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

by Cynthia Brideson

  Gene’s reward of becoming a father for the second time trumped any professional accolades he received. On March 3, 1962, Jeanne gave birth to Timothy Kelly, a little boy with the same dark hair and striking eyes as his father. Gene was the archetypal proud father, and columnists were quick to note it. Jane Ardmore of the TV Radio Mirror commented: “When I saw him two years ago [1960] . . . something was missing. . . . Well, see him now, stopping to roll son Timothy’s baby carriage to a sunnier spot, and you know what was missing.” Timothy was baptized in November. Patricia Lawford (wife of actor Peter Lawford) acted as his godmother and TV producer Joe Connelly was godfather. Ardmore observed that at the ceremony “Jeanne and Kerry were radiant—but you should have seen Gene! He was positively misty in the midst of all this. . . . A fulfilled man.”29

  Gene was able to spend ample time with his wife and son now that his work kept him so close to home. Going My Way was ready for its premiere on ABC-TV on October 3, 1962. “It’s been twenty years since the movie [of Going My Way] was produced and we’ve updated it. . . . Gene Kelly will not play the role Bing Crosby did. He’ll be more of a fighter,” Joe Connelly told the New York Times. “The TV show will have many serious moments. There will be a script about an unwed mother, a couple that can’t have a child, and a story about a kid who steals.”30 Though it dealt with sober topics, the show was not without humor. Gene’s character, Father O’Malley, has a talent for dancing and singing, causing his superior, Father Fitz, no end of frustration. “I asked the bishop for a hard worker and he sends me Arthur Murray.”31 No one was more pleased with Gene’s latest role than Harriet Kelly. “I like seeing Gene doing [this kind of] program.”32

  The first season of Going My Way was well received and it appeared that it might be picked up for another. Gene was discontented with the show, however, considering his role passive in spite of Connelly’s assertion that O’Malley was a fighter (particularly after the Catholic Church and the TV studio put restrictions on the program, cleansing it of much of its initial edge). Furthermore, Gene found “the weight of the lines he was expected to learn sheer drudgery.”33 The shooting schedule was fast paced even for Gene, leaving him only two days to memorize each script. The rigidity of the daily routine also made him balk. One worker on the set, commenting on working with Gene, snorted: “Holy Father? More like a holy terror!”34

  Gene may have had his qualms about the program, but he still regretted its cancellation. It could not compete against the popular Beverly Hillbillies, a sitcom that shared its time slot. “It was too gentle,” Gene said of Going My Way. “It was a nice, clean family show.”35 Ironically, when Going My Way went into reruns during the summer, its ratings skyrocketed. But it was too late to revive the program; the cast had already been released and had moved on to other projects.

  By the beginning of 1963, Gene had agreed to another professional venture that brought him back to the big screen. He signed to become a part of a new company Frank Sinatra formed with Warner Bros. In his contract, he agreed to produce one film, appear in another, and direct a third. Frank would perform in all three pictures. The first project, Robin and the Seven Hoods, was designed as a satire on Chicago during Prohibition. In the cast were Bing Crosby and Frank’s Rat Pack friends Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin. “I must say they’re most agreeable to work with,” Gene commented. “Trouble is they’ve spread themselves so wide that to get them all together at once takes more logistic ability than Eisenhower’s on D-Day. For a supposed lazy, drawling group, they’re busier than beavers.”36

  Frank, who was living in New York, was a difficult man to pin down. The singer kept postponing rehearsals, leading Gene to lose patience and tell studio head Jack Warner he was going to quit. Warner “kept reminding me how friendly I was with Frank, to which I replied I was more than friendly. I really loved him, and that was the reason I was walking out. . . . If I stayed on as a kind of paid laborer, our relationship would be over.”37 Gene dropped out of Robin and the Seven Hoods as well as his other two prospective projects. Frank and Gene remained on good terms; their friendship actually deepened over the years. Frank affectionately called Gene “Shanty,” a humorous put-down nickname referring to the most impoverished of Irishmen. He later declared that nothing on earth could change his position as Gene Kelly’s number one fan.

  Gene may have been experiencing a barren period in his professional life, but he was never one to remain idle; he became more active in politics than he had been since the McCarthy era. In late January 1963, President Kennedy and his wife hosted a gala in Washington, DC, at which many stars, including Gene and Carol Burnett, were honored guests. Gene, serving as emcee, called to Kennedy from the audience: “Sing something Irish!” The president agreed as long as Gene sang with him. They performed a duet of “Wearing of the Green” that listeners called “out of this world.”38

  On November 20, 1963, Gene had an opportunity to entertain the Kennedys on a far more personal level. It was Robert Kennedy’s birthday, and Ethel, Robert’s wife, invited Gene over as a surprise guest. He arrived wrapped as a gift and plopped in Robert Kennedy’s lap. After being unwrapped he entertained Kennedy and his guests with a song and dance. Such goings on were common among Gene and the Kennedys, who shared a warm friendship.

  Two days after Robert Kennedy’s birthday, on November 22, 1963, Gene was back in New York rehearsing a number he was planning for a surprise party for Jackie Gleason. That night he heard the news that his friend President John F. Kennedy had been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. He immediately took a flight home to California and his family. They spent the afternoon numbly watching the television, grief-stricken and stunned.

  The year 1963 was one of endings in more ways than one. Gene’s first two boosters in Hollywood, Arthur Freed and Judy Garland, made their farewells to Hollywood. Freed produced his last picture, Light in the Piazza, in 1962. He had dreams of creating more musicals, particularly Say It with Music, a biopic of Irving Berlin. None came into being. Judy Garland made her cinematic swan song in 1963’s I Could Go on Singing. The film won critical praise but failed at the box office. Freed and Judy had given up the struggle to maintain their places in a world and an industry that were unrecognizable from what they had known in the 1930s through the early 1950s. Gene, perhaps more than any Freed Unit alum, persevered to remain a part of the modern film business. But he found it an increasingly Sisyphean task.

  Gene landed an opportunity to keep his work with the Freed Unit alive in a most unexpected way: sharing it with the natives of Africa. On December 20, 1963, the US State Department had asked Gene to tour the continent as part of its cultural exchange program. Gene was to speak to university students about American filmmaking and the performing arts, after which he would screen a forty-five-minute clip showing scenes from his movies. Gene planned to leave in early January and return on February 1, 1964. He was enthusiastic about the project but reluctant to leave when he discovered that Jeanne was pregnant again. However, Jeanne encouraged him to go, given that the baby was not due until June.

  Gene’s adventure took him to Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, and Ghana. The US State Department had prepared Gene to discuss film as well as answer questions on race relations in America. He was surprised that few natives broached the latter subject. “Everyone wanted to know about the assassination of President Kennedy,” Gene said. “People over there cannot be convinced it was not a plot.” He enjoyed “a wonderful, warm reception” everywhere except in Ghana, where “officials were chilly and he was ignored by the press.”39 Nonetheless, Gene deemed his trip a fascinating one. “I went into the back country every chance I got to see the tribal dances.” The dancers, he observed, were very knowledgeable about their craft. Gene was excited to explain to them that Western modern dance actually had its origins in Africa. He especially amused those he met by obliging their requests to learn such modern dances. “In the cities they wanted me to teach American steps, especially the Lindy Hop. It was the favor
ite,” Gene commented, referring to a dance that had become widely popular in the late 1920s.40

  Gene arrived back in the United States on February 1. Less than three weeks later, on February 18, 1964, Steve Allen asked Gene to be his guest on his television program to share his experiences in Africa. Allen attempted to begin a political discussion about the trip, but Gene brusquely stopped him. He had no political agenda, he stated; he had merely shown diverse groups of Africans film clips and dance steps. After thus defusing any political talk, Gene took questions from the show’s live audience. One member asked if the people in Africa were “backward.” In education, yes, Gene replied, except in the large cities where there were numerous universities. He went on that he did not view their culture as uncivilized at all. Grinning, he cited as an example the fact that bare-breasted women were the norm in some areas. On a more serious note, he noted that integration was more successful in Africa and that America seemed “backward” by comparison. Africans might be anti-American where the US government was concerned, Gene observed, but they were pro-American in respect to the average US citizen. Allen commented, “People like you are an overlooked weapon in the Cold War.”41

  Another topic Gene discussed with Allen was his current role in a new film to be directed by J. Lee Thompson, What a Way to Go! Almost immediately upon his return to America, he began work on the dark comedy, in which he had agreed to appear when it was in the planning stages in 1962. How could he turn it down when it was penned by none other than Betty Comden and Adolph Green? Originally conceived as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, its original title was I Love Louisa. The project was temporarily shelved after Marilyn’s sudden, tragic death on August 5, 1962. Gene revealed to a columnist that he had had a meeting with Marilyn only days before her death “to discuss a . . . musical. . . . She was in excellent spirits—very happy and very excited about her future prospects. I just don’t understand.”42 Another sudden death occurred shortly before the release of What a Way to Go! that affected Gene on an even more personal level. Taken ill with pneumonia, Gene’s former assistant, Carol Haney, died on May 10, 1964, at the premature age of thirty-nine. She had just completed choreographing the Broadway smash Funny Girl. Her death was a great blow to Gene and yet another one of the endings that characterized the years from 1962 to 1964.

  Production for What a Way to Go! resumed with a new leading lady, Shirley MacLaine. Gene saw as much potential in Shirley as he had in Marilyn Monroe. He had followed her career since 1953, when he had noticed her in the chorus of The Pajama Game, the show for which Carol Haney had left the Freed Unit. After the play, Gene had elbowed his way backstage to find Shirley. Moving her red ponytail over her shoulder, he had whispered in her ear, “Kid, you’ve really got something, keep going.”43

  The film’s powerhouse cast also included Dick Van Dyke, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Robert Cummings, and Paul Newman. Through a series of flashbacks shown as Louisa Foster speaks with her psychiatrist, the film explains how she became a four-time widow. She claims that she was, in one way or another, responsible for making each of her husbands wealthy. But once the men became rich, they suffered untimely deaths due to their insatiable urge for more money. Gene portrays one of the husbands, a clown in a nightclub whose songs and dances go unnoticed by patrons. Louisa notes his talents and advises him to remove his makeup and sing just as himself. He becomes an instant sensation, and Louisa agrees to be his dance partner. After they are married, he becomes an egotistical movie idol dubbed “Pinky” Benson. He erects a monument to himself—a mansion decorated entirely in pink. At a movie premiere, Pinky opens his arms to welcome his adoring fans—and they trample him to death.

  Though not a musical, What a Way to Go! gave Gene two song and dance routines: “I Think That You and I Should Get Acquainted” and “Musical Extravaganza” (the latter he performed with Shirley). Gene greatly enjoyed choreographing the numbers. Pinky sings the first tune before becoming a huge star; it is executed quietly and sincerely, similar to the staging of “For Me and My Gal” in 1942. The second number stands in juxtaposition and spoofs some of Gene’s old, spectacular dance numbers. If the number can be compared to any in Gene’s career, it would be the finale of Anchors Aweigh. The number, nautical in setting, shows Louisa, Pinky, and “squads of singers and dancers [cavorting] over the vast deck of a battleship.”44

  Twentieth Century-Fox gave What a Way to Go! a staggering $3.75 million budget. When released on May 13, 1964, it more than recouped its costs. In the United States, it earned $6.1 million, making it the eleventh-highest-grossing film of the year. Audiences flocked to see it, but critics condemned the film. An annoyed Bosley Crowther of the New York Times commented, “The whole thing . . . lacks wit and grace. . . . Of course, it is in dazzling color and is riotously overdressed.”45 Gene’s biographer Tony Thomas called the movie an example of all that was wrong with Hollywood in the 1960s; What a Way to Go! sank under its own excesses while, ironically, trying to spoof the dangers of abundance.46

  Comden and Green never wrote another Hollywood screenplay, instead devoting themselves completely to the theater, the medium they had always preferred. Gene stayed off the big screen for three years. But his reason for taking a hiatus from film was different. He had become a father for the third time, and he was determined to be more present in his young children’s lives than he had been in Kerry’s.

  Bridget Kelly was born on June 15, 1964. “I was in the Cedars of Lebanon hospital waiting for Jeannie to give birth, when I received a phone call from a well-known newspaper columnist who congratulated me on becoming a father again and what, he wanted to know, did I have to say for myself? Well, I had no idea Jeannie had already delivered, and wondered how the hell the guy had heard before me! I knew it was impossible to keep a secret in Hollywood, but this, I thought, was ridiculous!”47 Jeanne’s delivery was not an easy one, and for the first few weeks, the baby’s survival was touch and go. When they first married, Gene and Jeanne “intended to have five children and over-populate the earth.” However, Bridget was their last. “Well, we never had those five children, after all. We lost [a] third child and the doctors told us Jeannie couldn’t have any more,” Gene later revealed.48

  Gene was more than happy with his three children. “Being a parent is probably the most important thing you can do in your life. My kids and I are very close,” he reflected in 1996.49 As well as instituting major changes in his professional life to ensure the stability of his home, Gene also made a concerted effort to become more involved in Kerry’s life. After the divorce she felt “betrayed and neglected and withdrew her affections. But her animosity was short-lived.”50 Now twenty-one, Kerry was studying psychology in London. Gene, though never a huge fan of analysis, supported her choice. “One measure of our relationship is that when I told him I was going into this [psychology] and needed a financial hand, he wanted to understand what I was doing, so he read books about analysis and modified his opinion,” Kerry related.51 Kerry was thrilled to have two new siblings as well as three stepbrothers courtesy of Betsy Blair’s new husband, Czech-born director/producer Karel Reisz. The couple had married in 1963.

  Asked about her relationship with Tim and Bridget, Kerry responded, “I lived in London most of the time when they were little kids. . . . I saw them a few times a year; I was more like an aunt when they were little. . . . Once they were grown up, we were just brothers and sisters, so it was nice, because I was an only child until I was nineteen. . . . And then I’ve got my . . . three . . . stepbrothers, so suddenly I was one of six, which was fabulous.” Kerry acknowledged that Gene’s two youngest children had entirely dissimilar childhoods than her own. “My father was older and Jeanne was a different person than my mother. . . . The whole household was very different because Hollywood was very different by then, too. . . . None of that [parties] happened at all, a very different sort of pattern of social life.”52 As part of Gene’s stronger focus on domestic life, he gave up numerous opportunities because they wou
ld have required him to leave his home base.

  The most significant project he turned down was directing Twentieth Century-Fox’s cinematic adaptation of The Sound of Music. It had been in the works for nearly five years, and William Wyler and Stanley Donen had also been considered for the job. Both declined the offer. Ernest Lehman, screenwriter for the movie, recalled being hopeful and excited as he drove to Gene’s home on Rodeo Drive to approach him for the job. “As soon as I walked inside the house, I announced, ‘Gene, I came over to ask if you’d like to be our director.’” Gene “walked Lehman back out the door and said, ‘Ernie, go find someone else to direct this kind of shit!’”53 In defense of Gene’s judgment, at this point in the film’s development, it was little changed from the Broadway production, which many critics deemed saccharine and lacking in vitality and character development. Gene’s vehemence against the project was also likely due to the critical failure of the big-budgeted What a Way to Go! He may have seen The Sound of Music as following in the same vein. Additionally, if he had indeed accepted the directorial job, it would have been necessary for him to be away for months on location shoots in Austria.

  Gene was offered but ultimately turned down two more film projects, both for Universal Studios: Send Me No Flowers (1964) and Beau Geste (1966). Send Me No Flowers, directed by Norman Jewison, was a great success upon its premiere in fall 1964. The same year, MGM released The Unsinkable Molly Brown (adapted from the Broadway hit). The film, directed by Charles Walters, produced by Roger Edens, and starring Debbie Reynolds, was a virtual Freed Unit reunion. Its considerable success proved that audiences still had an appetite for musicals—if only ones based on Broadway shows. But the success of The Unsinkable Molly Brown could not compare to the phenomenon that was The Sound of Music. When it made its debut in March 1965, it took Gone with the Wind’s place as the highest-grossing film of all time. It swept the Academy Awards, winning five statuettes including Best Picture and Best Director (Robert Wise). The film was a significant lost opportunity for Gene, but if he had any regrets, he never voiced them. He certainly did not regret pulling out of Beau Geste; when it was at last released in 1966 with Douglas Heyes as director, it was unremarkable.