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

by Cynthia Brideson

  By the time Leslie received a phone call from MGM, she had all but forgotten about the screen test she had made the year before. She still had her heart set on a classical ballet career. But she could not turn down an offer from Hollywood’s greatest studio. When she agreed to play Lise, however, she was not signed to a long-term contract. As Leslie packed her trunks for America, her mother gave her a bit of parting advice: “Be careful they don’t put you in a sarong . . . and whatever you do, don’t marry Mickey Rooney!”14

  Leslie’s mother need not have worried; Mickey Rooney was no longer a member of the Freed Unit. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were now the definitive actors of the group, and Leslie ultimately found herself dancing with them both by the decade’s end. She entered the Freed Unit at an ideal time; by 1950, the group had hit its stride after the monumental successes of Easter Parade and On the Town. “There was nothing in the phone book that said ‘Freed Unit,’” Stanley Donen explained in 1982. “The Unit was a myth created by the fact that he had brought these people to the studio more or less. . . . All worked with him more than anyone else, so we just seemed to be a unit. . . . [Other] producers . . . were all envious of Freed. . . . He WAS a god, with the sort of power he accumulated.”15

  The unit’s table in the MGM lunchroom was an object of both awe and scorn among those at the studio who worked outside what Freed termed his “own little Camelot.” Johnny Green elaborated: “We were the laughingest bunch of people in Hollywood. . . . We were so loud and raucous and behaved as if we owned the place that a lot of people couldn’t stand us. . . . The Freed boys and girls weren’t liked. Talent frightens people . . . but all we were doing was making MGM money.”16

  What was the secret of the Freed Unit’s success? Gene mused, “I think we liked working together and I think we did have camaraderie. But everything wasn’t easy. We always had to deal with the different personalities and creative instincts of each individual, but we sat down and talked everything out.”17 Johnny Green concluded, “Those years with Arthur Freed were among the richest of our lives.”18

  Americans in 1950 needed the lighthearted yet intelligent products Freed offered. The early 1950s bore little resemblance to the latter half of the decade which, in contrast, was characterized by “a glow of a new optimism and unprecedented prosperity.” According to the authors of Time-Life’s The American Dream: The 50s, “The escalating Cold War with the Soviet Union cast such deep shadows that some Americans considered 1950 the darkest time since early World War II.”19 When Communist North Korea declared war on South Korea in June 1950, President Harry S. Truman sent in troops and approved the development of a superbomb designed to be far more destructive than the atomic bomb.

  But in spite of its dark political climate, America was nonetheless a nation to be envied in 1950. The country was entering the beginning of its consumer culture and was still experiencing the baby boom that had begun in 1943. Suburban living continued to grow—and that equaled a continual rise in television sets as well. Stories reminiscent of those unfolded in the Andy Hardy series found a new audience thanks to TV. Called “situation comedies,” they were popularized by such shows as I Love Lucy (1951) and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952).

  As much as the Freed Unit’s musicals promised to fulfill the average American’s wishes, the group still faced numerous obstacles in producing universally appealing products. Youths in particular presented a problem. The rise of a new type of idol, the antihero, crashed into pop culture with passionate intensity. Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951) and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) were just two early antiheroes. Brando and Clift subscribed to the Stanislavsky or “Method” style of acting and became the characters they portrayed. Musical stars at MGM knew they were acting in a land of Technicolor make-believe; Method actors mimicked the harshness of the real world.

  But what about Gene Kelly? He professed to become as much like the characters in his films as he could. He immersed himself in the character of Jerry Mulligan. In preparation for his role, he took daily painting lessons (often using Oscar Levant as a model). He already dressed more or less like the starving artist he was portraying; his entire clothing budget for the picture totaled $50. Gene certainly held a special place in the film world: he was the musical antihero. However, according to Kerry, no matter how convincing he was in his roles, he never lost sight of the fact that he was pretending. “I think that’s a false assumption about actors,” she observed, that they are like “the characters they portray.”20

  An American in Paris had the potential to be that rare work of cinema to appeal to Americans of all ages in all regions of the country. Gene as leading man and a teenage girl as leading lady would attract younger people while older Americans would relate to the Gershwin score on a nostalgic level.

  An American in Paris was finally ready to begin filming on August 1, 1950—but not before it experienced a few hiccups.

  On her first day in Hollywood, Leslie Caron’s first stop was not MGM but a gathering in Gene’s backyard. She recalled in her memoir: “Gene and Betsy Kelly offered the warmth of a . . . dinner at home, en famille with their daughter, Kerry. ‘She’s brighter than you,’” Gene teased Leslie.21

  Gene was jesting. In truth, Leslie had passed his test for admission into his home, for she possessed talent and intelligence. Though Lela Simone claimed that the Freed Unit had initially approached Leslie with the attitude of “well, let’s hope for the best,” everyone soon recognized Leslie’s remarkable dancing skill.22

  However, she made a serious faux pas on the first day of rehearsals. Leslie told Sidney Guilaroff, Metro’s head hairdresser, that she wanted a “modern French girl’s hairdo, short as a boy’s and straight.” He did not understand her meaning, so she took up a scissors and cut her hair herself. Leslie recalled the frenzied scene that ensued: “Everything stopped . . . until the executive hierarchy could be summoned. There were frantic phone calls. . . . I found myself back against the outside wall of the building, facing the firing squad.” “They fire girls for less than that, you know,” Gene told her.23

  Arthur Freed sent Leslie home, and plans for filming had to be rearranged for the next three weeks to allow her hair to grow. Leslie did not regret shearing her hair; she reasoned that she was ahead of her time. Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine made that look fashionable a few years later in Roman Holiday (1954) and The Trouble with Harry (1955).

  When she returned to MGM, Gene, to familiarize her with his style, showed her a forty-five-minute montage of dances he had choreographed at MGM “performed with cocky charm and apparent facility.”

  “What tremendous fun you must have had!” Leslie exclaimed.

  “Fun?” he retorted. He then gave her five minutes “of dressing-down as he pointed out the hard work all this represented.”24

  Gene could be abrupt with the young dancers he trained to be his partners, but he also knew when to praise them. Leslie described his way of working: “He had a sense of fair play and would indicate in measured tones his approval. . . . His rebukes were feared by one and all in the studio. . . . Although he was very encouraging, I could lose my confidence in front of him.” Leslie fast discovered that Gene’s lectures were born not from anger but tough love. “Gene guided me in front of the camera with patience and good humor,” she explained. “I spoke my first lines phonetically. He would say to me, ‘Lester’—that was his affectionate nickname for me, ‘Lester, de pester’—. . . ‘if you want your grandmother to see you in this scene, you’d better turn toward the camera to speak your line.’” Leslie, accustomed to the presence of an audience when she performed, felt the camera was cold and thus could not act convincingly before it. Eventually, she solved the problem by playing to the director, Vincente Minnelli, who was always sitting under the camera. Despite his notorious inarticulateness when giving direction, Leslie claimed that she understood him. “There was a quality in him that pushed you to surpass yourself in order to surprise hi
m.”25

  The atmosphere on the set became a familial one after the cast and crew overcame their initial hurdles. Leslie wrote in her memoir: “Gene Kelly, who kept his car in front of his bungalow, very democratically walked to and from rehearsals. . . . He was saluted with familiarity by one and all: ‘Hi Geno, how ya doin’? See ya!’ He wore the same kind of informal clothes every day . . . and on his head, what was then called a beanie—a baseball cap to cover his baldness.”26

  More bumps arose as production went on. This time they involved Oscar Levant. From the beginning of the filming, his dejected expression had been more pronounced than usual. He felt certain that Gene would not support his idea about including a concerto sequence in the movie. He had performed two in his previous film for Freed, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), but Freed had different ideas for An American in Paris. “We won’t have any concert music. I don’t want any lulls in this picture,” Freed decreed, a declaration Levant felt was “directed at me.”27

  Freed’s none too subtle comment did not stop Levant from pitching his idea to Gene and Minnelli: he would perform Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” for what he termed an “ego fantasy.” In Levant’s number, Adam would play all the instruments in the orchestra and act as the conductor. To top it off, everyone in the audience would be a twin of himself, cheering him on with endless calls of “Bravo!” Gene and Minnelli, to Levant’s surprise, consented.

  Gene may have been a supporter of Levant’s “ego fantasy,” but their egos clashed when it came to another number, “By Strauss.” A comical sequence devised by Gene, it centered on Jerry waltzing through the bistro he and his friends patronize each morning. There is a piano in the establishment, which Adam commandeers. Gene puts a checked napkin over his head, pretending to be a Parisian belle as Henri serenades him. Jerry then drops his clowning and does a dainty waltz with the old woman who runs the bistro. Minnelli later wrote of Gene’s interpretation of the number: “He’s one of the rare people who can get away with such cute touches.”28 Levant, who concurred that Gene was “not averse to a good dose of corn now and then,” asked Jack Cole, the famed dancer and choreographer, how he liked the choreography in the picture. Cole replied, “rather bitterly,” “With old women and children, how can you miss?”29 Levant had his own reason to be bitter about the number. As Saul Chaplin explained, Levant wished to play “By Strauss” as “a true Viennese waltz with all its hesitations and accents. Gene objected. It didn’t fit what he had in mind. What started as a normal discussion soon turned into a shouting match with Gene threatening to hit Oscar, who threatened to sue Gene if he did. Now it seems quite laughable, but not then.” Though Levant stormed out of the rehearsal, he came back the next day as if nothing had happened. “What is surprising,” Chaplin concluded, “is that neither of them won or lost the argument. From then on, they were friends and the incident was never mentioned again.”30

  Gene tried to avoid arguments on the set because they impeded the collaboration necessary to create the film. And he certainly spoke on behalf of the entire cast and crew when he stated that he hoped audiences would find the film to be a fresh and distinctive musical.

  The moment the film begins, one can almost taste its freshness. The opening character introductions are executed with a twist, adopting the “subjective camera” technique used to much acclaim in noir films like Dark Passage (1947) and Lady in the Lake (1947). The camera acts alternately as the eyes of Adam, Henri, and Jerry, yet the actors do not remain invisible behind the lens. Rather, they observe themselves and narrate their doings. The “subjective camera” technique ends as Henri and Adam meet for breakfast. Henri is unusually cheerful because he is in love with Lise, whom he describes variously as exciting, sweet, shy, bookish, and vivacious. “Look, let’s start all over again, shall we? What’s she like?” a frustrated Adam asks.31

  Throughout their exchange, viewers watch a series of vignettes portraying Lise in each persona. “Embraceable You” provides the background music, changing in tempo and mood with each scene change. She is shown as a flapper, a ballerina, a beatnik, and a vamp. The entire sequence is like the sophisticated older sister of the “Miss Turnstiles Ballet” in On the Town. The earlier ballet did not employ the saturated colors or the creative interpolation of the same tune throughout, nor did its closing shot take on the form of a puzzle with each piece showing an alternate personality.

  Leslie Caron had not realized how demanding working on the picture would be. Coming from a background of classical ballet, she had assumed that a light Hollywood film would be easy in comparison. When the physical pressure of filming plus a strict diet caused Leslie to become sick with anemia and mononucleosis, Gene turned from taskmaster to father figure. Lela Simone’s interpretation of Gene’s kindness was not flattering. A good director has to excel at “handling unsure new people,” but Gene was “very often not good” at this—however, she remarked sardonically, “if a young actress had talent and technique and falls in love with him, she has it made.”32

  Leslie may not have been in love with Gene, but she did possess the talent and technique required to win his favor and, at times, leniency. “Gene was my defender, he’d say to me: ‘If you’re too ill just tell me and stand by me, and I’ll say you’re too ill, and we will collect insurance and go off one day, and you can lie in bed all day and rest up.’” With Leslie, as with Judy Garland, Gene displayed an empathy that he did not allow everyone. Leslie “thanked God” for the aid of Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne, with whom she did most of her rehearsing.33

  Minnelli was, for the most part, equally understanding. He was known for his ability to calm even the most frayed of actors by taking them aside and whispering comforting words. Still, a number of his colleagues wondered if his concern was genuine. Gene’s empathy, if given, was always sincere. He was not afraid to blow up at people; consequently, they seldom questioned where they stood with him. “He was dictatorial but in a nice way,” Leslie explained.34 Minnelli, on the other hand, would just purse his lips and keep his feelings to himself.

  Though Minnelli’s dominance was less obvious than Gene’s, Leslie Caron aptly summarized his crucial contribution to the picture: “He could express poignancy in dramatic situations but was never cloying and he always respected the limits of elegance.”35 The most dramatic, albeit lowkey, musical number in the picture takes place during Jerry and Lise’s first date along the Seine. With elegance and simplicity in perfect tandem, Jerry gives Lise a single red flower and begins to sing “Our Love Is Here to Stay.” Their languorous dance is so natural that their balletic movements seem merely an extension of walking. Leslie Caron recalled only one thing that made the filming of the sequence unpleasant: “The water [used to imitate the Seine] was becoming very stagnant—it smelled moldy—but once the lights were on . . . and Gene was singing and we were dancing . . . it was very tender and a moment of great closeness.”36

  In addition to touches of elegance, Minnelli lent the other numbers “what I call the great Hollywood sense of humor, which was in fact a blend of Hollywood and New York humor,” Leslie said.37 Minnelli used Levant to embody this humor; Levant, with his “curiously sad charm,” acts as the film’s moderator in two of the film’s “cute” numbers, “Tra La La La” and “S’Wonderful.”38 In the former routine, Jerry enters Adam’s apartment singing: “This time it’s really love, tra la la la.” Adam brings him down to earth, bellowing in a baritone, “To me you’re full of bla bla bla!” During the latter number, Jerry and Henri both torture Adam with dreamy-eyed declarations of love, crooning how wonderful it is that “she should care for me.” Adam, who has not informed them they love the same woman, sits between the men with a look of doom on his droopy face that is in comic juxtaposition to the toothy grins of his friends.

  The routine most reflective of Gene, “I Got Rhythm,” could have been condemned as saccharine if not for its novel execution. Gene invented a most unexpected approach to the old tune by using it as an English lesson for a group of
French children. Jerry points to a child and prompts him or her to say, “I got,” after which he sings, “rhythm.” His well-known Pied Piper quality was never conveyed more brightly than in this number. Claude and André Guy, two of the children in the routine, recalled: “Gene Kelly wanted children who weren’t professional. . . . [He] was terrific. He was so nice to the kids, loved playing with us even off the set. He’d tap dance round us and he would give us candy. He was like sunshine when he came into the studio.”39

  Gene’s love for children especially shone through whenever four-year-old Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Vicente Minnelli and Judy Garland, visited the set. Gene became a mentor to Liza in her adolescence, but his affection for her began during the making of An American in Paris. Minnelli recounted Gene’s rapport with her in his autobiography: “On a previous Halloween I’d had a witch costume designed for Liza. . . . I took her round the neighborhood. ‘Will I scare the people?’ she asked. ‘You’ll frighten them to death,’ I assured her. . . . We stopped at Gene Kelly’s. His was an award-winning performance. ‘A witch! A terrible witch! Save me!’ Liza walked home with her pointed witch’s chin held high.”40

  Liza found another encounter with Gene less pleasant. According to Leslie, one day when she came to visit the set, Gene and Minnelli were “kidding around and pretending to have an argument.” Liza started to cry and scream, “Don’t fight!” Leslie observed, “She obviously was a very highly strung child who had witnessed scenes that were too emotional for her age.” Whether the argument Liza witnessed was truly in jest or real is uncertain. Both men had definite opinions about their art and though “they both allowed for each other’s sensibilities,” when “Gene [took] over, Minnelli had a way of circumventing opposition and eventually getting his way.”41