Though Gene found life as a single dad intimidating, he had no intention of remarrying. He still had Lois McClelland to help him and, bereaved as he was, he firmly insisted on raising the children himself. Gene decided the best thing for him and his family was a change in surroundings. He appreciated the outpouring of sympathy in Hollywood, but he needed a place to grieve and heal in quiet. That place was Ireland. Gene took Tim and Bridget to the Emerald Isle for the entire summer of 1973. “When Jeannie was alive we’d spend many happy days in County Clare. . . . We’d take a boat out on the loch and live off the fish. . . . They were such happy days,” Gene later reminisced.13
Gene, Lois, and the children first arrived in London. There, Gene visited Kerry at her home. Kerry had recently given birth to a baby girl—Gene’s first grandchild. Gene beamed with pride to see his eldest daughter settled into married life with a fellow psychologist, Jack Novick. He affectionately called them a pair of “eggheads.”14
Gene, Lois, and his children then headed to Puckane with plans to remain a month. In Ireland, Gene rented two cars. Lois drove one with the children while Gene and the luggage occupied the other. He deliberately acquired two cars for the lengthy journey from the airport to Puckane because, when cooped up in an auto for too long, he claimed, children “grew fangs and claws!”15
Gene rented an unassuming, white-walled thatched cottage in Puckane, that were one of three recently constructed holiday homes made to resemble abodes one would have seen in the 1830s. The locals gave the Kellys a warm welcome. “A lovely, lovely man,” “a wonderful man” seemed to be the general consensus of the townspeople. Locals often saw Gene make his nightly stop at Paddy Kennedy’s pub where he would enjoy two whiskies and a Guinness before returning to his cottage. One local, Willie Slattery, approached Gene one night, telling him that three starry-eyed young ladies were dying to meet him but feared invading his privacy. Gene, without hesitation, said he would meet them. He gave them all hugs and, according to witnesses, the girls’ knees buckled and they all fell to the floor.16
The trip to Ireland proved so medicinal to Gene that he corresponded with Paddy Kennedy for a time with plans to build his own cottage there. He apparently never broke ground, but the fact that he entertained the idea evidenced his earnest love for Ireland. Gene explained, “With my good Irish name, I feel at home in the old country. I’m accepted there.”17
Back in Beverly Hills, Gene was not the bleak man he had been when he left. He may have been sixty-one years old, but suddenly no one could possibly imagine that Gene Kelly could ever be elderly. One film was responsible for making the work of Gene and his colleagues new again: That’s Entertainment! —a mammoth collection of scenes from MGM’s greatest musicals. In 1947, Gene had said, “I think there’s nothing sadder than to see an artist who keeps capitalizing on his former reputation.”18 By 1966, his opinion had changed: “Before I die . . . I would like to have a clip of the whole thing—everything I’ve ever done and watch it all.”19 Now, he had his chance.
Gene once referred to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a “Grand Duchess.”20 However, the studio was more like nobility fallen on hard times after 1970. By 1974, MGM was in major financial peril and had produced only four movies over the course of the year. Beginning in May 1970, James Aubrey, the new head of MGM, had begun to systematically destroy what used to be the most enviable studio in Hollywood by liquidating its history in an attempt to keep the company solvent. What he could not sell, he ordered to be leveled or auctioned. Among the saddest losses were “Andy Hardy Street,” where the trolley and house in Meet Me in St. Louis stood, and the Cotton Blossom Show Boat. Aubrey next sold the studio’s sixty-acre back lot to the Levitt housing developers. Finally, he ordered the burning of the Metro music department’s library. The only remnants saved from his reign of terror were the script library, whose contents were donated to the University of Southern California. Some props and costumes did survive as well but were either stolen or sold at massive auctions. Film lovers did not see such cheapening of the studio’s history as a crime until after the release of That’s Entertainment! in 1974.
One woman had the foresight to save as much of Hollywood’s history as she could. Gene’s costar Debbie Reynolds bought many of the items at the MGM auction and acquired over the decades what was regarded as one of the finest collections ever assembled, valued at $26 million. Asked why she began collecting, Debbie explained, “It was mostly emotional. I couldn’t believe that they were getting rid of all these iconic pieces that I considered to be historical and should be saved.”21
In 1973, Jack Haley Jr., the son of the actor who portrayed the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939), planned to write, direct, and produce a celebration of MGM’s fiftieth anniversary. It was more than a retrospective—it was an anthology of the Hollywood musical. With enormous changes taking place in society during the early 1970s, Americans yearned for the simpler times reflected in such films. Popular culture reflected America’s growing nostalgia for the not-so-distant past. In 1971, the 1950s-themed Grease opened on Broadway. In Hollywood, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola produced a fond look back at the early 1960s, American Graffiti, which became the third-highest-grossing film of 1973. Contemporary songs also expressed longing for the old days, such as the Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More” and Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock.”
With the impeachment and resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and the ongoing Vietnam War, Americans did not have much to sing and dance about. The planned tagline for That’s Entertainment! was, appropriately, “Boy, do we need it now!” Even Gene, who had once called himself a cockeyed optimist, was feeling less positive, admitting to biographer Tony Thomas that he was going through a period of cynicism, which he could only hope would be brief. The time seemed ripe for reintroducing America to the optimistic musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
“There is always a great deal of nostalgia about those days,” Gene observed. “Certainly at the time, we felt part of a Golden Age.”22 Any lingering bitterness he may have had toward MGM had vanished by 1973. He had also gained insight into the positive aspects of the studio system. “I could not have done those pictures without [it]. It would have taken too long. By the time you wheel and deal and get financing today, you’re practically an old man.”23
As much as Gene now appreciated MGM, he was hesitant at first when Jack Haley Jr. approached him to be part of That’s Entertainment!, admitting that he still had little motivation to get involved in a project. However, helping to preserve the contributions he had made to film history was enough to spur Gene to action. With colleagues and friends like Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Liza Minnelli, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, and Bing Crosby, he threw himself into what had long been his emotional outlet: work. The film covered all MGM musicals but paid special homage to those starring Gene and Fred Astaire.
Though the two men still endured endless comparisons to each other, Gene emerged as the dominant dancer in the film. “It was Gene Kelly who was the crown prince of the Hollywood musical during its golden era at MGM—not just in front of the camera but behind it as well,” a columnist observed.24 The finale of That’s Entertainment! proved Gene to be bearer of the crown. “We have saved the best for last,” Frank Sinatra narrated. “An American in Paris starred Gene Kelly . . . and [his] . . . ballet is as timeless as when we first saw it. It can only be described as MGM’s masterpiece.”25 As presented in the film, though, the ballet seemed less a tour de force because it was cut down from seventeen to seven minutes. Such ruthless editing left Gene with “mixed feelings” about the picture. “The best things in [the ballet] are not shown,” he said unhappily.26
That’s Entertainment! premiered on May 17, 1974, in Los Angeles. Audience reaction was akin to that of rabid fans at a Beatles concert. A writer for the Chicago Tribune recounted that “thousands of screaming fans packed the bleachers that lined the area between the Beverly Theatre and the Bever
ly Wilshire Hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars. . . . Most applause [went] to Gene Kelly.”27 The film’s production costs totaled approximately $1.1 million, but it more than recouped that amount, grossing an eye-popping $19 million at the box office.
After That’s Entertainment! premiered, Gene’s period of cynicism abated somewhat. Nevertheless, certain aspects of the film’s reception gave him pause. “At the Hollywood premiere of That’s Entertainment!, no one was interested in any contribution I may have made as a choreographer and director, which I felt in my immodest Irish way, was perhaps a major one as far as the musical went, but no, all they wanted was . . . ‘Get up and do a little dance,’” Gene remarked. Yet, he felt that the timing of That’s Entertainment! was fortuitous for him, both personally and professionally. “Life is very much alive for me now.”28
Gene’s buoyed confidence led him to accept an offer to play a part in another bit of nostalgic entertainment: Take Me Along. The show, a musical, was based on Eugene O’Neill’s ode to his youth, Ah! Wilderness. Arthur Freed had produced a musical version of the play in 1948, Summer Holiday, with little success. The play presents a sentimental story of the Millers, a New England family, at the turn of the nineteenth century. Producer John Kenley tapped Gene for the role of the alcoholic but loveable Uncle Sid, arguably the most three-dimensional character in the play (Jackie Gleason originated the role in the 1959 Broadway show).
Gene’s part in Take Me Along marked his first appearance on the stage in over thirty years. A reporter for People magazine asked Gene why he had chosen to return to live theater. “I am working for pleasure, not for financial reasons,” he said.29 Take Me Along was to be a touring show with a seven-week run. The six planned stops included Dallas, Columbus, and St. Louis. According to Gene, his reasons for accepting the job were due in large part to Tim and Bridget. “It offered Pop Kelly a see-America vacation with his children,” one reporter stated. “We’re going to hire a van or something, so instead of seeing America from 5,000 feet, we’ll ride around it, like I was able to do when I was growing up,” Gene explained.30 “We got a cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota over Easter for ten days. We split logs for the fire and had to use an outhouse. In four hours they had adapted and wanted to live there forever. That trip made me see they can do a lot of things. . . . They’re so protected in Beverly Hills—it isn’t the way it was in the Pittsburgh neighborhood I came from. We fought our way to and from school every day.”31
Forty-five-year-old Patricia Wilson, Gene’s love interest in the play, wrote extensively of her and Gene’s friendship in her 2009 memoir. When she first met Gene in June 1974 for rehearsals in Dallas, Patricia recalled, he appeared at her door “in a white polo shirt and chinos, a can of beer in each hand.”
“I want to show you a few dancer’s steps on—ahem—on how you can appear shorter on stage!” he said.
“Does my height concern you, Mr. Kelly? I’m quite a good method actress. How tall do you want me to be?” Patricia quipped.
Gene “laughed out loud, stood, and clicked his beer can against mine.”32 From that time on, Patricia and Gene were allies.
Patricia was just as pleased to make the acquaintance of twelve-year-old Tim and ten-year-old Bridget as she was to meet Gene. She found them “lovely, well-behaved children, unlike the spoiled, monster-progeny of many Hollywood stars.”33 The children even became part of the show, acting as extras in a picnic scene. Bridget would throw her arms around Gene as soon as he stepped in the wings. Seeing Gene with his children made Patricia miss her own two daughters all the more. Gene suggested that she send for them, arguing they would make perfect playmates for his children.
The day the girls arrived, Gene told Patricia that he needed a favor. “I should’ve done this right after my wife died, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. Would you witness my new will? I have someone coming to notarize your signature.”
Patricia, though shocked, agreed. “Oh gosh, Gene—you’ve made me think . . . ,” she stammered.
“Just get it done,” he said gruffly.34
Though outwardly Gene was back to the man people expected him to be—charismatic, charming, and energetic—he was still deep in mourning for Jeanne. Gene later said: “You see, people think you get over them [the aches of losing a loved one]. But you don’t always. They stay with you. It’s hard to explain. . . . But you have to adapt to it. You can’t mope around. The kids can’t mope around.”35
Neither Gene nor his children moped during the tour. Bridget quickly befriended ten-year-old Kate Wilson and the two often “made mischief backstage” while they awaited their entrances. When they were onstage, Gene would beam at the children from the wings and comment to Patricia, “Look at those hambones out there!” Patricia’s other daughter, seven-year-old Penelope, inadvertently made mischief herself when, one morning, she spotted Gene without his toupee. “Momma! All of Mr. Kelly’s hair fell out last night!” she cried.36
Another member of the cast, aspiring actress Colleen Lester, found an ally in Gene. A young understudy, she had had many scarring experiences with ill-tempered stars and back-stabbing colleagues. She was thinking of packing up her bags and returning home until, on opening night, Gene approached her in the wings and asked her why she looked so melancholy. “I ended up pouring out all the fear and bitterness I felt,” she recalled. “Don’t let them bother you,” he told her. “The ones who are the most insecure are the ones who are the meanest. True talent seems to show itself most often in kindness.”37 Buoyed by Gene’s compassion, she decided to stay in show business.
It was a bittersweet moment when Take Me Along ended its tour. Gene and Patricia Wilson were aware of—and amused by—Bridget and Kate’s plot to become sisters by convincing Gene and Patricia to marry. “Gene Kelly and I were never more than friends, each of us like a wounded pup kicked into life’s corner,” Patricia, smarting from marital difficulties, stated. “We were both insomniacs. We’d talk on the phone for hours in the middle of the night about books, work, the children, the sweet mystery of life.”38
In a 1976 interview in Woman’s Weekly, Gene elaborated on why he intended to remain single, maintaining that his children were “my whole life right now. They gave me the will to carry on when I didn’t know what to do with my life.” Gene kept his professional life less active to ensure that his primary role remained that of Dad. Gene was not sorry to turn down more opportunities for work. “Me and the kids . . . [have] so much fun together. . . . For sheer contentment I really [don’t] have to do anything else but just be with them,” he remarked.39 On Father’s Day of 1975, Tim and Bridget presented Gene with a well-earned certificate naming him Father of the Year. Gene kept it for the rest of his life and today it is among his preserved papers at the Gottlieb Archive in Boston.
As Gene grew older, he especially enjoyed going to Sunday Mass with his growing children. He had recently become more interested in Catholicism; up to this time, his observance had been intermittent at best. The Catholic Church, he explained, “has sustained me, and I have helped sustain the Church, not just with money and sending my children to Catholic schools, but by working with the Church in other ways.”40
When Gene did agree to another substantial project in 1976, it did not take him from Los Angeles. Saul Chaplin and Daniel Melnick approached him to direct That’s Entertainment! Part II, which they were producing. They hoped Gene could persuade Fred Astaire to perform in new sequences Gene would direct. The question was, could Gene convince his friend to put his dancing shoes back on?
Gene and Fred had both, on numerous occasions, announced their formal retirement from dancing. Yet, both men had time and again been persuaded to perform again. As had been the case in 1948 when he had to drop out of Easter Parade, Gene was again responsible for pulling Fred out of retirement in 1976. He wanted to include segments of song and dance men recapturing classic moments from their careers in That’s Entertainment! Part II, and without Fred, Gene knew the segments would be sorely l
acking. “I simply said, ‘Fred, I need you!’” Gene recalled. “Told him what for and he started shouting ‘No, no! I don’t want to dance.’ So I said, ‘Let’s have a quiet drink together tonight and discuss it.’ So we met, and we talked, and eventually we did those scenes! And we loved doing them.”41 Another factor in coaxing Fred to appear was Gene’s assurance that neither of them would “kill themselves.” He arranged numbers they could execute with as little physical demand as possible. Gene was aware of Fred’s dislike for nostalgia, which had served as another obstacle in getting him to agree to do the film. “Nostalgia is just not my bag. I live for today,” Fred explained. Gene completely understood, defending his colleague with: “He won’t be compared now with what he was then. And who’s to blame him?”42
Gene did not see the picture as a look at the past through rose-colored glasses. “It’s a historical record we’re preserving here. Some of these obscure dance routines never get seen on TV, or if they are, they’re cut beyond recognition.” “You see, it’s not just nostalgia. . . . It’s kids seeing all this for the first time. It’s delight in something new. They can’t go out and see joy and fantasy on the screen today—I wish they could.”43
If observers hoped to see the two men butt heads on the set, they were disappointed. Gene tailored the new numbers more to Fred than to himself; he even submitted to wearing a top hat, tie, and tails. Fred appreciated Gene’s efforts and, though thirteen years his senior, did not chafe at being directed by Gene. “I used to say, ‘Go ahead and direct me.’ He is a damned good director,” Fred explained.44
The film closes with Gene seated on a ladder in the dark. Fred sits below on a smaller one (unintentionally reflecting Gene’s dominance in the picture). They begin singing “That’s Entertainment” and end by climbing up and down the ladders, enumerating the names of the stars who appeared in the film. The camaraderie between the two dancers onscreen was not a scripted part of the narration; it was genuine. “Gene and Fred had become very, very close in those years,” said producer Daniel Melnick. “Gene would pick up Fred to have dinner because Fred had gotten very frail and didn’t like driving at night. Gene was devoted to him. . . . It was very sweet to see him almost at the seat of the master. He respected him because he knew he had led the way.”45 Gene called himself and Fred a “fraternity of two.” Gene’s reverence for Fred and his protection of him increased after shooting for the film was finished. Knowing Fred’s dislike of the promotional duties involved, he asked the film’s producers and promoters to put out the word: “Fred doesn’t want to talk to anybody—he’s had it. Send everyone to Gene.”46
He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly (Screen Classics) Page 50