Gene Kelly, Creative Genius

 

How many times have you heard Gene say the word “Pittsburgh”? No, this is not a Gene Kelly trivia quiz, but it would make a good question. He mentions it in many movies and even TV appearances and interviews. The town obviously held a prominent place in his heart and life. He was born there and lived there until he was around 25-26 years old.

On a recent trip to the U.S. I stayed with three very dear friends in various parts of the country. I met them all through Donna’s GK forum. (Link is on the homepage.) Thanks Donna. One friend and I decided, on the spur of the moment, to travel by train to New York and then back to Pittsburgh. A great idea Cindy, thanks so much.

It was a wonderful trip, I never thought I would get to see so many places associated with Gene. I have ‘followed his footsteps’ in Paris and in London, but Pittsburgh is special.

Well, we reasoned; there is an Elvis tour, a Beatles tour, and even a Sound Of Music tour, why not a Gene Kelly tour. So we planned our own.

We travelled from Toledo, changing trains at Pittsburgh, so we took the very same journey to New York that Gene had taken. We wondered what he would have been feeling and thinking as he made a second attempt to find work on Broadway, following his earlier return home after refusing to sell himself short by accepting a menial job.

We began the ‘tour’ in New York, finding the theatres in which he appeared, and even the hotel he lived in, and of course, some places associated with On The Town. That was fun. We stopped off in St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue. No Gene connection here, but it is a place to make the heart soar, a welcome oasis of peace and love in the midst of the bustle of the city. It is the church featured in the finale of Easter Parade.

We also visited the Paley Center, the museum of TV and radio, where we spent four hours of heaven, watching Gene’s appearances in the Pontiac  Show with Liza Minnelli and Carl Sandburg, New York, New York and Dancing A Man’s Game, among other things. Another ambition achieved. I can recommend a visit, they were extremely helpful and pleasant. Except that they would not make me a DVD copy of all that I had seen!!

We found time to eat in an Irish pub too. And see a show at the Lincoln Center. All in one day.

Then it was back on the Pittsburgh train. We again had just one day to see as much as we could, so we found a cab, with a driver called Bill who knew the area well. We had planned it like a military operation. We started with the house in which Gene lived from 1924 until he left for New York in 1938, 7514 Kensington Street, a few miles East of the City centre. It must have been a vast improvement for them, moving away from Mellon Street, two or three miles to the North, which Gene himself called almost a ‘slum’. The house on Kensington is a few yards from the entrance to Frick Park, a lovely setting. The house seems small for seven people, but I suppose that with a porch front and back and the large basement, there was sufficient room for most purposes. And Gene had the release of a run into the park when he needed to get away to think and dream. It was good to see the place where Gene formulated the ideas which were to influence the rest of his life, where he grew to manhood, played and studied, probably argued with his siblings, and took his first steps on the road to success.

We met the current owners of the house – they have lived there for 40 years – and they were kind enough to invite us inside. We were standing in the living room when Cindy’s cellphone rang, and the ringtone is Gene singin’ in the rain!! Quite bizarre that he was singing in his own front room. The owner told us of the changes they had made, explaining how the layout would have looked when it was built. Just a room at the front, with the stairs on the right, and a kitchen/dining area to the rear.

The owner told us that Gene had turned up one day in the late 60s or very early 70s, with his wife (Jeannie) and the children. He lined them up outside the house and took a picture.

Then we walked across Frick Park, past Homewood Cemetery where he would skate on the lake, and on to Beth Shalom synagogue where Gene taught dancing, receiving a regular income for several years. It is a beautiful building, still thriving. There were lots of children doing activities when we went inside – where Cindy’s phone promptly rang again!!

We walked down to Munhall Rd where I believe Gene hired a hall for his dancing school, but we did not know the exact address, though it is a very small street with imposing houses, any one of which could have contained the hall.

We called Bill to pick us up and he was invaluable for the rest of the day. If you read this Bill, thanks a lot!!

We visited Sacred Heart Parish where Gene went to school for a short time before attending Peabody, after they moved from Mellon Street. Hirschorn states that Gene was born in Sacred Heart Parish but that could not be true, from a geographical point of view. Then we went to see St Raphael’s where he went to grade school. We were invited in to look around the former church, now a gymnasium, where workers were preparing for a children’s party, and to see the school, which retains many of the features Gene would have known. We saw the ‘Gene Kelly auditorium’, a small, pleasant hall. The man who showed us round had children who had been taught dancing by Gene’s sister Louise. Also a relative had known Gene when they were children. Gene is still well loved and remembered in that working-class area.

Then it was on to nearby Mellon Street. Unfortunately we did not then have a house number. I was a dope, as I have a copy of a census with the family listed, when Gene was small, along with the house number – 722 -  sent to me by a friend a long time ago. Thanks to another friend for pointing it out. Better late than never!

Mellon Street seems to go on forever, but we focused mainly on the end closest to East Liberty, as the other end looked ‘posher’. We stopped the cab a couple of times so I could take general photographs, just to get a ‘flavour’ of the area. When I got home I found the house on Googlemap and was able to identify approximate  house numbers in each photograph with the images on Google. I realised I had taken a shot within a few yards of where Gene’s house would have been. It seems that the original  house was demolished, so far as we can tell. There had been quite a lot of rebuilding in some parts of the street. It was nice that on such a long stretch of road, we had alighted so close to his doorstep. If I had known, I would have looked for the crack in the paving, where he had fallen off his tricycle and got his scar!!

Then it was on to East Liberty, where the Kelly Strayhorn theatre is located. It is now a tiny community theatre in a very rundown area. It was closed for a while but has now reopened. We saw the Playhouse where Gene put on his kiddie’s shows, but when we enquired if they had any information, they looked at us blankly.

We also saw the outside of Peabody High, a forbidding looking building; and the University buildings, including the great Cathedral of Learning. The whole University area is very impressive.

We saw the Benedum theatre where the annual Gene Kelly Awards are held, rewarding excellence in school productions.

We said goodbye to Bill at the Gateway Center, where much of the traffic enters the city, and all is steel and glass, hard and cold. It was proposed that a statue of Gene be erected here, I have no idea why it never was. We both agreed that it was not the best site. Gene was a man who loved people and whom people warmed to in return. The only kind of statue I can envisage would be something unpretentious, maybe in a park or a quiet area, where folks could go and sit in peace, and dream, and feel the joy and exuberance which he so wanted to share with the world. But that is my personal opinion, you might not agree.

We decided to take the old Incline – an ancient funicular rail car – up to the heights above the city, where we could look down on the three rivers which were the original lifeblood of Pittsburgh. On the previous evening we had walked along the Allegheny River, opposite to the Pirates baseball park, when we found a black umbrella lying in our path!  Pity we didn’t pick it up, as it rained the following morning for a while.

We enjoyed a meal after our adventures, in a glass-fronted restaurant with spectacular views, but nothing prepared us for the sight of a beautiful, vivid rainbow, stretching right across the river. It was a perfect ending to a great day, and a trip I will never forget.

 

 

 

NEW YORK

The Imperial Theatre where Gene made his Broadway debut in Leave It To Me

The Booth Theatre where Gene appeared in One For The Money, and The Time Of Your Life.

The Barrymore Theatre, formally known as the Ethel Barrymore, where Gene became a true star of the theatre in the title role of Pal Joey.

 

The headquarters of the Theatre Guild, who hired Gene for the Westport summer stock, and put on The Time Of Your Life in conjunction with Saroyan.

The Woodward Hotel, on 55th and Broadway, where Gene lived during his roles in Time Of Your Life and Pal Joey. It is still a hotel, but is now called Dream, and has a fantastical lobby, with a sort of museum and a huge fishtank. It also has a restaurant called Serafina's!!

Radio City Music Hall, where the crowds would stretch round the block, waiting to see Gene's latest film.

The Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park, all sights we have seen in On The Town

   

The fountain outside the Plaza on The Park, where Betsy said that Gene proposed to her.

 

PITTSBURGH

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. February 3^rd 1996

The memories of Gene Kelly are thick throughout his home town, where he is memorialised many times. In 1981 he became Honorary Chairman of the Civic Light Opera. South Whitfield Street in his home neighborhood of East Liberty was named Gene Kelly Square in 1987. That same year he was given a bi-centennial medal by Pitt. But his most living memorial is the Gene Kelly Awards, started by the CLO in 1991 to honor excellence in high school musicals.

At the Pitt ceremony, Kelly spoke to those who asked why he ‘wasted’ four dancing years in college: “It not only made me more of a person, but it aided me in everything I did as a creative artist.” He quipped that his economics degree allowed him “to discuss intelligently certain things with the IRS.”

…In 1981 he came to accept his honors from the CLO at a ceremony in Mellon Square presided over by Bob Prince. Bill Copeland, CLO board member, recalls Kelly’s one stipulation was that he not be asked to dance with anyone, “because I hate to say no, but then I have to dance with everyone.”

Nonetheless, he did dance with a slight, white-haired woman at the noontime rally. Anne Greenberg beamed at him, holding tight to a thin blue program from a children’s dance recital held on April 13, 1932, by Beth Shalom Temple.

Roz Litman, wife of long-time local club owner and Variety correspondent, Lenny Litman, remembers Greenberg, now 98, had been in charge of hiring a dancing teacher for Beth Shalom and chose Kelly. She didn’t know she was making a lifetime friend. “He sent her a birthday card every year and he also wrote a beautiful letter on her 90^th birthday when her daughter gave her a big party,” Litman said.

Litman has her own story of crossing paths with Kelly. About eight years ago, she was visiting a friend in California and they were en route to the Friars Club for lunch. They came upon a parade of vintage cars with Kelly as Grand Marshal. No wallflower, Litman waved and called out, “I’m the delegation from Squirrel Hill. Mrs. Greenberg sends her love.” Kelly stopped the car and got out. “He was so sweet – just a darling man.”

The CLO’s Bill Thunhurst has an earlier Kelly story. When he was a chorus boy in South Pacific he met Kelly to audition for On The Town. “No, you’re too good-looking,” Kelly told him. “That was the nicest and swiftest brush-off I’ve ever had,” Thunhurst laughed.

At Checco, a fellow East Liberty native a decade Kelly’s junior, remembers playing amateur contests in movie houses. “Gene, Fred and his sister had a wonderful act where they did a dance on roller skates, going up and down steps. I had to follow that act as a 4-or-5-year-old kid, singing Brother Can You Spare a Dime! He taught me how to take a bow. There was an ovation and I wanted to run out, but he said, ‘Hold it, kid. Let ‘em want you more.’”…

Bob Miller remembered meeting Kelly at age 10 at a camp near Ashtabula, Ohio, where Kelly, 20, was a counsellor. “I came back and had two years at his dancing school. I danced with Gene and Fred in one of the kermesses they gave each year at Taylor Allderdice – he took me under his wing – it’s like losing an older brother.”

Leslie Brockett also studied tap with Kelly. She recalls one school show at the old Nixon Theater. “The number was The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. The curtain closed and I got stuck in the middle of the curtain, rear towards the audience. Kelly was in the wings whispering, ‘Leslie, this way.’”

Like so many Pittsburghers who never watched Kelly dance in person, she said, “I thought he was wonderful. He’s such a legend. I’m so proud he’s from Pittsburgh.”

 

Mellon Street, the site of the house which Gene lived in from around 1914 until 1924, having moved from nearby Portland Street. If you look for the red car, that is near to where number 722 is situated. A friend tells me that the current house on the site was built in 2000.

 

 

Filmland February 1951

Those were the days.

The most exciting moment of my life was not the moment the curtain rose on my first big Broadway break, “Pal Joey.” That was thrilling, terrifying too, but it can’t match that Christmas morning when I found a beebee gun under the Christmas tree. I was six then, and my brother James and I used to hide flashlights under our pillows. We’d read how the pioneers were able to restrict themselves to just a few hours sleep by lying with an arm twisted behind them; and on this Christmas Eve, we’d do the same thing. About 4 a.m. we’d waken with one arm killing us, grab our flashlights and sneak downstairs. I’ll never forget that beebee gun. I got so excited I shot all the balls off the Christmas tree. That was the end of the gun until the next day, then our parents relented and we Kelly kids took Pittsburgh by storm. One of the neighbors finally called the police. Luckily, the police got the wrong address and instead of coming to our house, arrived at the Doyles’ next door. The Doyles and the Kellys were pretty close and Mrs Doyle just said no, there’d been some mistake, she didn’t have any boys with beebee guns. That kept us out of trouble, but we were all washed up as gunmen, and the beebees were donated – much against our will – to a society for the Improvement of the Poor.

What a vivid and exciting memory that beebee gun is – second only to the time our home-made shack caught fire in the backyard and almost ignited the whole block. It was a three story shack. Not one story. Not two. Three stories, and it took us weeks to collect old lumber from trash heaps and backyards. My brother and I and a couple of other kids down the block were in on this. We used our wood fence for one wall and built the thing ten feet square. We used two-by-fours as joists. The second floor could hold just three kids, the top floor only two, and you had to climb up from the fence outside and duck in under a piece of burlap. I must have been eight or nine. We got the shack built and had it for several weeks, meeting every day like conspirators to make plans. Don’t ask me plans for what. Just plans.

It was getting close to Winter and the place had no windows, but we knew the log cabin boys had oiled paper so light could come through (it said so in the Scouts’ handbook) and we hung burlap on the walls for warmth. One afternoon we were huddled around the candle in the dark shack, planning, when wind blew the candle flame, caught the burlap, and the place went up like tinder. We got out all right and ran for water, but by the time we got back, the shack was a torch and the flames had started along the fence. Believe me, that three story shack is something they didn’t forget for a long time on our block. The houses are close together there and it wouldn’t have taken much to burn up the whole neighborhood. Men, women and children rushed out to form a bucket brigade and we finally managed to get the blaze under control, just about the time the fire department arrived. After that we were limited to one story shacks.

But originality was always cropping up. In a family with three boys and two girls anything can happen – and did. It was my older sister who instigated another exciting moment. We had a big American flag at home. It was about five feet wide and ten feet long, and on holidays used to drape the whole house. It was probably an Armistice Day that she corralled this flag and several of us Kellys and another couple of boys  on the block. My sister had a nurse’s uniform and she had the rest of us get rigged up as soldiers and sailors and we each had to carry one edge of the flag. We marched right down Pennsylvania Avenue holding our flag and calling, “Money for the Red Cross, money for the Red Cross.” We must have hit Penn Avenue right in the middle of the big patriotic parade because policemen kept clearing the way for us and we marched to the beat of martial music. We took in lots of money. People threw it right in the middle of our flag, which was the idea. We must have taken in about a hundred dollars that day, divvied it up and felt like millionaires until our mother stepped in and made us turn it all over to the Red Cross. That was exciting too, we Kelly kids had tremendous sales resistance!

 

Holy Man Or Holy Terror. TV Radio Mirror November 1962. Jane Ardmore

Big Paul Lewinski lay in wait for him, right after choir practice, to exact revenge for the previous day’s football defeat. Gene Kelly was 12 years old – and not very tall for his age, either. “Paul was 15, looked 26, and I was scared to death. I did everything I could to evade the issue, but he baited me, including some choice remarks about the Irish! – so I had to fight.”

It was a whale of a fight…other boys gathered round…it was rough and tumble, anything goes… Gene tried to get an arm free to swing…he gave a bounce, swung from the ground, smashed his fist into the big guy’s face. He heard the nose bone crunch, loud as the crack of doom...the red-haired giant edged away, crumpled, called it quits.. And Gene was on his feet, the hero…the guy’d bled all over him, Gene’s shirt was soaked with blood…and then he was home… His mother was entertaining the ladies of the Altar Society to tea…suddenly he heard his mother’s voice, “Gene, what’s happened?” His sisters came running, and the hero burst into tears.

 

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

It was concentrated culture for the Kelly kids when mom sent them off to Blinsky’s School of the Dance down at 6^th and Penn in Pittsburgh. Culture and rebellion, for Gene, the seven-year-old brat with a cowlick and a scowl, was kicking like a steer from the start. He hated the big choking Buster Brown collar and the black Windsor tie he and his two brothers had to wear down to school.

 

Hollywood magazine November 1942

Once when he was a small boy of seven, (who, incidentally, planned on being a missionary!) all slicked up in a white collar and dark suit, he was walking defiantly down his block headed for dancing school. Two small neighbours stopped him. “Yah!” they snarled. “Sissy” On ya way to dancin’ school!”

“Not either,” lied the potential missionary hastily. “Goin’ to a party with ice cream and cake!”

“Dancin’ school!” contradicted the little fiends. So Gene rolled up his sleeves and went to work….Then, bruised and tattered, he appeared at dancing school, where he flew about the floor with more grace than any of the soap-shiny little boys around him!

Highland Park, not far from Mellon Street. No doubt Gene would have played here.

 

St Raphael's school.  1154 Chislett Street. The Gene Kelly auditorium.

 

 

Sacred Heart Parish church. 325 Emerson Street, off Shady Avenue. This beautiful building reminded me so much of our English churches. It was like being transported back home for a few minutes.

The Pittsburgh Press. TV Graphic. December 9^th 1962

Gene Kelly. 23 years at the top.

 …In recent years he has done a few outstanding TV appearances. But it was not until this year that he tried starring in a continuing role in a weekly TV series, a job as gruelling as operating a Crosstown street car and as speculative as table stakes poker.

The vehicle which drew him was a TV adaptation of the motion picture property, “Going My Way.” He plays the Father O’Malley role created by Bing Crosby…

One regular viewer, needless to say, is Gene’s mother, Mrs. Harriet Kelly who lives in the Kenmawr Apartments in Shady Avenue, East Liberty. From her windows she can see Sacred Heart Church and School, and often she watches the priests of that institution mingling with the children on the street, chatting with them, assisting them.

“I like seeing Gene doing the same kind of thing in the program,” she commented. Recently a neighbor outraged her by remarking on Gene’s sparkling white teeth and asking, “Are they his own?”

“Gene has always had beautiful teeth,” said Mrs. Kelly indignantly. “They certainly are his own.”

Gene calls her by phone frequently, she reports, and the other day she chided him slightly for what she regarded as mumbling certain of his lines.

“I guess he got kind of mad,” she chuckled. “He hasn’t called back since. But then, that was only two days ago.”

 

This is 7514 Kensington Street, where Gene lived from around 1924 until he left for Broadway in 1938. A big thank you to the current owners for their graciousness. I read somewhere that Gene and his brother Fred shared the third floor 'attic' room. (In England it would be the second floor!)

 

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

He locked himself in his room and tried out some leaps and capers, some bends and turns with a bit of aesthetic jumping from bed to bureau. He was groping back, trying to remember what Maestro Blinsky had taught him ten years before. One day he went downstairs and announced “Mom, I’m going back to dancing school.”

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. September 4^th 1940

Gene Kelly came home over the Labor Day weekend to see the folks and drive his kid brother, Fred, back to New York. In two short years, since he put on the dances for and starred in the Pitt Players revue hold Your Hats, the older Kelly lad has been the talk of Broadway

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. February 16^th 1944

Gene Kelly arrived home from Hollywood yesterday to spend a few days here with his family. He was accompanied by Mrs. Kelly and their 16month-old daughter.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. October 30^th 1949

 Fred Kelly:  “If Gene had never gone into the movies, the family’d still be well known. Jim is a fine artist. He’s with Walt Disney. One sister, Harriet – we call her Jaye – has been to so many schools. She just never stopped going to school. She’ll get her doctorate soon. My other sister, Mrs. Louise Bailey, is working with her husband. My dad, James Patrick Joseph Kelly, was one of the mainstays of the old Columbia Phonograph Company. My mother was chairman of one of the divisions of the Carnegie Foundation.”…

Mr. And Mrs. Kelly still run the two Gene Kelly Dance Studios. All the Kellys attended the University of Pittsburgh…Fred’s wife is the former Dorothy Greenawait who lived next door to the Kelly home at 7514 Kensington Street.

 

Los Angeles Times. Jun 25^th 1981

Gene Kelly is taking his three children home to Pittsburgh to see his birthplace and visit his brother Fred.

 

The entrance to Frick Park, at the end of Kensington, a few yards from the house.

Frick Park from the road above.

 

Beth Shalom Synagogue. Walnut Street/Beacon Street. Squirrel Hill area, about 20 minutes walk from Kensington. I think it was almost brand new when Gene was employed there to teach dance and put on shows.

Yudkoff A life Of Dance And Dreams 1999

Writing of Gene’s tenure at Beth Shalom Synagogue in Pittsburgh, from 1931 to 1937, where he was paid $15 a week on a regular basis, to produce musical benefit shows for the Sisters.

"When a pimply-faced girl was embarrassed to try, feeling frightened and clumsy, Gene would flash a grin and take her hand and make her feel like his perfect partner, a Ginger Rogers. He had an innate sense of just what it took, in words and body language, to raise her self-esteem. Home she would go, flying rather than walking…as Kelly mania took over Beth Shalom."

 Colliers Magazine May 1945

…Gene knew that if he got any college education, it would mean he must not only keep himself but help the family. Despite the early trouble about dancing he had always monkeyed around with it, had watched the acts that came to town in vaudeville and practised steps with his two brothers and two sisters. Fred was the one who first discovered that you could pick up five or ten bucks a night hoofing in little joints around town.

“We made up a couple of jokes, stole a lot more and paired up as a team”, says Gene. “I really horned in on it.”

They knocked off amateur contests like sitting ducks, picked up a date or two a week in honky-tonks and were keeping the family alive. The real break came when he got into Pitt’s cap and gown shows and finally directed the show in his senior year. They considered him pretty hot potatoes around the campus, and several guys suggested that he show them some of those steps. He rigged up a spot in his cellar and started teaching at fifty cents an hour. One Sunday he substituted for the teacher at Beth Sholem Shul and so completely enraptured the students that he stayed there seven years...

 

 

Munhall Rd, where Gene hired a hall, a few minutes from Beth Shalom.

Modern Screen. June 1943

He’s prouder of his dancing school in Pittsburgh than of any other single achievement…At seven, he invented agonising stomachaches to avoid dancing lessons…Dancing was sissy. All the boys thought so. Boys who attend the Gene Kelly Studios know better, thanks to the Gene Kelly method. There’s no school in the country like it. It’s now run by his mother and sister Louise. If Broadway and Hollywood crumbled, he’d make a cheerful beeline for Pittsburgh.

 

Peabody High school 515 N. Highland Avenue, which Gene attended until he went to college. The sculpture is a war memorial.

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

It was in high school he tripped over his legs and fell backwards into dancing. They were casting for the junior play, and Gene was hanging around the edges, not making much headway. Tall, handsome Joes were mugging at pretty blonde co-eds and grabbing off the good parts. Smart alecks with a fast line of chatter were being labelled as comics and shoved into the dazzling white light of high school prominence…He tried out for a part that called for a little climbing to rescue a lady love, tumbled off a balcony, landed like a cat on his feet, and even threw in a couple of taps to show he wasn’t hurt. The director was impressed and told him to try it again – the tumble. He was in.

 

Jane Ardmore. TV Radio Mirror. November 1962

Gene’s dreams began in high school, Peabody High, where…a dozen kids got together to form an organisation known as the Toreadors….”I was the only Catholic, the others were Protestants and Jews, but we could discuss the tenderest subjects and understand each other. We could even criticize each other – the criticisms levelled at me were usually that I was conceited. We all were. We were also deeply religious, atheistic, and agnostic by turns, and pretended we knew too much about sex to even discuss it!”

...Gene Kelly was eighteen… when he discussed the idea of entering the Church with a priest – who advised him to take his time, probably seeing that the monastic life wasn’t for Gene. And it wasn’t…He’s a warm, loving man, who craves a personal life, marriage, children. And a non-conformist if ever there was one! Since then, he’s developed all potentials, believing: “The more you do, the more you learn.”

Pittsburgh Post Gazette February 26th 1996

Letter:

One correction should be made to Mary-Lynn Uricchio’s tribute to Gene Kelly “(Kelly embodied best of Pittsburgh,” Feb. 6).

She said he came from the ‘mean streets’ of East Liberty. This was not true. When he grew up there from 1912 and for the next 18 or so years, East Liberty was an attractive, busy part of the city…He was a graduate of Peabody High school – an excellent cosmopolitan school.

Two retired teachers who also were members of East Liberty Presbyterian Church, Miss Nell Goehring and Miss Sarah Baker have talked about teaching history and Latin to Gene Kelly.

Two days ago, a letter came from a niece of Nell Goehring. She wrote, “Did you know that Gene Kelly was Nell’s student in Peabody and he also had Latin with Aunt Sarah Baker?”

Her letter continued, “Some years ago there was a big celebration for him in Pittsburgh. Aunt Nell and Aunt Sarah were invited and that dear Mr. Kelly had them stand while he introduced them and said so many nice things about them at the dinner given in his honor. They were good, caring teachers.”

So Gene Kelly grew up in a stable, attractive East Liberty in a different era when the reality of ‘mean streets’ was far into the future.

Vadis Robshaw

The Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh University, a fabulous building, it would have been new when Gene went to college. The other college buildings are also very attractive.

 

Gene started out at Penn State University but came home after his first year for economical reasons, and enrolled at Pittsburgh.

Daily Collegian. State College Pennsylvania. March 23^rd 1954

Perhaps the best known famous Penn Stater in the show world is Gene Kelly, who was on campus in 1929 and 1930 and would have been graduated with the class of ’33. While on campus Gene was active in Thespians and was a member of Phi Kappa. He was a commerce and finance major until the call of the show world proved greater than the call of the books.

 

Interview Magazine 1994

I went to Penn State college in 1929. And as the world knows, the crash occurred. In the Kelly family there were five children…and our folks said: “Dad doesn’t have a job, and our money is running out…if you want to finish your education, you’ll have to make your own way.” I had the usual jobs – ditchdigger, soda jerk, gas pumper, and so forth….Meanwhile I enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, because I could live at home and all I had to do was earn my tuition.. All five of us graduated from Pitt.. Then I went into Law school. I was there a month and I realised that it wasn’t about being Clarence Darrow, so I quit that and continued to teach dance for another five, six years.

Daily Collegian. Penn State University. October 22^nd 1966

Gene Kelly, class of ’33, got his first taste of stardom on the stage of the Schwab auditorium, when he made up half of a dance team in the musical The Dutchess in Dutch.

 

Daily Collegian. State College Pennsylvania. January 5^th 1955

Joan Hunter was…one of 5 finalists in a nationwide contest…while in Hollywood she was given a tour of MGM studios, where she talked with Gene Kelly about the days when he was a member of Phi Kappa at Penn State.

“He was so friendly and so natural,” Joan said… He was on the set of his new picture, It’s Always Fair Weather.

 

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

At the University of Pittsburgh a professor of mathematics looked at him seriously and said, “Mr. Kelly, it’s remarkable how you’ve learned to co-ordinate the muscles of your arms, hands, fingers and feet, and all of it so instinctive and spontaneous.” Dead-pan Kelly answered, “Yes, sir, and it’s fun too.”

He couldn’t keep the fun to himself. He turned professional in a ten-dollar way, slipping off the University campus to the night clubs in the little towns around Pittsburgh. One night he kicked his feet around too enthusiastically during the act. A heel flew off his dancing shoes and Kelly lost his dignity. He picked himself off the floor and finished the number in his socks. He was still good.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. March 15^th 1935

Theodore Viehman is directing…the Pitt Cap and Gown show…during his absence, Gene Kelly has been putting the Pitt ‘girlies’ through their paces in chorus rehearsals. Kelly is a former Cap and Gown star.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. April 20^th 1937

The University of Pittsburgh Cap and Gown Club will take its musical Trailer Ho! Literally this year by hitting the trail to Johnstown, Bradford and Erie next week… This will be the club’s first road trip since 1930. More than seventy members of the cast, chorus and student staffs will make the trip by buses…It is being directed by Gene Kelly, dancing school master of Pittsburgh and Johnstown, and by Carl Coss, assistant professor of speech at the university.…

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. April 2^nd 1938

Boys will be boys – and girls too – at the Nixon next week when the Pitt Cap and Gown Club presents its annual musical production. This year it is Pickets, Please!

…A satire on the European dictatorships, in which all of the “T” boys on the other side of the pond are taken for a ride…Gene Kelly has directed the dances, a task he has performed for several years now…

 

Modern Screen. August 1944

Gene has always resented social discriminations since his school days when he earned honors as an athlete, dancer and student, only to find snobby fraternities barred to him because of religious prejudice. He has studied all phases of political science and sociology – and just to show you how well he knows his stuff, Gene was invited back to his old alma mater, Pittsburgh University, not long ago to address the student body on – not show business, dancing or Hollywood – but current aspects of those two solid subjects above.

 

 Hollywood magazine. November 1942

His college days came, like the Depression, In 1929. He arrived as a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh in a fancy automobile – and lost it a few months later in the crash, along with the Kelly’s family shirt…Gene suddenly realised that if he wanted four years of college he was facing four years of work…

Which explains why the inhabitants of Pittsburgh saw a quick-moving, quick-smiling kid named Kelly everywhere. He was jerking sodas, digging ditches, pumping gas, singing in cheap night clubs, checking tires in a rubber factory – and every Sunday for seven years he taught the boys in a Jewish synagogue how to dance! He was also a member of Phi Kappa fraternity – getting As in economics – and preparing to study law, to please Mother Kelly…

He decided to forget law – too many lawyers were hungry in Pittsburgh. Instead he began studying dancing as systematically as if it were law…he started the Kelly Dancing School – which became the biggest and most popular in Pittsburgh…It was six years before he suddenly decided that there was nothing left for him in Pittsburgh. He was a big shot there, so it was time to go elsewhere. He left for New York…

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. December 3^rd 1942

The professors who tried to teach Gene economics and sociology found him a willing, but sometimes tired, pupil. Gene was working his way through the University of Pittsburgh and was dancing every free moment he had. Gene established himself as the leading dancer on the campus in no time at all and starred in the college Cap and Gown musical shows for years…

His school was going to be different. He wasn’t going to make the young lads feel ashamed of being sissies. They could dance like men and the pupils found themselves being chided by teacher if their gestures proved affected or stilted.

Needless to say, Gene Kelly’s dancing school was a great success…he was by this time sending out small unit shows of his own to theatres in W. Pennsylvania. Vaudevillians would come to Pittsburgh, hear about him, and ask him to re-routine their acts.

Gene was doing well, “Too well,” he says…he was working harder than ever. He was doing so well that it took a lot of courage to break off a successful venture for a try at the Broadway stage.

 

The Kelly/Strayhorn Theatre 5941 Penn Avenue in East Liberty. Named for Gene and Billy Strayhorn, another Pittsburgh celebrity. Though I confess, being English and all, I never heard of him! I have, however, heard of Gene Kelly. He dances doesn't he??

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. June 5^th 1995

Regent Theatre reopens Friday in East Liberty.

“It’s going to prove that the perception of East Liberty as unsafe is not true,” said Paul Brecht, executive director of the East Liberty Chamber of Commerce…The goal in the first full year…is to hold about 20 weekends of performances by Pittsburgh arts groups…The 28-by-46-foot stage is smaller than some groups like – particularly for dance – but not an absolute deterrent….”It’s a good location close to Highland Park and Shadyside. It will be a great asset.”…A second $1.5 million renovation will be tried in several years if the Regent is successful…

Later this year there will be a sidewalk celebration in which bricks will be laid in front of the theatre with names of donors and such East Liberty celebrities as Gene Kelly, and Billy Eckstein. Stonework will dedicate the Regent to the creative spirit of Javon Thompson, a young artist slain in a shooting last year…

The Pittsburgh Playhouse, 222 Craft Avenue, where Gene put on his children's variety shows, and made a name for himself in his home town.

New York Times. 2^nd March 1941

“Going to Pitt I decided I had better find another way than writing to earn a living.”

He went at this shrewdly, starting a dancing school and keeping his own name in the local papers by taking a prominent part in Pitt dramatics. The school was a success, “though plenty of times I was only one step ahead of my pupils; I’d go to a night club, watch the routines, pick up a couple and teach them the next day in class.” He was featured in several Cap and Gown shows, and was chorus director and featured player at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The school made enough money to ease the rough spots for the Kellys, and Gene took his younger brother, Fred, and a younger sister into partnership.

 

Modern Screen. June 1943

After graduation he threw the law overboard, and the only qualms he felt were his mother’s. He knew with assurance that he wanted to teach dancing. Pittsburgh grew too small, and he opened a branch school in Johnstown. He directed the University shows and the civic theatre. At 24 he woke up to find himself a local celebrity and a bird whose wings craved stretching.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. March 25^th 1937

Enright Kiddies Show.

Gene is the director of the young stars who perform so cleverly on the stage and over the air every Saturday morning at the Enright theatre.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. March 25^th 1937

All children love Alice In Wonderland. Bring them to see the play set to music…and acted by members of Kaufmann’s children’s theatre. Dances arranged by Gene Kelly, Pitt’s Cap and Gown director.

 

A 'Pittsburgh Panorama'! I put 4 pics together to make this amazing view from the Duquesne Heights above the town.

The 'V' shape, where the bridges converge, is the Gateway Center, which was the proposed site of the statue of Gene.

 I don’t know if this story is true, I never read it anywhere else, so it may be apocryphal, or embellished. But it’s fun!

Movie Stars Parade. July 1947 Tap Happy.

Gene talked the family into opening a dancing school downtown. He thought of everything, and the dancing school was a big, thumping success. Only he shouldn’t have located the school above a restaurant. One bouncing night, with the Kelly force in full swing, and the pupils having an uproariously good time for their money, the plaster ceiling fell on the restaurant, and the Kelly tribe was faced with a lawsuit. They handed the restaurant manager the key to the school and faded out of the business.

The rainbow across the Allegheny river was a stunning sight, and a fitting end to a magical day. 

The circular structure with the black columns, just beyond the yellow bridge, is the new PNC Park, home of Gene's beloved Pittsburgh Pirates.

 

 

Photoplay May 1943

Bloody noses and blacked eyes were Gene's earliest memories of life in his home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The same dancing which brought him fame was responsible. Done up in prim little Eton collars, with his hair slicked and his ears scrubbed pink, he was sent to dancing school once a week by his mother. She believed in little boys' learning the niceties of life.

“The route to school was lined with kids whose mothers held less aesthetic views, “ Gene said. “Invariably the divergent schools of thought clashed and I had to do battle on each of six corners to prove I was no sissy.”

On one occasion Gene and his brother were jumped by a gang of seven kids. That called for quick strategy since they were so badly outnumbered.

“G'wan!” Gene disdainfully answered the challenge. “We're going to a party with cake and strawberry ice cream and everything!”

Oh, yeah?” said the gang. “Prove it.”

“Okay,” said Gene. “Follow us and see. Maybe we can hook you some of the eats.” The gang fell in line. Keeping up a patter about the delights in store, Gene led the beguiled enemy to the door of the dancing school and safety.

“The Irish have a way of meeting things,” Gene observed....

He shared a room on the third floor of the big red brick home [???] with his younger brother Fred and it was cluttered with the usual paraphernalia and trophies of adolescents – pennants, stolen No Parking signs, cigar box hoards of junk and white mice in a shoebox. He had the usual succession of mumps and measles and the one outstanding accident which always throws the family into a panic. It left a slightly curving scar at the left of his mouth which still turns white when he gets fighting mad.

“I'd love to ascribe that scar to some great dramatic event,” Gene said, “but actually I fell off my tricycle when I was a sprout of five.”

Gene's interest in dancing was re-awakened at Peabody High School when he discovered an ability to dance helped land bigger parts in school plays. To the amazement of his family, who remembered his bitter tirades anent dancing school, he voluntarily sought further instruction and soon became one of the most adept pupils of the class. It was football however, not dancing, which brought him his first taste of fame and glory. For a solid season he had been warming the bench as the substitute halfback in the school team and was still warming it when the final game of the season was in its closing moments with Peabody high on the losing end of the score. Suddenly the regular halfback was carried off the field with a broken ankle.

“Okay Kelly,” the coach said wearily. “You might as well go in.”

Kelly bounced off the bench. On the first play he intercepted a forward pass, ran for a touchdown and then kicked the winning point between the goalposts!

“Boy!” he recalled. “Was I a great guy – for a day!”