Gene Kelly, Creative Genius
A personal celebration of his life and work
Gene, interview on the set of ‘Hello Dolly’
Being a very weak singer myself, and since I broke into showbusiness having to sell a song... put it across and kid the people into thinking they are hearing something better than they were, I have a 
lot of things in the bag, like ways to deliver a song, that I can give to young people.
Saturday Evening Post. July 1950
Kelly’s voice is gravelly enough, but when a fellow who sits through a Kelly flick with his girl sneaks a look at her, nobody has to tell him that she’s picking up that gravelly voice on her emotional radar, and that it’s coming through to her warm and smooth, and disturbing her plenty. You can’t expect Joe Average to enjoy getting up the money for tickets so Kelly can make his date sprout goose pimples.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette. May 13th 1950
Gene Kelly really hits a high note in the barroom singing scene in Black Hand. Didn’t know he could sing so good.
Leslie Caron. On the Kelly 'open house' weekendsGene never performed much - he didn't like his voice - but he did the Irish thing for a Saturday night: he drank his whiskey and talked
Jeanine Basinger. 1976
His singing was a mysterious blend of love and larceny… It was believable, like his overall image, and audiences loved it.
Christopher Walken, TCM tribute
His singing was like a natural extension of his speaking voice. When he played a scene and started to sing it was as if he was still talking and this 
gave his songs a sincere quality. Nobody sounded like him.
Stanley Donen 1996
He was very nervous about his singing voice. Whenever we would record it was a sure thing that on the day he would be hoarse because he was so tense that he was not going to deliver what he wanted.
Gene: The one advantage that non-singers like myself have...is that we can almost talk what we have to say. We want the audience to hear the words...
American Film 1979. Gene:
The song should take you from the dialogue into the dance.
To make those transitions is the hardest thing in any musical, even on the stage. But I found that singing a song helped me. I never had a good voice, but the song was just a means to an end, to getting from the dialogue into the dance. I think you need some transition, whether it’s stepping in mud or falling down or whatever. The good songwriters will give you that transition, without making it a slap in the face.
Time Magazine March 2002
...the title number from Singin’ In The Rain is nearly as memorable for Gene’s pipes – the giddy catch in his voice at “I’m ready for love,” the unaffected “doo-dle-oo-doo’s” at the start and the unsheepish “I’m dancin’ and singin’ in the rain,” at the finish – as for the great hoofing.
Time Magazine. August 1967
Though his singing voice sounded like someone gargling pebbles, he projected an easy grace and wit that made him the most sought-after song-and-dance man in Hollywood.
St Petersburg Times. August 4th 1984
“I always thought of myself as a song-and-dance man, and, Lord knows, I can’t sing,” Kelly says with typical self-deprecation, as if being able to take over a stage or a screen with a straw boater and cane is something every mortal could routinely accomplish.
