Filming for Words and Music completed on October 1, 1948, at a cost of $2,799,970. The picture opened a month after The Three Musketeers, on December 9, 1948. A critic from Picturegoer magazine commented on Gene’s ballet: “From the moment . . . Gene Kelly struts out to meet his girl, the sequence has the stamp of ‘difference.’ . . . It could have been so easily cheap and nasty, but some queer amalgam of music, choreography and mood lifts it to a strange perfection of its own.”33 Dancing Times ranked “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” as second only to “The Red Shoes”; Words and Music as a whole did not gain such a high honor, but it did gross a respectable $4,552,000.34
Arthur Freed’s films, like Words and Music, may have lacked weighty plotlines, but they were heavy in original dance concepts, wit, and fluid execution. Gene’s next film for Freed, Take Me out to the Ball Game, began shooting immediately after Words and Music in July 1948. The picture gave him the ideal opportunity to test dance as a means of storytelling in a nonballetic setting. His challenge lay in creating a fine balance between story and dance without weakening one at the expense of the other.
The idea for Take Me out to the Ball Game had been on Gene’s mind since 1946. Part of his inspiration for the picture came from MGM’s softball team, which bore the same name as the team in the film: the Wolves. Gene, though he was passionate about athletics, did not always relish being a part of the team. He claimed with bitterness (specifically during periods when he was without any promising assignments) that the studio wanted him less as a leading man and more as an athlete. He was especially annoyed by Dore Schary’s boasting in MGM games about what a great player he had been in high school. Moreover, Gene was still smarting over the studio’s veto of Cyrano de Bergerac. Thus, he could not resist razzing Schary, one of the men who had rejected the proposal, on the field. Eying Schary’s spiked shoes, he quipped: “Just wear sneakers and you won’t hurt yourself.”35 Schary scoffed, but he ultimately never made it into the game. Because of his spiked shoes, he tangled his foot in the grass as he left the batter’s box, fell, and tore a thigh muscle. The times Gene most enjoyed on the field were those spent with fellow team member Buster Keaton. Keaton had been one of his boyhood heroes, and he had never lost his admiration for the comedian. Gene later noted that he used to see Keaton nearly every day for a chat. Keaton’s film performances were now few and far between, but he still worked at MGM as a gagman, especially for Red Skelton vehicles.
Gene may have used Keaton’s slapstick antics as inspiration for the comedic scenes in Take Me out to the Ball Game. The rest of the story stemmed from his childhood dream of being a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates as well as from the true story of Nick Altrock and Al Schacht, baseball players who moonlighted as vaudevillians. Finally, the picture was born from an instinct for, in Gene’s words, “self-defense.” Thirty years after Take Me out to the Ball Game completed filming, Gene revealed that the film would never have been made had it not been for his vehemence against doing a picture for Joe Pasternak.36 The plot of the proposed Pasternak film, which had shades of the dated backstage musical, would have had him and Frank Sinatra converting an aircraft carrier into a nightclub. It was then that he developed, with Stanley Donen, the scenario for Take Me out to the Ball Game, which Arthur Freed bought at a cost of $25,000.
“At heart I’m something of a frustrated writer myself,” Gene told a columnist for the Schenectady Gazette. “MGM is finding that out. Stanley Donen and I banged out a story and managed to sell it to the studio. . . . Now we’re making it into a musical. . . . We think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”37
The premise of Take Me out to the Ball Game hinges on the tension between the Wolves and the team’s new owner, K. C. Higgins. Higgins, to the team’s shock, is not a man but a beautiful young woman who intends to take an active role in managing the players. Eddie O’Brien (Gene) tries to woo K. C. so she will soften her discipline of the team, but she is unyielding. Dennis Ryan, Eddie’s friend and teammate, is infatuated with K. C., much to the amusement of Eddie and first baseman Nat Goldberg. During the first game of the season, Dennis catches the eye not of K. C. but of Shirley, a man-crazy fan of the team. Unbeknownst to Shirley, her escort to the game, Joe Lorgan, is an underworld figure with a heavy bet against the Wolves. Lorgan convinces Eddie to perform in his new nightclub after every game, knowing the work will make him too tired to play ball. Lorgan’s scheme works. After Eddie’s exhaustion causes the team to lose a number of games, K. C. discovers his extracurricular activities and suspends him. Eddie, who now has feelings for K. C., confronts Lorgan and quits his job at the nightclub. With Dennis and Shirley’s help, Eddie plays in the final game of the season. In the end, Shirley finally wins Dennis, Eddie wins K. C., and the Wolves win the big game. With no shortage of humor and dance, the film stressed the American way of life and glorified the nation’s favorite pastime during the height of HUAC’s nationwide influence.
Though Gene and Donen created the scenario, they did not write the screenplay. That task was completed by Harry Tugend (writer of many Shirley Temple films and, most recently, the Danny Kaye musical comedy A Song Is Born, 1948) and George Wells (writer of numerous Red Skelton comedies as well as Freed’s Till the Clouds Roll By, 1946). To round out the musical aspects of Take Me out to the Ball Game, Gene’s friends Betty Comden and Adolph Green came on board as lyricists for the bulk of the score. The two had proved their skill not only on Broadway with the hit show On the Town (1944) but also through their recent work on Freed’s Good News (1947). The duo’s screenplays and song lyrics ideally encapsulated the postwar feel of MGM musicals. They were witty and hard-edged while still retaining unshakeable idealism. Freed’s assistant, Lela Simone, remarked that the writers “were very smart people” and “adapted themselves to everything very rapidly.”38
While Comden and Green penned the lyrics, Roger Edens composed the music for most of the songs with the exception of an Irish-themed tune, “The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore” (by Jean Schwartz and William Jerome), and the title song (by Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer). Edens was both composer and lyricist of one song: “Strictly U.S.A.” Arthur Freed chose the past master of the musical picture, Busby Berkeley, as director. Berkeley had freshly graduated from an Alcoholics Anonymous program and Freed, “essentially a caring person, . . . [was] eager to salve his own guilt feelings” about having fired Berkeley from the Judy Garland vehicle Girl Crazy five years before.39 Gene and Donen had been campaigning to be co-directors on the film, but Freed decided that his friend needed the boost more than the younger men.
After assigning Berkeley as director, Freed began to assemble the rest of the cast. Frank Sinatra played Dennis, a role almost identical to that of the girl-shy sailor in Anchors Aweigh. Betty Garrett (wife of blacklisted actor Larry Parks and frequent guest at Gene’s parties) portrayed Shirley and Jules Munshin, an eccentric Broadway comic, played Nat Goldberg.
Frank Sinatra was not happy with his unchallenging role. He was sulky and troublesome on the set; he felt he did not need rehearsals and attended only when the mood struck him. However, Frank did love working again with Gene, his former mentor. He also befriended Betty Garrett—though she did make him the butt of a joke. In one scene, Frank faints and Betty must carry him to the sidelines of the playing field. A double had been engaged to do the scene, but Betty said, “Believe me, I can carry him.” For the rest of the picture, the joke on the set was that “Betty Garrett can carry Frank Sinatra any day.” In general, Betty found production on the film a “loose and friendly” experience.40
Betty was alone in her feeling. The atmosphere on the set became unpleasant after Gene and Donen were forced to accept aquatic musical star Esther Williams, a leading lady they never would have chosen, for the part of K. C. Higgins. Esther’s position on the set was not helped by the fact that she was fourth choice for the role of K. C. Kathryn Grayson was originally slated for the female lead and then, at Freed’s suggestion, Judy Garland was to fill the role. However, Judy
was still experiencing major emotional ups and downs and arrived each morning in a drug-induced haze. June Allyson, yet another contender, proved unavailable due to pregnancy.
Freed turned to the Pasternak Unit and chose Esther, one of MGM’s top moneymaking stars. On the surface, she and Gene seemed well suited to one another. Next to him, she was the most accomplished athlete on the Metro lot. Yet the two performers’ commonalities became their source of animosity. Both were stubborn, outspoken, and accustomed to getting their way on a set. At five feet eight, Esther towered over most of the executives at MGM and, if she wore a hat and heels, was a head taller than Gene. Gene stated that she was “very different” from the other three actresses considered for the part. “Different meant not in his league,” Esther explained. “A dancer I was not. . . . I felt clumsy on dry land.”41
Esther had anticipated having a strong leading man in Gene. Each was disillusioned with the other when they began working together. Esther recalled that Gene behaved like “nothing less than a tyrant behind the camera—at least with me. He had to see that I was doing the best I could—and suffering through it.” Truth be told, it was Esther’s height and not her lack of dancing skills that seemed to be at the root of their problem. Even in scenes when both stars were seated, her stature was obvious.
“That son of a bitch even sits tall!” Gene allegedly declared.
“It would help if you would just sit up straight. Try tucking one foot under your ass,” Esther told the incensed Gene.
“Gee Esther,” he said. “The way you just said that, you surprise me. I think you really would like to learn to act.”
Esther concluded in her memoir: “That’s the way it was with Gene. There was always that little zinger.”42
Esther was no fonder of Stanley Donen. In aesthetic endeavors, Gene and Donen brought out the best in one another. On a personal level, they had long brought out the worst. “They were joined at the hip—and the mouth,” Esther declared.43 Just as Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson had been victims of Gene and Donen’s antics on the set of Anchors Aweigh, now they made Esther Williams their target.
One afternoon, Gene and Donen stationed themselves beside the actress’s new blue Cadillac El Dorado convertible. When she neared the car, the two boys were “merciless, mincing around the car, dropping sarcasm with every step.”
“Oh my,” said Gene with make-believe admiration. “Stanley, do you see what Esther has?”
“Look Gene! See what you get from splashing around in a pool?”
Esther retaliated by making it known around the studio that playing scenes with Gene gave her a severe case of scoliosis from having to “make herself short.”44
Esther also sought revenge by going to Freed, lamenting that Donen especially did not respect her acting. Freed ordered the young man to make a public denial. “I can’t do this, Arthur. She’s absolutely right,” Donen admitted.45
Gene Kelly researcher Susan Cadman hypothesized that part of Esther’s dislike for Gene had to do with her association with Arthur Laurents. “She was friendly with Arthur Laurents . . . who for some reason did not like Gene, and had a poisonous tongue.”46 Laurents, who resented Gene’s occasional jokes about homosexuals, could not have taken kindly to his performance in Take Me out to the Ball Game. In one scene, Gene (as Eddie) sarcastically behaves in a way that he thinks would be acceptable to K. C. at the dinner table. With dainty gestures, he gushes over fashions in Vanity Fair magazine in a feigned effeminate voice. “Have you boys seen the fashion page in this week’s Vanity Fair? Well, there’s the cutest pair of pants with a tank top and a narrow bottom,” he says and then brings his hand to his face in a coy manner. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”47 Though Gene’s mimicry was done purely in fun, Laurents and Esther found his sense of humor offensive.
Adolph Green and Betty Comden, conversely, adored Gene and Donen’s company. “Stanley and Gene were terrific storytellers and they were also great with the actors. They too had a terrific sense of humor,” Green asserted.48
Because of Laurents, Esther may have been predisposed to dislike Gene. Nonetheless, her recollections reveal the truth as she saw it, hard as that truth is for many of Gene’s fans to accept. Esther’s brief description of Gene on the dust jacket of her book summarized her feelings about him in six words: “a jerk, but he could dance!”49
Gene and Esther Williams had a chance to find common ground in their mutual dislike of director Busby Berkeley. Esther disapproved of Berkeley’s indifference to actors’ safety and his refusal to use stunt doubles. All he cared about, she argued, was seeing that his overblown visions for a given sequence came to fruition. Nonetheless, Esther wanted Berkeley, not Gene, to choreograph her musical numbers. She owed much of the success of her aquatic musical numbers to Berkeley and hoped he could do the same for her in Take Me out to the Ball Game. Berkeley envisioned a sort of dream sequence in which Eddie would reach out to K. C. as she swam in a rushing river. His failure to grab hold of her would reflect her elusive affections toward him. Freed and Esther were enthusiastic, but Gene turned down the idea.
“Are you sure it isn’t because you don’t know how to swim, Gene?” Esther quipped.
“I can swim, smart ass,” he retorted.50
A fantasy sequence, albeit an underwater one, seems like a concept that would have sparked Gene’s imagination, given that he helped pioneer the concept of dream ballets on film. Esther later conjectured that Gene’s rejection had more to do with his reluctance to turn the film into an Esther Williams picture. “In retrospect, Gene was right. The movie does just fine without an Esther Williams aqua special. . . . However, at that time in my career, I wasn’t used to a backseat and Kelly and Donen knew how I felt.”51
Esther and Berkeley both came to accept that the film was essentially Gene’s. Berkeley’s biographer Jeffrey Spivak mused, “Kelly was a choreographer, Berkeley was, most assuredly, not. . . . They did clash a bit on Ball Game, but it was Berkeley who gave him [Gene] his start in For Me and My Gal. One might have thought Gene Kelly would have been a bit more respectful to the man who gave him his film career, but he wasn’t.”52
For one scene, Berkeley envisioned filming in a bird’s-eye view reminiscent of his kaleidoscopic style of the 1930s. “Back, back . . . take the camera back!” he shouted to his cameramen. Gene looked on with his arms crossed, realizing that the shot, if executed in Berkeley’s way, would be so long and wide that the movements of the two actors in the frame would be lost. “Yeah, back to 1930,” Gene murmured audibly.53 While Gene considered Berkeley’s cinematography style outdated, he did eventually admit, “Anybody who ever used a camera owes a debt to Berkeley. To laugh at his films is like laughing at Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales because it’s in Old English.”54 Berkeley never disparaged Gene’s work. In fact, when asked to name his favorite musical sequence of all time, he answered without hesitation: “Gene Kelly’s ‘Alter Ego’ dance in Cover Girl.”55
Though Gene did ultimately express admiration for Berkeley’s work, the musical numbers in Take Me out to the Ball Game were mainly small scale and inappropriate for the elder director’s sweeping visions. Historian Martin Rubin noted that the musical sequences place “the major emphasis on comedy, transitions to the narrative, the cleverness of the lyrics, and the personalities and performance skills of the stars, rather than on spectacle and group dynamics.”56 The songwriters’ creations clearly favored the Kelly-Donen style. Indeed, every song reflects the character performing it so well that the movie, when viewed in total, seems lopsided. Singing and dancing do considerably more for characterization and storytelling than the dialogue.
Most of the film’s musical numbers did serve to further the plot and characterization, but others, like “The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore” and “Strictly U.S.A.,” were purely for show. The numbers most indicative of the new direction in Freed musicals were those penned by Comden and Green, including “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg” and “Yes Indeedy.” In both numbers
the performers and cameras are in constant movement.
In “Yes Indeedy,” Eddie and Dennis reunite with the Wolves after their season playing on vaudeville. As they sing, they establish themselves as consummate showmen, recounting five outlandish romances they enjoyed during their travels. The song ends with a twist and a laugh:
We’re hot as electric wires
Twice as hot as forest fires,
And the biggest pair of liars . . . in the U.S.A.!57
The second major number in Take Me out to the Ball Game succeeds in further establishing Eddie’s and Dennis’s personalities as well as Nat Goldberg’s. The sequence concludes with the three friends standing in a pyramid formation, crooning that they are “the Three Musketeers of the bat and the ball!” The routine fills the requirement for the “teamwork” message conveyed in the bulk of Gene’s films.
Gene’s solo dance, “The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore,” is inessential to the plot but is arguably the most memorable number in the film. Taking place at a clambake, the sequence allows Gene ample opportunity to employ items around him as props. He uses his cane as everything from a flute to a gun, effortlessly dances from picnic table tops to the steps of a bandstand, and struts across the deck in a George M. Cohan fashion. All the while, a cocked green top hat on his head covers one eye. The sequence is the best example of cinedance in the picture; at one point when he slows his pace, Gene wears a dreamlike expression as he hears a distant playback of his voice, as if from a memory nearly faded. Fred Astaire used the same technique of a disembodied singing voice in his “Shoes with Wings On” number from Freed’s The Barkleys of Broadway, which was filming simultaneously to Take Me out to the Ball Game.
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 28