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

by Cynthia Brideson

  As an accompaniment to the zesty, forty-five-minute ballet, Gene selected George Gershwin’s Concerto in F. “The paramount problem was to teach the corps de ballet how to dance modern symphonic jazz,” Gene commented. “It’s been a huge source of satisfaction for me, working with these kids. I think they liked the informal atmosphere of my rehearsals. . . . Every so often when I looked up at this ornate old building and reminded myself of what I was doing, I sort of looked up toward heaven and murmured ‘Forgive me, Diaghilev.’”5 Not all the dancers thought the rehearsals were “informal” or fun; a number of ballerinas complained that Gene’s “muscular rehearsals” were “wearing them out.”6

  Pas de Dieux made its Paris premiere on July 6, 1960. When the final curtain fell, the audience was rapturous, applauding like “a Saturday night crowd at a barn dance.” The company took an astounding twenty-three curtain calls. “It was hard to tell, however, whether the audience and the majority of critics were applauding the ballet or the man who created it,” a reporter for Newsweek observed. Gene was pulled from the audience and onto the stage as theatergoers began to shout, “Auteur! Auteur!” His eyes were damp and he wore a “radiantly happy” smile on his face as he took three more curtain calls with the dancers. Among the enthusiastic audience members were a handful of movie folk, including Grace Kelly and Sam Goldwyn.7

  French and American critics had almost unanimous praise for the show. One French author recorded: “Kelly succeeded in blowing away a half century of dust from the Paris Opera.”8 Gene, ever the perfectionist, was not content to leave the production at its status quo. “This was just the first night. Wait till we get the thing polished up.”9 Negative reviews of the show are difficult to find, but one stands out—a piece written by a critic for Le Monde. “It was a bad idea to insist pompously on evening dress for the opening. To have been at one with the other side of the footlights last night, we should have come in jeans.”10 Gene was his own severest critic. Twenty years later, he commented, “Now I feel I could do it better.”11 A. M. Julien, general director of the opera, saw no flaw in Gene’s work and presented him with the French government’s honorific title Knight of the Legion of Honor.

  Though plagued by doubts of the ballet’s merit, Gene found his months in France refreshing. He and Jeanne rented an expensive apartment in Paris that, according to Gene, cost him every franc he earned that spring. The abode was too big for just the two of them, but “he adopted a ‘what the hell’ attitude (of which his mother would not have approved!) and enjoyed himself.” Each night, Jeanne and Gene made it their custom to stop by a nearby bar and play pinball. The couple competed ferociously against each other, but not to the extent Gene and Betsy had years ago. Gene claimed that he usually won because he knew how to “cheat outrageously.” One night, Jeanne had had enough of his tricks and kicked Gene on the shin beneath the table. Unbeknownst to Jeanne, she had kicked not her opponent but a stranger observing the game. Gene was apoplectic, then, when the stranger began to hurl insults at Jeanne in French, including the epithet “whore.” The man retreated from the bar after Gene punched him on the nose. On the way back to the hotel, Gene wondered aloud why the man had turned against Jeanne. “Is he anti-American? Dirty son of a bitch.” Jeanne turned to him with a sheepish expression and confessed, “I think I kicked him in the groin.” Several weeks later, the couple passed the man on the street, apologized, bought him a drink, and played a game of pinball with him. “He beat the hell out of me,” Gene recalled.12

  In Paris, Gene and actor Jackie Gleason began discussing a screen project titled Gigot that would star Gleason and have Gene as director. Gene and Gleason were “pals by proxy” because the comedian was friends with Gene’s colleagues Paddy Chayefsky and Frank Sinatra. Seven Arts Productions was to produce the film and Twentieth Century-Fox agreed to release it. The Gleason project was only in its infancy when Gene, at the behest of producer Jerry Wald at Fox, flew to Hollywood to appear in Let’s Make Love, a Marilyn Monroe musical directed by George Cukor.

  The picture costarred Yves Montand as Jean-Marc Clement, a sort of French Howard Hughes. When he becomes the subject of an off-Broadway satire, he makes a trip to the theater only to be mistaken for a look-alike actor auditioning for the role based on himself. Clement becomes infatuated with the leading lady Amanda (Monroe) and decides to play along with the misconception. To make himself believable as a performer, he hires Milton Berle to teach him comedy, Gene to teach him to dance, and Bing Crosby to teach him to croon. Gene’s one line allowed him to espouse his personal dance philosophy: “You see, a dancer expresses with his body what an actor does with words. It’s not just the feet.”

  The high point of the picture is Marilyn Monroe singing a sultry rendition of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” which Mary Martin had made a hit in Gene’s first Broadway show, Leave It to Me! (1938). Gene was happy to work with Marilyn. As a starlet, she had been a semi-regular guest at his and Betsy’s open-house parties, usually as the date of a director or producer. Gene saw great potential in Marilyn’s musical comedy skills and hoped to work with her more closely in the future.

  When Let’s Make Love premiered on September 8, 1960, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times bemoaned Montand’s leaden performance. “Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly are brought in to give the pupil further lessons. The only humor in their appearance is the idea. The futility of their efforts is more ironic.”13 Though the movie lost money at the box office, Gene viewed it as a positive experience—and an easy one. “I got on a plane and flew over the Pole to Los Angeles. Jerry [Wald] met me in the evening at the airport; we filmed the next day and then he returned me to the airport,” Gene explained. “Would that all my jobs had been so well arranged.”14

  Gene hoped his impending directorial job would be as streamlined. However, the importance of Gigot paled beside a lively event in Gene’s personal life. He was certain he had kept the development a secret, but it came as little surprise to his friends and family. At age forty-eight, Gene Kelly became the husband of thirty-seven-year-old Jeanne Coyne.

  “I can’t imagine an adult man not wanting marriage. Freedom is lonely. . . . It’s sheer boredom. . . . A little variety can’t possibly compensate for the joys of solidity, of having someone close by your side. . . . A woman clips your wings a bit, but she’s worth it,” Gene stated in 1962.15 By that time, he had been happily married to Jeanne Coyne for two years. Two decades after their first meeting, the couple married at two o’clock in the morning in a small ceremony in Tonopah, Nevada, on August 8, 1960. Gene wished to keep the marriage quiet to protect Kerry, whom he did not wish to be hounded by columnists. Tireless columnist Louella Parsons, however, managed to leak the story. Kerry later said she was “thrilled” about her father’s remarriage and “thought it was great.”16 She recalled that Gene had asked her permission to marry Jeanne, thinking it would come as a surprise to his daughter. “I played it very straight and said: ‘What a wonderful idea, Dad. How did you ever think of it?’”17

  Now that Gene and Jeanne were ready to begin a life together, Gene considered putting his house on the market to make a completely fresh start. But when he asked his wife what she thought of the house, “she said she loved it and wouldn’t dream of making me sell.” What changed was not Gene’s house but his lifestyle. It had already altered considerably since his divorce from Betsy, but now it became even quieter. The couple was content to stay at home. On the infrequent occasions they went dancing, Gene said, “People expected me to be throwing her around and dancing on tables. All we wanted to do was the foxtrot.”18 Jeanne was not fond of flashy dance, nor did she like volleyball or charades. In spite of their less stimulating social life, they found all the refreshment they needed in each other. Their personalities complemented each other ideally, for they shared the key traits of, in Betsy’s words, being “charming, good-natured, straightforward, and energetic.”19

  Gene, as he settled into a semi-retirement, “was not only personally happy but also though
t himself the better for having had his temperament and perfectionism cut down to size” by Jeanne.20 This being said, Jeanne was not dominant. Unlike Betsy, she had no interest in pursuing her own career after she married, and moreover, she was apolitical and “a little puritanical.” She believed a wife’s place was in the home and, according to Kerry, had an “image of family life . . . she was intent on turning . . . into a reality even if it meant suppressing her actual intelligence in the process.” Kerry asserted that Jeanne’s only fault seemed to be her “neurotic denial of her intelligence.”21

  Gene was aware of his wife’s intelligence, but he seemed to thrive on living with a more self-effacing woman. Nonetheless, he was proud of her abilities—abilities he had seen from the first time he met her when she was his twelve-year-old pupil. “No one I’ve ever known has such a combination of talents,” Gene said of his wife, referring specifically to her skill in assessing any routine he showed her and critiquing a number’s effectiveness. One journalist aptly described her as a woman who “became his living answer. . . . He has found someone whose sense of perfectionism matches his. . . . Like Gene, she has one foot in fantasy, and a perennial child’s ability to imagine.”22

  One area in which Jeanne did not adapt herself to Gene was in becoming politically active; apolitical, she left campaigning, rallies, and the like to Gene. Gene was especially active in championing John F. Kennedy as the Democratic candidate for president in the 1960 election. Gene’s colleagues Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe joined him in their support. Kennedy did ultimately win the election, making him, at forty-three, America’s youngest president as well as the country’s first Catholic leader.

  At Kennedy’s inaugural gala in January 1961, Gene was among the celebrities who paid tribute to the president via a lengthy musicalized story of his life. Gene sang and danced to “The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore,” wearing the green top hat he had worn performing the number in Take Me out to the Ball Game. He next did a vaudevillian skit complete with his trademark dance move of hopping along the ground on his hands and feet. The audience met his contributions with lengthy applause and shouts.

  America in 1961 was far different from the America Gene recalled in his nostalgic skits. The Cold War was escalating; the US government attempted to halt the spread of Communism, first in an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs and next in Vietnam. On December 11, 1961, the war in Vietnam officially began when American helicopters landed in Saigon. American soil, too, was not free from conflict. Tension brewed when African American Freedom Riders were arrested for allegedly disturbing the peace when they refused to sit in the backs of buses. On a brighter note, America had become a strong contender in the space race against the Soviet Union. Kennedy launched the Apollo program, claiming a man would be on the moon by the end of the decade. As immersed as he was in his family and work, Gene remained in touch with the world around him and was an especially firm supporter of the civil rights movement.

  Film reflected the racial tension in the country. West Side Story, the number one movie of the year, depicted animosity between whites and Puerto Ricans. Escapist entertainment, however, remained a necessary element in cinema. Doris Day and Rock Hudson delighted audiences in one of their many “sex” comedies, Lover Come Back, while Disney found a new star in Hayley Mills in its pleasant family movie The Parent Trap. The year’s surprise hit was not escapist but experimental: Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Its success proved that Americans were now more receptive to foreign, avant-garde cinema. The Italian film, shot completely in black and white and on location in Rome, led Gene to see his impending project, Gigot, as a promising one. It, too, was to be shot in black and white and entirely on location.

  Gene had little reason to doubt his capability to create an artistic yet accessible picture. On October 5, 1961, his alma mater, Pittsburgh State University, awarded him an honorary doctor of fine arts degree. The title was far more fitting than bachelor of science in economics, the degree he had actually earned there. In late spring 1961, the newly christened “doctor” flew to France to begin shooting on Gigot—a film he claimed had the makings of a minor masterpiece.

  Gigot was essentially Jackie Gleason’s Invitation to the Dance. As such, producers viewed it with grave doubt. Already, four directors had tried and failed to bring the picture to life: Orson Welles, José Ferrer, William Wyler, and Fred Zinnemann. What the film needed was a man of sentiment who still had the spark of childhood about him—Gene was a natural choice. Gleason’s biographer William Henry III disagreed, asserting that Gene’s “genial nice guy humor” and “schmaltzy romantic vision of France” as shown in An American in Paris in no way could be reconciled to Gleason’s Paris of “rotting suburbs, petty merchants, peasant mores, and stark survival.” Gleason, Henry concluded, took Gene on simply because he needed to get his movie made.23

  Gigot tells the story of an outcast Parisian deaf-mute who can communicate with others only via pantomime. When a prostitute with a baby finds her way to his basement one rainy night, Gigot takes it upon himself to look after them.

  Gleason and Gene found that they worked well together in spite of their clashing egos. The comedian remained in good humor even after Gene imposed an exercise regimen upon him that included running up and down flights of stairs. Though Gene put Gleason on a weight-loss plan, he did not seem overly concerned with Gleason’s eating habits. They regularly went to LeRoy Haines’s restaurant in Montmartre—the only establishment in Paris that listed barbecued pork ribs, Texas chili, and homemade apple pie as its specialties. Gleason was so pleased with the food that he made an embossed certificate for the restaurant reading, “Winner of the First Annual Jackie Gleason Culinary Award.”24

  Three events more significant than Gene and Gleason’s delight in finding American cuisine in Paris occurred during the filming of Gigot. In August 1961, Gene escaped death when a group of right-wing terrorists attempted to bomb a Parisian police station. The bomb hit Gene’s parked sedan instead, blowing it to smithereens. The second event was a happier one: Gene received from Hollywood the offer of a role in a new television series by the makers of Leave It to Beaver, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher. The series was a spin-off of the movie Going My Way (1944), which had won Bing Crosby a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the progressive Father O’Malley. Gene did not relish the idea of committing himself to the twenty-six-week job, but he reconsidered after receiving a special birthday card from Jeanne—the third and most exciting event to occur during shooting of Gigot. “I have your present inside me,” Jeanne wrote succinctly. Now, the idea of Going My Way became vastly appealing. Because it was to be filmed at Universal Studios, it assured Gene that he would be close to home when the baby was due in March 1962. Leo G. Carroll and Dick York (the latter had also appeared in Inherit the Wind) signed to be his TV costars. All would report to ABC-TV for work in February 1962.

  Gene was eager to return home, but he continued to put his best efforts into Gigot. In December 1961, after six months of shooting and editing, Gene agreed with Gleason that the film was Oscar material. They planned to complete the final polishing at Seven Arts Studios in Hollywood. “I was a very proud and happy man.”25 Gene’s pride was all too short-lived. After the film’s New York preview, Gleason and Gene realized, much to Gene’s dismay, that Seven Arts had heavily cut and edited the picture.

  Gleason’s biographer William Henry III claimed that Gene was at fault for the film’s massacre because he departed for another project, presumably Going My Way, before completing final edits. “Jackie astonishingly forgave Kelly’s . . . departure. . . . Jackie grumbled publicly that the result was not as good as it could have been . . . but he never criticized Kelly.”26 Gene stated years later: “I did have a wonderful time working with Jackie . . . and we are still great friends.”27

  Gigot made its New York premiere on September 27, 1962. Bosley Crowther had little good to say about the picture; he deemed it a failed homage to Charlie Chaplin’s
brand of silent comedy. “[Gigot] is a ponderous, steamy figure whose maunderings are soggy and gross—and made only more so in the close-ups that Gene Kelly, who directed, has generously employed. . . . True, there is a fast burst of morbid humor and sweet sentiment at the end, but it is awfully late in coming.”28 The picture grossed only $1.6 million.

  Americans may have had little appreciation for Gigot, but the French revered Gene for again featuring Paris in American cinema. In November 1962, the American Legion cited him for his outstanding contribution to Franco-American relations; Gene received the additional honor of being made a Friend of the City of Paris.

  A different sort of honor helped assuage the less than enthusiastic reception of Gigot in America. In summer 1962, New York’s Museum of Modern Art hosted a retrospective of Gene’s films. The country, in the thick of civil unrest and worry over atomic warfare, needed the optimism and hope Gene’s films instilled in audiences.