The Full Biography
Gene Kelly. Dancer. Director. The Pittsburgh kid who put working-man’s sweat on a musical and then spent the decades after the rain teaching a camera what a body can do when it is allowed to be athletic.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in a suit, soaked, a lamppost, a street that has agreed to be a stage. Singin’ in the Rain (1952). What the still cannot show is Eugene Curran Kelly of Pittsburgh, a dance-school brother, a Broadway athlete MGM hired, and a second life of strokes, a late marriage, and a death in 1996 that the rain has never accepted.
He was born on August 23, 1912, in Pittsburgh. The family ran a dance studio; the boys taught. He went to the University of Pittsburgh, then New York. Pal Joey on Broadway in 1940 made him a name before a camera did. MGM signed him. For Me and My Gal (1942) put him opposite Judy Garland. He wanted the musical to look like a person who had a job, not a person who had a chandelier. That was the argument of his career, and he made it with his body before he made it with a director’s chair.
What came next was not a lucky streak. It was a run.
Cover Girl (1944), on loan to Columbia, gave him the alter-ego dance: Kelly beside Kelly, a double-exposed argument with himself on a city street. It is still taught as a piece of film grammar. Anchors Aweigh (1945) put him in a sailor suit with Frank Sinatra and, in the number the children still know, with Jerry the Mouse — live action talking to a cartoon as if that were an ordinary duet. The Academy nominated him. The Navy took him during the war as a photographic-unit director in the Naval Air Service. He did not make a speech about service. He did the job and came back to Culver City.
On the Town (1949), co-directed with Stanley Donen, took the camera into New York. Sailors on real sidewalks. A musical that admitted the city was already a set. An American in Paris (1951) won Best Picture and a seventeen-minute ballet that still divides people who want songs from people who want a body to think. Gershwin on the soundtrack. Leslie Caron in the frame. He received an honorary Oscar in 1952 for his achievement in choreography on film — the town admitting, while he was still in the middle of the work, that the work had already changed the form.
Singin’ in the Rain, with Donen, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor, is the civic object: a movie about movies that also happens to contain the most famous dance in American film. He made Reynolds learn in public. She was nineteen. She has said it was a crash course. He has said the picture had to be right. Both are true. The title number was shot, the crew still reports, while he was running a fever. The puddles were milk and water so the camera could see them. The lamppost is now a souvenir. The number is still a job: tap, ballet, a grin that is also a count.
Before the rain there were other rooms. The Pirate (1948) with Judy Garland, a Cole Porter dare that the public did not fully buy and that dancers still study. Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) with Sinatra and Esther Williams, a baseball musical that treated a diamond as a stage. Summer Stock (1950) gave Garland “Get Happy” and Kelly a barn. Thousands Cheer had already put him in an MGM revue. He was not waiting for one number. He was building a grammar: the body as a working man, the street as a floor, the camera as a partner who had to keep up.
He kept directing the camera as a partner. Invitation to the Dance (1956) was nearly all movement, a dare the public did not fully buy. It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) put three soldiers in a reunion that had already soured — a harder musical than the rain. Les Girls (1957). Brigadoon (1954) with Vincente Minnelli, a Scotland that never existed, Cyd Charisse in the mist. He was, for a stretch, the most complete male musical star the studio system hired to be both athlete and author. Astaire was air. Kelly was gravity enjoyed. The argument about who is greater is a bar conversation. The pictures are two different American sentences.
He directed Hello, Dolly! (1969) for Fox, a vast Barbra Streisand musical that cost more than it should have and did not become rain. He took other chairs that did not become rain. The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) put him behind the camera with James Stewart and Henry Fonda, a western comedy that is not a musical and is still a Kelly job: timing, a standard, two old instruments. Xanadu (1980), with Olivia Newton-John, put him in a roller-disco fantasy as a living souvenir of the old studio. He was kind in it. The picture is a cult object now. It was a paycheck and a bow then. He appeared in the That’s Entertainment! series, walking the MGM lot as a man who had already been the lot’s argument. Television specials asked him to teach the country what a combination was. He taught. He did not become a nightclub act of his own rain.
The Navy years belong in the work, not only in a footnote. He served in the U.S. Naval Air Service as a photographic-unit director. He made training films. He did not make a speech about service. He did the job and came back to Culver City with a camera already in his head. That is one reason On the Town could leave the soundstage: a man who had already treated a camera as a tool, not as a chandelier. Donen was the partner. New York was the set. The sailors were the argument that a musical could sweat outdoors.
I didn’t want to be a tap-dancing tuxedo. I wanted to put on a pair of jeans and dance.Gene Kelly
He married Betsy Blair, then Jeanne Coyne — a dancer from the old Pittsburgh floor who died in 1973 — then, in 1990, Patricia Ward. He had children, including Kerry Kelly Novick. The AFI Life Achievement Award came in 1985. The Kennedy Center had already put him in the national living room. A stroke in July 1994 took the speech and the ease; he spent weeks at UCLA. Another stroke in 1995 left him severely disabled. He died on February 2, 1996, in Beverly Hills. He was eighty-three. The lamppost did not notice.
The turn is the athletic idea itself. He also, more than the stills show, directed: the camera as a partner, the street as a set, the insistence that a musical could sweat. That is the file. That is the work.
Six things most people never knew
- Pittsburgh and a family studio are the first floor. He taught kids. The “common man” is a teacher’s habit, not a costume.
- Donen is inside the pictures people call Kelly. On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain. A partner, not a hired hand.
- Reynolds learned the rain picture as a crash course. Nineteen. His standard. Her testimony is part of the file.
- An American in Paris is a Best Picture that still argues. The ballet is the dare. Some audiences still walk out. He meant the dare.
- He directed as a second occupation, not a vanity credit. Hello, Dolly! and the street pictures are a filmmaker’s file.
- A stroke took the speech. 1994, then another in 1995. The body that had been the instrument had to sit. He died two years after the first.
His children, including Kerry Kelly Novick, have written and spoken with a clarity the lamppost does not require. Friends from MGM describe a man who could be a tyrant about a mark and a joy on a take that worked. After the stroke, the house was quieter. Patricia was there.
The later years
Home, after the studio run, was Beverly Hills and a man who still thought like a choreographer even when the jobs thinned. He taught. He accepted the honorary statues because they were the industry’s way of admitting the jeans had won. He did not become a nightclub waxwork. He became, instead, the clip every musical after him has to survive. Patricia Ward married him in 1990, when he was seventy-seven and she was thirty. The columns made a joke of the ages. The house did not. She has spent the decades since as the archive: the letters, the counts, the insistence that the rain was work and not weather.
He kept choosing pictures the way a careful dancer chooses a combination. What a Way to Go! (1964) put him in a Shirley MacLaine comedy as one of the husbands. A Guide for the Married Man (1967) was a director’s job. Hello, Dolly! in 1969 was the vast one: Streisand, a New York of sets, a budget that Fox would feel. It is more respected now than it was then. He took the chair. He did not get another rain. Xanadu asked him to be a living link to the old MGM, skating beside a pop star. He took the part without winking the picture to death. The That’s Entertainment! films put him on the lot as a guide. He narrated. He walked. He pointed at a number and let it play. That’s Dancing! (1985) was another walk through the grammar he had helped write. For a man who had spent his prime arguing that a musical should sweat, the clip-show years were a strange peace: the sweat already in the can, the argument already won. AFI’s Life Achievement night in 1985 was a civic object. The Kennedy Center had already put him in the national living room. He stood and took both. The body still answered then.
He taught when the features asked less of him. Workshops. Interviews in which he named the counts and refused the souvenir version of the lamppost. Patricia, after 1990, became the partner who would spend the next decades doing that work in public. Kerry Kelly Novick, from the first marriage, has written the Pittsburgh floor with a psychologist’s clarity. The children did not inherit a nightclub act. They inherited a standard: the jeans, the street, the insistence that a musical could be athletic without becoming a stunt.
The body stopped answering in the mid-1990s. The July 1994 stroke put him in the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for seven weeks. Friends who visited found a man whose instrument had been speech and turn, now practicing both as if they were a new combination. The 1995 stroke took more. He did not give a farewell interview. Patricia kept the house. Kerry and the other children kept the first floor in the story — Pittsburgh, the studio, the teacher’s habit. He died on February 2, 1996. Warren Cowan, the publicist, said he had never fully recovered. Beverly Hills was the last address. Pittsburgh is the first. Culver City is the floor.
What those last years actually were is easy to miss because the rain is so loud. They were a marriage that did not need a premiere. They were a widow who would spend the next thirty years correcting the souvenir version. They were a man who had already put jeans on a musical and did not owe a second lamppost. The honorary Oscar of 1952 had already named the contribution. The AFI night had already named the life. The last work was staying in the house after the speech had gone, which is a kind of directing too: fewer cuts, and on purpose.
Patricia Ward Kelly has kept the archive as a job, not as a souvenir stand. She walks the clips. She names the counts. She refuses the fever-and-puddles version as the whole file. Kerry Kelly Novick has written the first floor. The MGM lot is a mall now. The rain is still a Saturday. Astaire still arrives in the same sentence, which is the right argument to have: air and gravity, tuxedo and jeans, two American musical sentences that do not cancel. Donen outlived him and kept saying the pictures were a partnership. Both things are true. Culver City is still the floor.
After he was gone
Every soaked street in a movie still pays him a tax. Astaire still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right argument to have. Reynolds still gets the crash-course footnote. Patricia still walks the clips and names the counts. The rain still looks easy. It was not.
He came out of a Pittsburgh studio, put jeans on a musical, took New York into the frame, soaked a suit, made a nineteen-year-old learn in public, directed until the jobs thinned, and died after the speech had already gone. If you only remember the lamppost, you have the still. If you remember Donen, the jeans, and the stroke, you have him.
Portrait: Allan Warren · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons