The background track to this page is Michael Crawford talking of his first meeting with Gene. It is taken from a 'live' performance, a PBS concert in California in 1998.

 

This page focuses on Gene's work as a director. We all know that he co-directed some of the best ever movie musicals with Stanley Donen - On The Town, Singin' In The Rain and It's Always Fair Weather.

Then of course there was Invitation To The Dance, made in 1952 and released in 1956. He also had the original conception, wrote it, produced it, (though nominally an Arthur Freed production), directed it and starred in it, a mammoth undertaking. It was completely 'his' movie.

Gene's first solo directing task in a non-musical was The Happy Road, made in 1957. Again, he also produced it and starred in it.

In 1967 he directed and produced, and starred in,  Jack & The Beanstalk, a 'made for TV' production which won an Emmy as the best children's programme.

He directed That's Entertainment II, in 1974.

All of the above movies are featured elsewhere on the site.

Dallas Times Herald. June 1974

His direction of On The Town, with Stanley Donen as co-director, holds up today as incredibly bold and contemporary. It is probably more exciting a piece of film direction than all of those heavy works that film students lug out of the storage bins.

 

Toledo Blade. February 17^th 1973

It was Gene Kelly, the actor, who met us at The Saloon in Hollywood. It could just as well have been Gene Kelly, the singer-dancer, film director, stage director, choreographer, producer, TV star. You name it, the man can do it and has been doing it expertly for years.

Asking him which one of his multi-talents he most enjoys is like asking Elizabeth Taylor which one of her diamonds she likes best. But he doesn’t cop out on the answer: “Directing. The way things are now in motion pictures, I like directing best. It’s the real creative force.”

 

Toledo Blade. April 12^th 1958

Dir “Every studio in town has offered me straight directing jobs, but I don’t want to stay away from acting,” Gene said. “They soon forget you in this age of specialization. I like to do everything. But it’s getting tougher to direct and act in the same picture."

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. May 14^th 1949

Gene Kelly won’t be making too many more pictures. His heart is set on being a director only. Will someone please stop him from giving up his acting career.

 

Irish America magazine. December 1990

Gene: I actually love to create the dance more than I love to dance it. So naturally I got into directing. That was my greatest joy...the directing was always more of a pleasant task to me than the actual performing.

 

Los Angeles Times. February 14^th 1968

Since What A Way To Go, Gene Kelly has been so busy directing or preparing to direct, that many of us have sadly missed him as a performer.

 

Michael Singer. A Cut Above. 50 film directors talk about their craft. 1998

Gene: If there is ease to what you see in the camerawork, it’s because of the hard work behind it. I planned every little step of the way. Then if on the stage something special happened, or one of the actors had a great idea, I’d throw it all out.

 

The Dancing Irishman. Magazine article 1950

Gene hankers to be a director, but his Metro bosses aren’t too enthusiastic – he’s more valuable to them as a star in front of the cameras. While we won’t quarrel on the values, what with Gene’s success in writing and dance directing to date, we’ll go along with the idea of keeping him in Technicolour. We like the guy.

 

Gene: Gene Kelly Day, London 1970

I’m too old to jump over tables and grand pianos. It’s too much work getting into shape at my age.

So I have to direct films.

Gene. Theatre Arts. December 1958

I felt that the dancer in films had never had the opportunity to probe emotional and acting problems adequately. This feeling led to analysis and experiment.

In my second dancing picture I began to fool with colour. Then I started to worry about the camera. And with that began the evolution of a director.

Los Angeles TV Weekly 1970. Gene:

In a musical, as a choreographer, you don’t tell the performer ‘I did it this way and it was good, so you do it that way also’. What you must do is try to get the best out of somebody in his own style. This is the difficulty in directing but, when you succeed, it’s also the joy of directing.

 

Sue Anne Langdon

Some directors stress interiors or exteriors, he likes posteriors.

 

Hollywood Album 1950. Gene:  I need plenty of energy for my work, but if my plans come true I will not have to put forth as much physical work because I hope to become a full-time director... I remember wondering why the director should spend as much as four hours to create a fleeting impression that will be on the screen twenty or thirty seconds. I finally appreciated the painstaking efforts of all concerned with making a film when I realised the average picture plays to an estimated audience of 40,000,000 persons…no wonder I still worry and try to be right!

 

Gene. 1981

The difference between directing an actor and choreographing a dancer is that an actor doesn’t like to be told anything. He likes to think it all comes from him. But a good director has to understand the play and carry out its meaning

Los Angeles TV Weekly January 1970

Gene Kelly’s Wonderful World Of Girls

Gene has gradually transferred his emphasis from dancing and choreography to the directorial portfolio.

He’ll become less evident as a performer and more evident as the creator behind the performer.

 

Time Magazine. August 1967

It is the moving part of moving pictures that interests Kelly, and to keep the action hopping on the set, he will often  shout out the desired rhythms like a ballet master. “One-two-and-three-and-four.” His own movement is jitterbug. He will bound off his chair to correct a camera angle, touch up the scenery, or show an actress how to swivel her hips. “Actors like to be told how to act, not shown, “ says Matthau, “but with Kelly, his great body movements reveal what he wants.”

What he usually wants is another retake, and he is just stubborn enough to keep at it for houyrs.. Says Frank Sinatra, whom Kelly directed in On The Town: “The guy just never heard of exhaustion.” But he has heard about charm, and he can crack the whip without stinging the ego.

 

Michael Singer. A Cut Above. 50 film directors talk about their craft. 1998

…The gentleman who answered the door of his Beverley Hills home…in 1988,immediately making me feel at home… was Gene Kelly himself…

To discuss his work as a film director, and this he did, with charm and a crystalline memory…

In addition to his status as the most energetic, charming and athletic musical comedy star in movie history, Kelly had also been one of the genre’s most revolutionary directors…

On being asked why he decided to direct films: “I just felt that to have dances shot in a specific way and then handed over to an editor was a first step toward losing what you had done, and there’s only so much cutting in the camera that one can do.

“…I was more than ready, but I never prided myself that I could jump in front of the camera and direct a whole picture alone.”

 

Source unknown, possibly Photoplay late 1973.

Article by Barbra Paskin. Living The Life Of Kelly

 I asked him whether he found that directing and starring in a film detracted from his performance as either the actor or director.

“Not really. It was very difficult to do, but I was smart enough to know how difficult it was and so I had a fine assistant who worked with me for many years. Stanley Donen, who’s now a fine director. He got to know every move I’d ever make, and we could communicate by a look of the eye or a jerk of the thumb. He was always behind the camera and was tremendously valuable in that he could tell me whether we’d got what we’d talked about earlier. That’s too hard to do yourself – to judge, when you’re in front of the camera, whether what you’re doing is coming off as you planned it.

There’s always got to be someone behind the camera to help or at least say ‘yes, it’s worked,’ otherwise you’d be doing retakes about once a week. I did a picture in 1956 called The Happy Road which I produced, directed and played in but that was a killing job because I had no help at all, not in the way I was used to, because by then Stanley had gone on to do marvellous things on his own.”

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE 1958

Tony Thomas. The Films Of Gene Kelly 1974

It was Gene Kelly's final movie in his contract with MGM...The job was a pleasant one and Kelly claims the picture was shot fairly quickly and without problems, which no doubt accounts for the flowing good-natured mood of this glib sex comedy.

Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Miss MacCracken’ in the film

Gene Kelly was really gentle and very supportive…I can remember Gene Kelly trying to keep a sense of humor. At one point, he picked up a girl and was dancing around with her...Kelly told both Day and Widmark that they looked Swedish and took to calling Day Brunhilda.

 

Los Angeles Times. September 7^th 1958

…It is the first time Kelly has directed a movie without also acting in it. But the multi-talented star remedied that situation fast. He didn’t merely tell his stars how he wanted them to act – he showed them. And so, bouncing in and out of character like a rubber ball, Kelly acted every part in the movie.

What effect on the actors did Kelly’s do-it-yourself routine have? Did they resent it? On the contrary. Said star Richard Widmark:

“Movie actors often complain they miss the audience. But not with Gene around. He’s not only an actor, producer, and director. He’s a whole audience too.”

 

http://www.uberarticles.com/articles/artsubmit/upreview.php?article_id=16632

..Gene Kelly has done wonders. Every situation is carefully contrived, every laugh milked bone dry, most expertly by Young and Miss Fraser, champion milkers from way back. Widmark joyously throws himself into this bit of switch-casting. Doris Day skilfully rounds out the quartet of fun-makers." Photoplay

BBC Radio Times.

This film marked the first time Gene Kelly had directed a picture which he was not in, and though he makes an efficient job of transcribing the Broadway comedy by Joseph Fields, Peter De Vries and the blacklisted Jerome Chodorov, it comes out as one of those plays that convulsed theatre audiences in New York and London but seems only mildly amusing on screen. Doris Day and Richard Widmark (the latter in a rare comedy role) play a married couple forced to battle through all sorts of bureaucratic formalities in order to adopt a child. Shot in only three weeks on virtually one set, the film still lost money - Doris Day later blamed its failure on a poor script." BBC Radio Times

Los Angeles Times December 18^th 1958

Gene Kelly in his first straight comedy directorial task, does a note-worthy job.

 

Ocala Star Banner. December 14^th 1958.  Gene Kelly displays the same zip in directing as he does in acting…

GIGOT 1962

Gene: This was my unhappiest experience in the picture business...We showed the film to the armed services ... in Europe and received enthusiastic response. When next I saw the film in New York it had been so drastically cut and re-edited that it had little to do with my version. I was never consulted, and I never found out who was responsible for cutting it...caused the picture to look like a continual pantomime, with Gleason following himself in a series of sketches. He was brokenhearted about it. We thought we had a minor classic- but not as it stands.

Time Magazine August 1967

When he teamed up with Jackie Gleason to film Gigot in 1961, the trade waited expectantly for the Great One to unload his celebrated wrath on the demanding director. Instead, Kelly had Gleason puffing up and down a flight of stairs like a trained St. Bernard and Jackie begrudgingly tacked a reminder on his dressing-room door: GENE KELLY is RIGHT.

 

Time Magazine August 1961

In Paris to direct the Jackie Gleason film Gigot, dancer Gene Kelly, 48, was exposed to a new plastic art: the explosive impressionism of France’s right-wing terrorists who, in an effort to bomb a police station, splintered Kelly’s parked Citroen sedan.

 

Time. May 5^th 1961

…The cat picked its way across the floor to where the great body lay canted on its side, sagging in sleep…the cheeks, which were smeared with sardine oil, glistened invitingly. The cat sniffed, turned, sneered at its audience, and began cleaning its paws.

Sorrowfully, Jackie Gleason heaved himself upright and looked at Gene Kelly. The two are in Paris trying to film a movie called Gigot…In the first scene, the cat is supposed to hear an alarm clock, wake up, and then rouse his deaf ami by licking his face. But the fist dozen Parisian alley cats had flunked their screen tests. Gleason…swabbed off the sardine oil and discussed things with Actor-Director Kelly…

Francophile Kelly supervises Gleason’s workaday lunches and explains: “I just order what I think would be a decent meal for three men, and when it’s not enough, I order more.”…

 

 Evening Independent. November 21^st 1962

Now and then director Gene Kelly tends to prolong good scenes, but in general he handles the pathos and humor of the story in befitting style.

    

A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN 1967

Tony Thomas. The Films Of Gene Kelly. 1974 

Sex is not easy to spoof, particularly those areas of it dealing with infidelity, but Gene Kelly came close to perfection with A Guide For The Married Man, a film that might have sunk in a mire of tastelessness in less cunning hands.

 

Frank McCarthy on the choice of Gene as director:

Apart from Gene’s innate good taste, there was another reason why I wanted him. My idea was to cast every available comedian in Hollywood in small cameo parts…and the only guy I knew who was popular enough, and who was sufficiently highly respected in the business to get them to say ‘yes’, was Gene…Gene could get them, and he did.

 

Hirschorn:  [Gene] proved he was every bit as contemporary as some of his younger colleagues, and…it firmly established him as a viable commercial proposition. The film was justifiably well reviewed and praised for its ‘impudent candour and freedom from leer’. It made the studio a great deal of money…

 

Time. June 2^nd 1967

Director Gene Kelly has guided Guide flawlessly, making it as crisp and catchy as one of his old dance routines.

 

Los Angeles Times. June 1967. Bosley Crowther.

Gene Kelly has directed with speed and persistent wit. He proves himself a swinger with this film.

 

Time Magazine. August 1967

At 54 Kelly is going like sixty. It has been twenty-five years since he first whirled across the screen with Judy Garland in For Me And My Gal, and now he is Hollywood’s busiest – and only – sextuple threat – dancer, actor, singer, choreographer, producer, director. “I wear so many hats,” he says, “that sometimes I forget where I’ve been and where I’m going.” These days he prefers the checkered cap that goes with the director’s chair. He has just completed A Guide For The Married Man, a kind of lab course in advanced adultery starring Robert Morse and Walter Matthau, and it is one of the niftiest comedies to come out of Hollywood in years.

Deftly alternating fast and slow motion, blackouts, flashbacks and stop action … Kelly in effect has choreographed the film along the lines of a fast-paced modern dance. He enlivened one terpsy-turvy scene, for example, by having Art Carney prance after his mistress like an oversexed peacock.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette January 17^th 1967

For himself Fred Holiday wishes nothing for the New Year. “I only wish,” the young actor was saying here on a short visit home the other day,  “that in 1967 every movie director should come from Pittsburgh.” Like Gene Kelly, for instance… they were interviewing a truckload…for bits in a motion picture called Guide For The Married Man

…Fred Holiday announced himself late one afternoon at the 20^th Century Fox casting office. His was the last name on the list Gene Kelly…held in his hand.

“Since everybody else has been checked off,” Mr. Kelly said, “you must be Fred Holiday.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Holiday answered, and then added, “from Pittsburgh.”

Gene Kelly smiled…

“I think you’ll hear from me,” Mr. Kelly called after him at the end of their brief meeting.

Fred Holiday did indeed hear from him. Not only that but Mr. Kelly built his two-day part in the motion picture…into a two-and-a-half week part.

“He was always thinking up new things for me,” Mr. Holiday recalled…”Each morning when I’d report for work, there would be more lines for me, and then finally came the ultimate! A scene all by myself with Pat Becker, which Gene added at the last minute.”

This called for Mr. Holiday and Miss Becker to be driving home from the party…at which the two of them were to pull up at the side of the road and climb into the back seat for a spot of smooching.

Mr. Holiday remembers that Mr. Kelly wasn’t satisfied with their necking the first time or the second time either.. Then he said:

“Hey, Fred, this isn’t Mulholland Drive necking – it’s Schenley Park necking” [Schenley Park is in Pittsburgh!]

Mr. Holiday got the idea at once and the director called out a few minutes later “Cut and print it.”

…”I have my best part in pictures so far in Guide For The Married Man, thanks to Gene Kelly and the fact that I happened to be from Pittsburgh, too!”

HELLO DOLLY!. 1969

Gene. Hello Kelly!’ She magazine 1969

I was a bit worried about taking a show that’s been the biggest musical hit of our time and that had nothing of a plot to speak of…and having it hold up on the screen for 2.5 hours …The logistics of putting Dolly on are tremendous, it’s the biggest budget (about $20 million) ever made for a show going in.

In the Parade scene we have about 7,500 people. If I don’t get the shots...the first day, that means you call them back a second day - this is a tremendous amount of money….The day we shoot the parade…that night it will be hard to go to sleep because I will be listening to all the weather forecasts.

Ernest Lehman: On the choice of Gene for Director:

He was a hot property and it seemed a smart move – was a smart move. Gene had exactly the qualities we needed on the picture. Tremendous energy and vitality, and a maddening cheerfulness…outwardly at any rate, he always maintained a bright, confident attitude towards his work. He just didn’t believe in showing fear, anxiety, uncertainty, lack of confidence or pessimism.

 

The Age. February 27^th 1970

Director Gene Kelly recaptured much of the lyricism, zest and spontaneity of his great days, in this huge production of the stage musical.

 

Gene, Gene Kelly Day, London 1970

When I directed Hello Dolly! I knew it was old-fashioned, but it excited me to meet the challenge of blowing it up into a big and exciting picture. I’m not sorry I did it, but it probably wouldn’t have been my first choice.

Source unknown

The heavy handedness and painfully coy atmosphere that plagues so many 60s musicals like Oliver! (1968) Star! (1968), Doctor Doolittle (1967), Camelot (1967) and Paint Your Wagon (1969) is wholly absent from Dolly’s mélange and to this credit is largely due to Gene Kelly. For all his behind the scenes angst and consternation, Kelly delivers an adroit and jovial procession that never once seems strained or dull.

 

 

 

Michael Crawford. Parcel Arrived Safely: Tied With String. 1999.

Roger Edens arranged for me to audition with Dolly director Gene Kelly, which completely changed my life….the words look so matter of fact…Gene Kelly. But let me tell you, just the anticipation of meeting that great American dancer was enough to tie me in knots.

…I am still changing as the doorbell rings…I open the door and see that famous genial Irish grin….he never took his eyes off me…”Let’s cut the small talk” he said. “Can you dance?…Just get up and do something. Try this.” He cleared the coffee table, got up on it and did a couple of tap steps…his compassionate eyes were glued to the human rubber band who helplessly flailed away in front of him….

“Siddown”, he said. “What I’m looking for is someone to play Cornelius Hackl…he’s an attractive idiot. Now my wife, well, she thinks you’re attractive, and I think you’re an idiot…”

 

The romantic ‘It only takes a moment’, was my big song in Dolly…. I looked up at Gene when I finished and saw he was in tears. He came over and put his arm around me. “That’s my boy”, he said.

 

While we were filming in New York, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in LA….Gene was crushed; he had been a friend of the Kennedy family. …The set was closed down the day after the tragedy….When production started up again…the mood was bleak for cast and crew. Yet Gene Kelly was able to handle it all with great equanimity. He was enormously understanding and empathetic to his artists.

 

Tommy Tune.

"I was doing my solo and I’d shot it a couple of times. He said ‘Let’s go for it again’ and he came over to me and said ‘Tommy, dance better.’…and I went ‘What does he mean!’ Then I…got ready and by the time he said ‘Roll them, action’, I went ‘Oh, right, dance better’, and I did, and that’s a great, great thing for a director to tell a dancer."

 

Los Angeles Times. June 9^th 1968

Marianne McAndrew: Being the second female lead in Hello Dolly is almost as bad as being an Indian in a John Wayne western. You’re dead before you get to finish a war whoop…Gene Kelly is a very strong and patient director and I think Barbara respects him….

 

Time Magazine December 1969

If the echoes sometimes blend into a solid chorus, credit must be divided between Director Gene Kelly and his choreographer Michael Kidd…The most kinetic, Dancing, is happily reminiscent of the old MGM musical It’s Always fair Weather, starring a couple of guys named Gene Kelly and Michael Kidd. Hello! Dolly could have used those personalities on screen.

 

THE CHEYENNE SOCIAL CLUB 1970

Gene, Films Illustrated 1974

There were James Stewart and Henry Fonda, they had director approval and they chose me. I wasn’t just flattered, I was ecstatic.

Assistant director Paul Heinrick: Gene may not have know a darn thing about Westerns or the West when the picture started, but when he finished it he was very knowledgeable about the subject and there wasn’t much you could tell him he didn’t already know – just as there wasn’t much you could tell him about the technical side of filmmaking from editing to special effects. He never did things by halves. His undertaking something was guarantee enough he would do it to the best of his ability. The only time I ever saw him lose his Irish temper was when other people ‘goofed off’. That he couldn’t stand.

 

Dallas Times Herald. June 1974

He directed a film with James Stewart and Henry Fonda a few years ago, Cheyenne Social Club, a quasi western, and turned it into one of the most affecting films of the year, letting those two personalities bounce off each other, finding a relationship between them that was uniquely male and fascinating.

“I didn’t want to do that film,” he said. “I wasn’t interested in directing a western. But I’m a pushover for performers and how could I go through the rest of my life realising that I had turned down an opportunity to work with two people like that. “

This film was brought up by Kelly on the first day of rehearsals in Dallas for Take Me Along. Any director and choreographer would feel intimidated, obviously, in working with Kelly as a performer and Kelly is extremely aware of this reaction. Especially, in this case since director Michael Maurer and choreographer John Sharpe are talented but young men. Kelly called the staff together and told of a story that took place on his first day of shooting Cheyenne Social Club.

He said he had called Fonda and Stewart into a huddle and explained his predicament in having to direct two great and legendary actors and hoped they wouldn’t play around him and give each other pulling on the ear signals. Both told him flatly that as far as they were concerned he was the director and whatever he wanted was good enough for them.

 

Toledo Blade. January 4^th 1970

Kelly…is directing his first western. “He blocks out the scenes like a chorus,” Fonda agreed, “but it’s more for the crew than the cast. We had a location scene in which Jimmy and I are doing laundry alongside a track. It called for co-ordinating action, dialogue, sound etc as a train, starting from half a mile away, passed by. Gene worked it like a countdown, with everything happening on count.”

 

St. Petersburg Times. June 10^th 1970

Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and Gene Kelly were in Salt Lake City…to promote their new picture The Cheyenne Social Club

CNN News:  Hollywood's Gene Kelly had this town built in 1969 for the filming of a movie he was producing, "Cheyenne Social Club" starring Jimmy Stuart and Henry Fonda. In the years since it has hosted the likes of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Kevin Kline, and Johnny Cash. When it isn't serving as a Wild West backdrop for cameras, it is open to the public for tours.

The J. W. Eaves Movie Ranch is about 10 miles south of Santa Fe.

Kinematograph Weekly. October 10^th 1970

Critics and columnists turned up in force at Peter Reed’s party for Gene Kelly following the press show of the producer/director’s film, ‘The Cheyenne Social Club’, the second release from the Carthay Center Distributors. In addition to the press coverage, interviews and extracts are to be shown on both the BBC and Granada television. James Stewart and Henry Fonda star with Shirley Jones in this comedy…Press photographers turned Piccadilly Circus into a still studio.