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

by Cynthia Brideson

  Du Barry Was a Lady, adapted from the Broadway show by Herbert Fields, B. G. DeSylva, and Cole Porter, tells the story of a coatroom attendant, Louis (Skelton), who is hopelessly in love with nightclub singer May Daly (Ball). However, she is in love with Alec (Gene), an emcee at the club. One evening, Louis accidentally drinks a laced beverage and falls into a dream in which he is Louis XVI, chasing after Madame Du Barry (also played by Ball). In the dream, Alec is “the Black Arrow,” the leader of a revolutionary group. Just as Louis is about to be put to death, he wakes up—safely back at the nightclub, where he discovers that he actually loves the cigarette girl (O’Brien) who works there.

  Gene called the project “atrocious.” He told Freed: “Arthur, you know, you don’t want to do this.”65 Freed promised better assignments in the future and Gene made the best of the situation. One redeeming part of the project was that as the Black Arrow, Gene had the opportunity to play a swashbuckling character similar to his boyhood idol, Douglas Fairbanks.

  The rest of the film gave Gene little to do with the exception of one solo dance sequence. The dance finds Gene in top hat and tails, emceeing at a nightclub not unlike Chez Joey. Charles Walters was the ideal choreographer for the number, for he rivaled Fred Astaire for “tuxedoed grace.”66 But Walters chose not to choreograph the number like an Astaire routine. Instead, he and Gene decided to juxtapose Alec’s elegant appearance with Gene’s trademark performance of athletic dance moves—he moved across a stage by bouncing on the balls of his hands (he had also used this technique in For Me and My Gal). Arthur Freed praised Walters as the only dance director “who had ever read a script to find out what the characters are all about.”67

  Because he had indeed read the script, Walters knew that immediately preceding Gene’s number, Alec and May share a romantic moment during which Alec serenades her with “Do I Love You?” “Wouldn’t it be fun to start the number inside the dressing room and then pow, out through the door, through the audience, and onto the stage to continue it?” Walters asked.68 Freed and Gene took his suggestion; once Alec leaves May’s dressing room, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra takes up the tune of “Do I Love You?” as Gene launches into his dance solo. Through the device of the number beginning in May’s dressing room, the audience feels that the energy and enthusiasm Alec gives his dance is fueled by his love for her. Walters’s brainstorm added much-needed authenticity to the love scene between Gene and Lucille Ball, whose onscreen chemistry was almost nonexistent. Walters became an integral choreographer and director at MGM for the next two decades.

  Du Barry Was a Lady received generally positive reviews upon its release on August 19, 1943. Bosley Crowther praised Gene and Walters’s collaboration, proclaiming Gene’s solo to be “screen magic.”69 A writer for Photoplay called Gene’s dancing “something to shout about.”70 The production, which required a hefty $1,239,222 to shoot, grossed $3,496,000.

  Working with old friends like Walters went far toward making Gene feel more at home both at MGM and in Hollywood. “When I first went out to Hollywood from New York I was an effete Eastern snob. I only went into films to make money. Then, when I got there, I found I liked it,” Gene reflected in 1980.71 He shared his newfound love for Hollywood with anyone he could, including Mamie, his housekeeper. He often took her to the best restaurants or to the MGM commissary (which was like a restaurant itself, complete with menus, waiters, and waitresses), where he introduced Mamie to her favorite movie stars.

  A large part of Gene’s growing taste for Hollywood was due to the fact that he had won acceptance into the “Freed Unit,” an honor few on the MGM lot could add to their list of accomplishments. Hugh Martin, who was working with Ralph Blane on Freed’s film adaptation of Best Foot Forward at the same time Gene was filming Du Barry, did not have Gene’s extroverted personality or thick skin. He found the Freed Unit a formidable group, especially after he and Blane were shunned when they tried to sit at Freed’s table in the studio commissary. Freed’s coldness and unpredictable temper were enough to drive the introverted Hugh Martin away from the cafeteria for the rest of his tenure at MGM.

  Unlike Martin, the self-assured Stanley Donen had little trouble making himself at home in the commissary as well as in the Freed Unit. Donen had been in Hollywood less than a week before he managed to land his first assignment, as a dancer in Freed’s Best Foot Forward. Van Johnson recalled that one of Donen’s first moves at MGM was to call him and ask, “Can you get me into the commissary?” Donen well knew the cafeteria was the best place to meet influential people. Van obliged and later stated that after Donen gained access to the commissary, “the rest is history. Only wouldn’t you know it, when the son of a bitch got to be a big director, never once did he hire me.”72

  The fact that Gene included both Martin and Donen in his group proved that, as much as he had grown to embrace Los Angeles, he was still independent minded. True, he befriended only those he felt possessed talent and intelligence, but he did not judge them based on the opinions of others, or on their personal style—quiet and delicate or raucous and blunt; Gene made room for them all.

  Just as Gene had settled comfortably into his new life in Hollywood, an entirely new role came his way—one that required sensitivity, discipline, intelligence, and plenty of talent: fatherhood.

  While Gene was filming Du Barry Was a Lady, Betsy checked into the Good Samaritan Hospital on October 15, 1942, the day before the baby, if it arrived on time, was due. Betsy’s mother, Frederica, had arrived in the first week of October to help her daughter and son-in-law through their first months of parenthood. Though he knew Mrs. Boger was there for Betsy, Gene still found it nearly impossible to focus on his work. “Every time the phone rang he jumped. He said a man who was about to become a father ought to be pardoned for nerves,” a journalist visiting the set of Du Barry reported.73

  Immediately after work, Gene drove to the hospital. He played the board game Battleship with Betsy for an hour and sang to her before visiting hours were over. The doctor promised to inform Gene when Betsy was ready to deliver. The moment he received word that Betsy had gone into labor, Gene rushed to the hospital. But by the time he arrived, his baby had already been born. Though disappointed he had missed the birth, Gene was overcome with joy when the doctor placed his daughter in his arms. Gene and Betsy gave their daughter a name to acknowledge their shared Irish heritage: Kerry.

  Gene, Betsy, and Kerry became nearly inseparable. When Gene was rehearsing or shooting, Betsy often brought Kerry in a padded laundry basket to the studio for lunch. Five years later, a reflective Gene told Silver Screen magazine that he did not “agree that children can’t be raised ‘normally’ in the environment of Hollywood. That depends on the parents. It’s their job and it’s one that is shirked by a lot of people who yip about ‘phony atmosphere’ and simultaneously raise brats because they don’t take the time to give them a normal home life.” Gene strove to protect Kerry from publicity as much as possible. He balked at “home sittings” and the “family portrait” type of publicity. “Our home and home life are our own,” he declared.74 Nevertheless, he fulfilled his contractual obligation to pose for a small number of publicity shots with his family. “We were photographed in the kitchen, with Kerry on Gene’s knee and me at the stove pretending to cook in an apron borrowed from our housekeeper,” Betsy recalled.75

  Gene soon discovered that not everything about fatherhood was idyllic. When Kerry was three weeks old, her first all-night wailing fit sent Gene into a panic. He had sixty pages of a script to study and a seven o’clock call scheduled at the studio the next morning. “She hates me,” he told Betsy in despair. “I can see it in her eyes.” However, Gene soon grew accustomed to the behavior of babies and stopped taking it personally.76

  Gene had been in Hollywood for just over a year, and already he had established a family, an intimate circle of friends, and stardom. According to one Movieland report, he was “the hottest thing in town” whose personality “hits an audience like a
three-alarm fire.”77 A writer for Photoplay summarized his swift ascent in the film world: “He came to Hollywood devoid of the supposed essentials of handsome looks and personal glamour; his subordinate role in For Me and My Gal created such an instant sensation he was rushed into top roles in two top MGM pictures and then was handed the starring part opposite Kathryn Grayson in Private Miss Jones. Not bad for a young man who just has skimmed by his thirtieth birthday!”78

  “Starring part” was no exaggeration. Private Miss Jones, later renamed Thousands Cheer, placed him as the male lead in a Technicolor, star-studded wartime extravaganza under the direction of the versatile George Sidney. Yet in spite of his remarkable professional progress, Gene did not, as Betsy had feared, lose track of himself. Neither she nor Gene, she claimed, took his stardom “very seriously yet.”79

  8

  New Heights

  Now that Gene Kelly was a star, MGM publicists capitalized on his appearance and persona—the very attributes that had initially made studio executives question his future in Hollywood. The crescent-shaped scar on his cheek, his unremarkable height, his solid build, reedy voice, and regular Joe dancing attire became hot topics in fan magazines. “Everyone’s been trying to get me to cover that scar up,” Gene told a writer for Motion Picture. “But why should I? Just covering the scar wouldn’t turn me into a glamour boy.” The columnist admitted that nothing about Gene spelled “glamour boy.” “His voice is not romantic. . . . It hasn’t the tone or timbre that make women dream of being with Boyer on a tropical island.”1 A Seventeen reporter commented on Gene’s carriage, which was not stereotypical of a dancer. “If you saw Gene walking down Main Street you would not be likely to say, ‘There goes a dancer.’ He has a compact, purposeful walk with long, vigorous strides. You might think him a cop—genial and tough.”2

  Gene later dubbed himself the “Marlon Brando of dance.” Just as Brando would later set a new trend in acting—intense, raw, and physical—so Gene set a new style in dancing. The men also shared an unconventional fashion sense; one could argue that Brando was actually influenced by Gene in this area. “I may have been the first to look like a slob,” Gene said in 1972. “I rolled up my sleeves and danced in blue jeans and sweat shirts and moccasins when those things weren’t . . . so fashionable.”3

  What set Gene apart from later antiheroes, however, was his unabashed sentimentality and, as the Seventeen reporter noted, his geniality both onscreen and off. He was a city kid and a rebel, but he was also a “good Catholic boy” and a traditional family man.4 His far-reaching appeal increased his value to MGM as a star of morale-boosting pictures for the home front; this was a boon to his career but a barrier to his hopes of donning a uniform not provided by the costume department.

  Gene had to be content with such a uniform for the time being. In his next picture, Thousands Cheer, he wore the khakis of an army private. The film was among the first in a resurgence of film revues, a genre that had almost gone extinct after the early 1930s. Revues made a comeback during the war due to their entertainment-dense format. The fact that 1940s audiences were music crazy and accepted any excuse to see another song or dance in a picture certainly helped the genre’s popularity.

  Despite Hollywood’s loss of foreign markets, film production reached its peak of efficiency and profits from 1943 to 1946. Gas and rubber shortages curtailed travel; consequently, Americans had few other places to go but movie houses within walking distance of their homes. Movie attendance soared to near-record levels of 90 million a week. MGM films, Thousands Cheer included, continued promoting American values. In 1942, Mayer’s pet project, the Andy Hardy series, received an honorary Oscar for “furthering the American way of life.”5 Rather than release gritty war epics, MGM found its forte in producing pictures portraying the bravery of those on the home front that “affirmed a sense of national purpose” and “emphasized patriotism, group effort, and the value of individual sacrifices for a larger cause. They portrayed World War II as a people’s war.”6

  Joe Pasternak, the other major musical producer at MGM besides Arthur Freed, had signed to produce Thousands Cheer. “Pasternak had an interest in kind of sentimental stories and liked what people . . . refer to as classical music,” director Stanley Donen explained.7 Pasternak, a self-made immigrant from Hungary, had built his career mainly on productions starring Deanna Durbin, Universal Studio’s popular young opera star. Once at MGM, Pasternak found his niche producing films that blended classical and modern tunes, such as in the musical comedy Presenting Lily Mars (1943), which showcased both Judy Garland’s swinging style and Marta Eggerth’s operatic one. Thousands Cheer promised to follow the same pattern.

  The film was essentially a revue with a thin plotline running through it; opera by soprano Kathryn Grayson and concertos by pianist José Iturbi dominated the classical side of the picture’s score, while swing by Bob Crosby’s big band orchestra filled the modern one. Gene, by this time in danger of being typecast, plays Eddie Marsh, a sharp-talking, lone wolf soldier who is the adopted son of an Italian family of circus performers. He is moved to show his soft side by the love of Kathryn (Kathryn Grayson). She pursues him despite the fact that her father, a colonel in the army, disapproves of Eddie’s vocation as a trapeze artist. She also helps teach him the value of teamwork and how accepting help from others does not make him weak. Gene had the opportunity to show off his gymnastic skills during a scene in which he does warm-up exercises on a pull-up bar, but a professional trapeze artist doubled for Gene in long shots. The thread of the engaging story is lost during an overlong extravagant camp show staged for the servicemen.

  The picture went into production in November 1942 and proved to be a pleasant experience for all involved. Gene found friends in the cast and crew, including Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and vocal arranger Roger Edens. The rest of the cast was composed of almost every single musical or comedic MGM star under contract. Mickey Rooney, Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Lucille Ball, and Margaret O’Brien were among the scene-stealers in the picture. Pasternak, upon watching Gene during rehearsals, observed that he was unperturbed at the prospect of being upstaged by the other performers. “And believe me, this made a change because most actors are ignorant people who let success go to their heads. . . . Kelly . . . took success in his stride.”8 As well as winning the producer’s approval, Gene also impressed Kathryn Grayson, who revealed in 2001, “My favorite dancer was Gene Kelly.” She added, “His mannerisms were pretty much the same in each picture. If you look at his films, one after the other, his expressions were very much the same.”9

  Gene’s expressions were consistent in each of his films because he established his stage/screen persona so early in his career. From the time he portrayed Harry the Hoofer in The Time of Your Life, Gene’s character was that of a self-made, ambitious proletarian whose hardened exterior covers passionate convictions, an inner vulnerability, and a search for approval. The lines Gene speaks as Eddie in Thousands Cheer prove that he is playing a variation of the same character. After describing to Kathryn’s character how he became “the King of the Trapeze,” he asks: “Do you think I got to the top overnight? Do you know how long I spent working at it?”10

  The authenticity Gene brings to his character adds much-needed dimension to the picture. Gene was able to make Eddie Marsh so believable because the character’s outlook was similar to the actor’s own. The film was, in essence, a message picture in that it showed the importance of people working together. Despite his independent nature, Gene believed that everyone in a given organization, from the lowliest employees to the bosses, should cooperate.

  Gene’s dance routines for the film were what made Thousands Cheer more than a formulaic wartime musical. Pasternak gave him permission to do what was necessary to elevate the film. “I told him from the start: ‘You want to steal the movie? All you have to do is one dance that is new and original . . . you be different,’” Pasternak recalled. “So he came up with the mop dance, which is the best number in
the picture.”11 The “mop dance” became Gene’s most important cinematic contribution in his career to date. Indeed, it marked the first solo film routine he created and choreographed himself. In his first two screen musicals, he had performed with others, often in routines not fully indicative of his unique style. The mop dance established many of Gene’s trademarks, such as casual wardrobe, utilization of props, and a setting that is not stage bound. Critic Karel Reisz wrote that the movement of musical numbers away from the stage and into the outside world was the transition from the old to the new.12

  Gene’s solo takes place after Eddie Marsh is confined to quarters as punishment for insubordination. As he carries out his penalty—mopping the local PX—he wears army fatigues consisting of a white T-shirt and loose-fitting denim pants. The task of mopping seems anything but unpleasant once Gene turns it into a dance. In choreographing the routine, Gene ensured it could not be duplicated on the stage. Biographer Clive Hirschhorn wrote of its “complicated rhythms and skillful synchronization of beats.”13 Gene’s use of as many props as were handy added even more intricacy. First he dances with the mop while singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” then he times his steps to working soda fountain gadgets. At the heart of the sequence, Eddie picks up his broom and uses it as a rifle to mime shooting at a poster of Adolf Hitler. Gene considered the dance his first contribution to the war effort. Though one could say Gene’s routine was not completely original because Fred Astaire, too, used props in his solos, Gene’s daughter Kerry articulated why her father’s approach was new to the screen: “His ability to maintain the leading-man role while still dancing has to do with his particular style of dance and his own personality. The style was athletic and that made it masculine. And also . . . it was unabashedly sexy.”14