. “This [For Me and My Gal] was the film that disappointed me most. . . . I got the part of the schnook who never gets the girl,” Murphy lamented.41 Murphy, however, had one opportunity to dominate over Gene. One day, the tired Berkeley ordered Murphy rather than Gene to oversee a number he was unable to complete. To Murphy’s chagrin, Gene was not a complacent subject and interjected ideas of his own. Murphy watched with a scowl as Gene approached Berkeley and heard the director sigh, “Okay” in acquiescence to the young actor’s requests to experiment. Gene tried different camera angles, much as Berkeley had done more than ten years before. By minimizing the background of a scene, he was able to focus the camera on the individual dancer. Placing vertical props in the background created the illusion of movement from left to right. In order to convey momentum and speed, he tested the effect of having the dancers rush forward toward the camera.42
The one-on-one dance Gene developed with Judy for the film’s title song is a simple yet highly original routine. Gene’s intimate choreography in the sequence focuses solely on the two players in the scene dancing to an understated song in an unassuming diner. Only a mustachioed waiter acts as their audience. Watchful film viewers will notice a sign above the piano reading, “Where there’s music there’s love.” John Updike articulated why Gene and Judy’s dance routines were so effective. “An intensity of mutual regard [burns] through when they gaze each into the other’s shining black eyes or crisply tap dance side by side. . . . Both have a slightly troubled, orphaned air which lends believability . . . to the film.”43 Previously, only Mickey Rooney had been able to match Judy’s personality onscreen. Now, with Gene, Judy found a “grown-up” Mickey Rooney. Their banter in the film is also more sophisticated but retains the casual ease Judy and Mickey had shared on camera. One particularly comical piece of repartee occurs when Jo and Harry first meet at a snow-laden train station. “Good morning, Springtime,” the foppishly dressed Harry says after whistling at Jo. “Aren’t you a little out of season?” Jo shoots back, hugging her coat around her. Her barb does nothing to dissuade Harry from pursuing her. Instead, he looks after her, grinning and tilting his derby at a jaunty angle. Jo says to Jimmy, loud enough for Harry to hear, “Who’s the want-ad with the squirrel around his neck?”44
Gene’s worldliness was in complete contrast to the innocence Judy conveyed onscreen, yet somehow they were ideal partners. Indeed, their opposing screen personae aided their growth as actors. He helped Judy become a woman and she softened the lingering influence of Joey Evans in his characterization. “Judy was my first booster,” Gene stated. “She is a real trouper, a brilliant actress, and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. . . . She’s able to work out another person’s problems at the same time she’s working on
her own.”45 Gene followed Judy’s lead during all dramatic sequences. He later asserted that the best acting he ever did was in his first film. “She . . . gave him [Gene] hints about how little projection of emotion is necessary, not like in the theater—and she made him laugh,” Betsy Blair reflected.46 For the rest of his life, Gene never uttered Judy’s name without expressing his gratitude to her. The feeling was mutual. Just as she had taught Gene how to emote for the camera, he taught her how to dance at a professional level. Gene spent hours coaching Judy, and she would not settle until she was satisfied that she had the steps down perfectly. Although she went home with a sore back and blisters on her feet, Judy was thrilled to become a more than competent dancer. “She was the quickest study I’ve ever known,” Gene declared.47
Judy managed to lighten the mood on a set laden with tension between Murphy, Berkeley, and Gene. “The joy of working with Judy was her capacity for laughter,” Gene commented. “She laughed . . . and she wanted to laugh. All I had to do was snap my fingers. When I made a goof, this made her laugh too.”48 In Gene, Judy found a kindred spirit. She, too, shunned Hollywood artificiality and enjoyed poetry, classical music, and complicated word games. During filming, she invited Gene and Betsy to dine with her and her husband, musician David Rose, at their home. Rose was eager to show his guests the elaborate toy train he had set up in the backyard. Judy indulgently allowed her husband to expound on his hobby, though she, Gene, and Betsy found his obsession odd. “We thought some aspects of Hollywood were strange, but we loved Judy,” Betsy said.49 “Judy saw no difference between us. . . . She was a joy to know.”50
Though filming on For Me and My Gal wrapped in late May 1942, Judy and Gene remained regular guests at each other’s homes. Louis B. Mayer had high expectations for the movie’s success despite his reservations concerning Gene’s picture potential. A columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote on June 8, 1942: “Metro’s all excited about the teamwork of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in For Me and My Gal and is thinking about building them up into a Rogers-Astaire combination.”51
MGM’s potential Astaire-Rogers combination seemed a doubtful prospect after the film’s first preview. When asked their opinion of the picture, 85 percent of preview audiences declared they were disgusted that Gene’s character won Judy’s love rather than George Murphy’s. The movie, as it stood, did not meet the Office of War Information’s specifications for what a film should communicate if it was to aid the war effort (specifically in the area of self-sacrifice done voluntarily and cheerfully). Mayer had already invested too much in For Me and My Gal to let it be a box office flop. He ordered Fred Finklehoffe to rewrite the entire ending so that Gene’s character becomes a war hero by saving a transport of ambulances before they drive into an area under enemy fire. The revised conclusion was filmed in June 1942, adding twenty-one extra days of shooting and sending production costs up to $802,980.52 However, the film’s profits more than made up for its costliness. When the new and improved For Me and My Gal made its Los Angeles premiere on November 26, 1942, it became Judy’s biggest box office hit yet, grossing $4,371,000.
Judy was the film’s primary attraction, but Gene proved to be a draw in his own right. Eddie Mannix, the executive who had been most opposed to casting him, told Freed after viewing the film: “Arthur, remind me not to tell you how to make pictures.” Busby Berkeley was also ecstatic about the film and shook Gene’s hand “until it was almost embarrassing.” Berkeley concluded that of all his films, For Me and My Gal was his “top favorite.”53
Gene, for all his outer bravura, was not without self-doubt. When he first saw himself onscreen, he was miserable. “Shocked is a better word,” he amended. “The sight of my funny Irish kisser magnified that many times sent me out of the theater with the screaming meemies!”54 “I had an awful feeling I was a tremendous flop, but when I came outside [at the premiere of the revised film] executives started pumping my hand and Judy came up to me and kissed me. . . . It was a new world and quite different from the theater. In the theater, you can chug along for years, but being a success in the movies is like suddenly being turned into a rocket.”55 A writer for Time magazine raved that Gene “has flashes of acting intuition which should rate him a special berth, or perhaps a drawing room, in Hollywood,” but Bosley Crowther of the New York Times argued that the newcomer was “pressed a bit too far [dramatically] in his first film role.”56 Gene was swift to admit that he never felt he was an exceptional actor. In 1975, he mused: “I would have loved to have been as good an actor as Spencer Tracy or Marlon Brando. I was a very good stage actor, but in films I never was quite as good, just passable.”57
Gene worked to refine his acting skills throughout his career, and many critics took note of his improved abilities. Even early in Gene’s film career, a writer for the Chicago Tribune went so far as to call him “a combination of Cagney—Tracy—Astaire.”58 In his critique of Gene’s career, John Updike called him “a gentler younger brother to James Cagney’s sassy George M. Cohan” whose generally “immobile face” gave him the sulky “bruised appeal of John Garfield or Humphrey Bogart.”59
Louis B. Mayer now viewed Gene as an asset to the studio and thus decided to buy out the remainder of his contract from Selznick. He offered Gene a seven-year contract with MGM with a starting salary of $1,000 a week (paltry compared to major Metro stars like Spencer Tracy, who was earning $4,400 a week). The new contract did not carry the stipulation that Gene could return to Broadway if he wished. Signing the document was a serious commitment, but Gene, with a child on the way and a promising start in film, felt it was one he was willing to make. At this point in his career, Gene was no longer under Johnny Darrow’s management. The legendary and charismatic agent Leland Hayward became Gene’s representative. He represented nearly every big name in Hollywood at various times in their careers, including Judy Garland, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda.
Few were happier about Gene’s decision to sign an MGM contract than Arthur Freed. To him, Gene Kelly was the future of musical films. As actress Nina Foch explained, “It was a different world, suddenly we [Americans] were defending ourselves. We were macho, this country. Along comes this muscular young man who takes dance and puts it somewhere that all Americans could appreciate it.”60
Gene’s next two films were a step down from his stellar beginning of instant celebrity status after the release of For Me and My Gal. His first follow-up assignment, a low-budget, rather stilted war drama directed by George Sidney entitled Pilot #5, is notable only because it offered him his first “straight role.” Filmed immediately after Pilot #5 was another Arthur Freed musical, Du Barry Was a Lady, an entertaining if fluffy picture directed by Roy Del Ruth elevated by a Cole Porter score and lush Technicolor. In spite of Gene’s disappointment in these two films, he valued them as learning experiences. In a press book for Pilot #5, Gene stated: “When it comes to acting and dancing, there’s no reason at all why the two should be divorced. Both are great mediums of expression. And dancing helps acting. I’m sure I never would have been an actor if I hadn’t first been a dancer.”61
Pilot #5 began shooting in July 1942 and was slated to wrap in August. Though a “programmer” that would be the second on a double bill, the film at least cast Gene alongside his friend Van Johnson. The movie tells the story of five American pilots in a bomb-blasted air base in Java. The senior officer has only one usable aircraft and must choose one of the pilots to attack the Japanese in a deadly mission. According to Gene’s biographer Tony Thomas he, in his role as a “moody Italian-American . . . surprised those who had little reason to consider him as an actor on the basis of his work in For Me and My Gal.” Gene felt the film could have left a stronger political message, claiming that it began as “a statement against fascism . . . but . . . we were in the entertainment business and this was wartime. So the script was changed [to be more entertaining rather than moralizing].”62 When the picture premiered on June 24, 1943, a critic for the New York Times deemed it
“tedious” and “overlong” but singled out Gene’s acting as “convincing.”63
Du Barry Was a Lady gained Gene far more notice than Pilot #5. It went into production in August; shooting came to a close in November 1942. The film was a screwball confection starring Lucille Ball and Red Skelton with Gene, Virginia O’Brien, and Rags Ragland as the supporting cast. Gene balked about receiving third billing, but as consolation, Freed allowed him to request a dance director for the picture. Gene felt the man assigned to the job, the elderly Felix Seymour, was not the best selection. He asked for Robert Alton, but Gene’s agent, Leland Hayward, informed him that Alton had Broadway commitments.
“Well then, where’s Charlie?” Gene asked, using a nickname for Charles Walters that allegedly made the choreographer “bristle.” “I have one big number in this picture and I need him.” Walters agreed to do the picture with an “oh well, what the hell?” shrug.64 Because Du Barry Was a Lady was dominantly a Red Skelton comedy, it offered Walters, and thus Gene, fewer opportunities to demonstrate their skills. However, Walters worked to make what dance routines the picture did contain the most memorable parts of the film.
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 15