Thousands Cheer, in spite of its overwhelming cast of stars, was Gene’s picture, as Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune appreciated: “Gene Kelly . . . is so superb in the role of a distinguished draftee who discovers a few things about discipline and teamwork that he dominates the proceedings.”15 The picture, budgeted at $1,568,000, made an astounding $5,886,000 upon its release on September 13, 1943.
Gene’s success in Thousands Cheer did not earn him what he had hoped it would: a green light from the studio to put his contract on hold and join the navy. Though he was still invested in his home and family life, he could not ignore his patriotic itch to defend the country. Instead of letting him enlist, MGM again cast Gene as a soldier in his next film. The picture, to be directed by Tay Garnett, was a propaganda piece with a mostly male cast entitled The Cross of Lorraine. The film tells the story of a group of French soldiers held prisoner in a German camp. They eventually stage a successful rebellion and take back the Nazi-occupied French village. Gene was relieved he was not required to adopt a French accent for the film, given his failure to acquire a proper Scottish dialect for the aborted Keys to the Kingdom project at Selznick International.
The Cross of Lorraine was a B picture, but it was an improvement over Pilot #5. In the cast were talented actors including Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Hume Cronyn, and Peter Lorre. Gene, again in the part of a rebel, established his persona early in the film’s proceedings. During a Nazi interrogation, he gives a facetious salute and asks, “Heil, er—what’s his name?” For his disrespect of “Der Fuhrer,” an officer knocks him unconscious and throws him into solitary confinement. The Nazis work night and day to break his spirit, which they succeed in doing after much physical and mental torture. The picture required significant dramatic acting on Gene’s part. Film critic Jeanine Basinger wrote in 1978, “In the prison torture scenes in particular Kelly’s close-ups revealed his brooding intensity and he conveyed realistic internal suffering by the subtlest of changes in his face.”16 Gene told Screenland magazine in 1947 that he deemed Lorraine “one of the best things he has done in Hollywood.”17
Gene, as much as he relished taking on a dramatic role, accepted that his name meant more in musical pictures. But he firmly believed that musicals could be as thought-provoking as dramas like The Cross of Lorraine and carry in them food for American thought.
Gene may have wished to perform in more realistic pictures, but audiences were tiring of such films. The Cross of Lorraine, released on December 2, 1943, received positive critical reviews but, according to Gene, only “about three people saw it.”18 A critic for the New York Times warned audiences: “This is a harshly realistic film drama . . . unsullied by the usual ‘softening up’ ministrations of Hollywood.” The reviewer singled out Gene as rising above the uneven screenplay. “Like the picture itself, Mr. Kelly’s character (a conventional tough hero type) goes all to pieces toward the end. The writers and the director are at fault in this instance, not the actor.”19 The film, budgeted at $1,010,000, grossed only $1,248,000.
Another small Metro picture produced in 1943 fared much better. The Human Comedy, based on the novel by Gene’s friend William Saroyan, told the story of a telegram delivery boy (Mickey Rooney) who sees firsthand the effects of war on the people in his hometown. The picture, budgeted at $1 million, grossed $3 million. Playing the ghost of the protagonist’s older brother who died in the war was Van Johnson, who was quickly rising as MGM’s most popular new male star. According to reports from the New York Times and St. Petersburg, Florida’s Evening Independent, Gene was supposed to play the part of a wounded soldier who adopts Johnson’s family and hometown as his own. Why his role in the film was abandoned is unclear. It may have been because Gene was occupied with Thousands Cheer or simply because The Human Comedy was not a musical, which was clearly the direction in which the studio wanted to push Gene.
Gene did not mind that his future lay in musicals. Indeed, from his experience on Broadway in Pal Joey, he knew that genre could provide plenty of “solid food for American thought.” “Kelly believes that screen musicals are still child’s play, their possibilities largely ignored,” Philip Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times reported. He quoted Gene: “The way I see it . . . dance can be used to express emotions phonetically—in movements that ‘speak.’ It’s too soon to expect it yet, but it’ll come.”20
As it happened, Gene found an opportunity to bring more depth to musicals sooner than he expected. Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, had begun filming a Rita Hayworth Technicolor spectacle—with no leading man yet cast. The film boasted Charles Vidor as director, Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin as composers, and Arthur Schwartz as producer. To Schwartz’s mind, no one at Columbia was appropriate to play Rita Hayworth’s love interest. Only one man in Hollywood, Schwartz argued, could play the part: Gene Kelly. Cohn grew apoplectic each time the producer brought up the possibility. “That tough Irishman with his tough Irish mug? He doesn’t belong in the same frame as Rita!” he stormed. “Besides, he’s . . . too goddamn short.”
Without informing Cohn, Schwartz went to MGM and negotiated with the studio to loan Gene out for four weeks. Schwartz returned to Cohn’s office, grinning as he said: “Your problems are over! I just got Gene Kelly for the role.”
Cohn rose from his desk, put his arms around Schwartz, and uttered, “Thank God.”
“Strange man, Harry Cohn,” Schwartz dryly concluded.21
Why was Schwartz so set on casting Gene as the male lead? Reading the plot of Cover Girl, one can see that Gene was an obvious choice for the role given that, as in Pal Joey, he plays a nightclub host. However, his new assignment had him portraying a conscientious man (Danny McGuire) rather than a heel.
“If you can get there [to the top] quicker, why shouldn’t you?” Danny’s girlfriend, Rusty (Rita Hayworth), asks.
“Look, when you get there quick, you get out quick. Easy get, easy lose. You have to work for what you get . . . you’ve got to get there on your feet, not on your face,” Danny replies.
“Old hard-way McGuire,” Rusty teases him.22
Cover Girl follows Rusty’s dilemma of choosing the easy way or the hard way to become a star. The film begins with Rusty working as a chorus girl at a small club owned by Danny. She is content with her job and her friends there, though she, Danny, and his pal, the star comic Genius (played by Phil Silvers) all dream of bigger things. Every Friday night, they order oysters at their favorite haunt (reminiscent of Louie Bergen’s in New York) and chant, “Come on, pearl!” Rusty does not consider leaving her job until she hears of a contest to become a cover girl for the popular Vanity magazine. The magazine’s editor John Coudair (Otto Kruger), who years earlier had been in love with her grandmother, Maribelle Hicks, gives Rusty the chance to be a star. Once she is Vanity’s cover girl, Danny’s club becomes the hottest spot in town—a Chez Joey, so to speak—but only because Rusty is a performer there. After arguing with Danny, Rusty leaves and finds success on Broadway in a musical produced by Coudair’s wealthy friend Noel Wheaton (Lee Bowman). Danny closes his club when Rusty leaves and he and Genius enlist as USO entertainers. Hesitantly, Rusty decides to marry Wheaton. At the last moment, she flees the altar after Coudair gives her a pearl Danny found (and Genius had delivered to Coudair) the previous night. Rusty and Danny reunite at their old haunt, presumably with plans to marry and resurrect their act together.
The four weeks MGM gave Gene to complete the film continually extended as he grew more and more involved in its creation. As an assistant, Gene enlisted his apprentice, Stanley Donen. Since his arrival in Hollywood in 1942, Donen had been the most frequent visitor at Gene’s open-house parties; he was at the Kelly home so often that another occasional guest, director George Cukor, asked, “Who is that young man who’s always asleep on your floor?”23
Donen had been floundering in his attempts to gain a foothold in movies, and only after Cover Girl did he consider his career “really swinging.”24 Gene later claimed that it
was he who had asked Donen to work on Cover Girl after MGM fired him, promising the young man that he would receive equal billing. At this point, Gene explained that he and Donen became close friends. Gene’s claim is not completely true. Donen was not fired from MGM. Columbia borrowed him. Nor did Donen receive “equal billing” with Gene. Biographer Stephen M. Silverman argues that Gene’s paternalistic attitude toward Donen (whom he said was “like a son to me,” although he was only twelve years younger), and Gene’s assertion that he had virtually rescued the younger man from unemployment “demonstrate Kelly’s longstanding attempt to diminish Donen’s contribution to their collective work.”25 Whether or not Gene was purposely trying to minimize Donen’s input is debatable. Gene did have a far more prominent place in Hollywood at the time, which inevitably cast him as the leader. By his account, Gene did allow Donen to play a part equal to his own in directorial duties. He valued the young man’s opinion to such a degree that he did not view any shots of the film without Donen present.
With Cohn’s approval, Gene and Donen took over supervising the musical numbers in the film. Fred Kelly apparently also assisted with choreography, albeit uncredited. When Gene and Donen first arrived at Columbia to view the footage of what had already been shot (incidentally by Seymour Felix, whom Gene had vetoed as dance director for Du Barry Was a Lady), they were taken aback, especially by the kitschy opening number, “The Show Must Go On.” To ensure that Gene was not credited for the routine, he and Donen inserted three “reaction shots” showing Danny in the wings covering his face and shaking his head in horror. The other routines that lacked Gene and Donen’s touch were flashback numbers showing Maribelle Hicks in the 1890s: “Sure Thing” and “Poor John.” The numbers seriously impeded plot continuity, a problem of which Gene was well aware and hoped to remedy in the numbers he and Donen designed.
Each morning, Gene came to the set with more script revisions or ideas for further enlivening the dance numbers. Those on the set of this film, as on Gene’s others, watched in amazement as he jumped from behind the camera to check the viewfinder, bolted to watch the dailies, and then ran back to the set to perform in front of the cameras. The next day, he would begin the entire process over again.
One of Gene’s numbers was notable less for its choreography than for the depth of emotion it conveyed. The routine takes place after closing hours at Danny’s club as Danny is putting up chairs, distracting himself from the fear that Rusty and he are growing apart. He quietly sings Kern’s “Long Ago and Far Away,” soon joined by Rusty, who has been watching him from the doorway. The number that follows utilizes simple ballroom steps. The song was by far the best in the film and the only one that won enduring popularity. Gene was not a crooner on a par with Frank Sinatra, but the feeling he gave the song brought tears to Jerome Kern’s eyes. Gene later spoke of the number “with special fondness, calling it ‘Really more of a mood than a dance.’ . . . It tells its own story of nostalgic love. Kelly says that he and Miss Hayworth worked longer and harder on getting the right feeling into those thirty seconds [of dance] than they did on any of their longer and more exuberant numbers.”26 Gene and Rita had a great rapport onscreen and off. She was no amateur dancer, and Gene held a special regard for her in part because he had learned invaluable techniques from her uncle, Angel Cansino, at the Chicago Association of Dancing Masters in the mid-1930s. Betsy Blair called her “sweet and gentle” and recalled Gene complimenting her for working “like a real trouper.”27
Gene likewise admired the abilities of his other costar, Phil Silvers. Phil, incidentally, was another frequent guest at the Kelly open-house parties. Phil, with his slightly chubby build and bespectacled face, was not a typical musical star. Nevertheless, he successfully performed in several dance routines with Gene and Rita. When a friend remarked to him: “Phil, I didn’t know you were a dancer,” he quipped: “I’m not, Kelly hypnotized me.”28 Gene’s friend Saul Chaplin (who worked uncredited as assistant musical director) was assigned to write a humorous song for Gene and Phil to perform during a USO scene. Discussing his ideas for the number with Chaplin, Gene surprised him by saying: “Make Phil as funny as you can, and don’t worry about me—I’ll take care of myself.” Chaplin concluded that “Gene . . . would always maintain this attitude. And he would always be able to take care of himself.”29
In the midst of filming Cover Girl, Gene received word that his friend Dick Dwenger’s ship had been torpedoed off Salerno on October 9, 1943. Dick was declared missing in action. A year would pass before he was officially declared dead. In an interview from 2014, Gene’s daughter Kerry explained that Gene “lost his very best life-long friend . . . and it had a big impact on him. . . . My father wanted to go to war right then.”30 Still bound by his contract, however, Gene worked out his grief in the only way he knew: work. He turned a number in Cover Girl, “Make Way for Tomorrow,” into a sort of tribute to Dick.
The routine is an optimistic one danced and sung by Danny, Genius, and Rusty as they traipse about the streets of New York in the early hours of the morning. The number is a prime example of the shift toward musical sequences in open-air settings rather than stage-bound ones. It also served to establish camaraderie between a threesome, which became a hallmark of numerous Kelly-Donen numbers. As in the mop dance, “Make Way for Tomorrow” utilizes many props. For instance, a breadstick becomes a baton and a mailbox becomes a tom-tom. With arms linked, the trio then chuckles at a couple kissing on the landing of a walk-up, dances around a friendly drunk, and salutes a milkman. “I think Gene honored his [Dick’s] memory and commemorated the three of us and our wonderful time together,” Betsy Blair asserted. “Dick would have loved” the number.31
The most intricate number Gene and Donen designed for Cover Girl was reflective of the era’s most cutting-edge Broadway production. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, which premiered on March 31, 1943, ushered the stage musical into what Alan Jay Lerner called the “belle époque” of the genre.32 Oklahoma! picked up where Show Boat had left off in 1927, perfecting the weaving of songs and dances into a strong story that summons a broad range of emotions beyond laughter. Gene had not forgotten that in 1939 at the Westport Country Playhouse he had created the choreography for Green Grow the Lilacs, the show that evolved into Oklahoma! Agnes de Mille’s choreography in Oklahoma! however, replaced most of what Gene had conceived in Green Grow the Lilacs. De Mille’s greatest achievement in the play was a fifteen-minute “dream ballet” illustrating the heroine’s feelings for two men. Despite the fact that most of Gene’s work had been discarded, his ideas were the inspiration behind the final, polished product on the Broadway stage. Gene was indignant that he never received credit for his part in the creation of Oklahoma! According to his biographer Alvin Yudkoff, “From then on, he would always fight for credits and proper recognition. Anonymity simply doesn’t pay.”33 In truth, Robert Alton and Gene had already designed something similar to de Mille’s ballet two years before Oklahoma! opened: the fantasy ballet in Pal Joey. Now, for Cover Girl, Gene needed to take what he had used in Pal Joey and meld it with de Mille’s more psychologically charged model.
The resulting dance routine, in stark contrast to the joyousness of “Make Way for Tomorrow” and the romance of “Long Ago and Far Away,” was sorrowful and introspective in tone. Donen later took credit for conceiving the idea of having Danny McGuire “fight it [his dilemma] out with his inner self in a double-exposure dance.” Donen claimed that the concept came to him after he decided a number with a lone dancer was far less “powerful” and “fun” than one with two dancers.34 Gene, however, maintained that he was the first to envision performing an angsty duet.
Regardless of who was responsible for devising the number, it evoked equal enthusiasm in both Gene and Donen. Director Charles Vidor did not share their excitement. “It won’t work,” he said after listening to Gene and Donen describe what they now dubbed the “Alter Ego” number. Executives at Columbia were also against the idea. “For one
thing, you can’t pan and dolly in double-exposure,” they said. “It’s never been done.” “About time then,” Gene declared.35
Saul Chaplin described Charles Vidor’s mounting impatience with Gene’s brashness. “Charles Vidor had never done a musical before, but that would not have mattered if he had not been so totally humorless. . . . Gene’s latent towering Irish temper would get the better of him every now and then until he and Vidor had a fistfight. Cohn . . . had to be called down to the set more than once to settle their disputes.”36
Gene finally reached a truce with Vidor after Cohn agreed to give Gene and Donen a chance to experiment. At first, the studio head had been as unconvinced as Vidor about the possibilities of the “Alter Ego” dance. Gene went home and stayed up until five a.m. for two consecutive nights, sipping coffee and working out the dance in his head and on paper. After consulting with the cameramen and technicians, he went back to Cohn, who finally said: “All right. Go ahead. Just get the fucking hell out of here.”37
Before plunging into filming, Gene and Donen had to devise a clever transition into the sequence. Gene knew he could not begin the dance without a bridge. “You have to state your thesis in a song first and then go into a dance,” he explained. “So, what I decided to do was state my thesis not in a song but in a few words which came over the soundtrack as if they were my stream of consciousness, and then go into the dance.”38 As is true of nearly everything involved in the “Alter Ego” routine, it remains murky whether it was actually Gene or Donen who formulated the bridging statement. Donen has stated that he told Gene to drop “McGuire” in the following line because he had never heard anyone refer to himself by his full name: “Wait a minute, Danny McGuire, she [Rusty] stood you up and you know it.”39
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 17