Gene Kelly, Creative Genius

 

 

 

Photoplay May 1943  “For no good reason I suddenly began to feel hemmed in,” he explained. “I wanted new horizons. So I left the family to run the schools (they’re still doing it!) and gambled on getting a job in New York.”

BBC interview 1974. Gene:  Nobody wanted a choreographer from Pittsburgh so I got a job as a dancer just to keep going.

Saturday Evening Post.  July 1950

In the summer of 1937 he felt that he was ready to seek work in New York as a choreographer, if New York was ready for something new and fresh in rhythmic patterns. But the Gotham producers betrayed a perverse lack of interest in hiring a young Pittsburgh dancing master to show them the errors of their ways, and since the two Gene Kelly Studios of the Dance were earning around $8000 a year – more than anyone in New York offered him – he came home. The following year Broadway made a place for him as a dancer instead of a choreographer.

 

Colliers magazine. May 1945

The winter sessions at his schools in Pittsburgh and Johnstown were doing a raging business, and everything was fine until he took another decision: he was giving it all up to try his luck in New York. Solemn friends pointed out to him what a mistake he was making. He had a prosperous and growing business; he was a big frog in a little puddle; competition was tough in New York and he might find himself up against it.

“I had been looking at that competition for years,” says Gene. “It didn’t look so hot. Anyhow, it was time to move. You reach that spot and you either move or you stay where you are and end up wearing a flowing black tie and being called ‘Professor’.”

He wasn’t a Broadway riot from the start, but he picked up jobs right away…After that came…a spell of living with three other fellows in a rather crummy apartment where Gene learned Shakespeare by listening to the others spout it….what really fixed him up was meeting with William Saroyan, a sort of bargain-basement Shakespeare…He heaved Gene into Time Of Your Life, where he staged his own numbers and worked up quite a little reputation for himself in the Pulitzer Prize winner.

 

New York Times. 2^nd March 1941

Kelly is a handsome young Irishman from Pittsburgh who became a dancer because, he says, “of vanity.” However, his vanity is not likely to show. When he talks of playwrights he uses the thoroughly unactorish expression of, for example, “I think Saroyan likes me,” or “O’Hara seemed to like us all right; we had good times together.”…

“Kelly is omnipotent,” said Variety. An unknown two years ago, Kelly is now invited to parties where he gazes on such masters of the musical comedy crafts as Victor Moore and George M. Cohan and thinks how wonderful it would be to stay on top all your life.

“I know I’m lucky now – but what if my next show is lousy and I am shown up as being not too good? You don’t get a book and songs like [Pal Joey] every year, you know.”

 

Movie Show. October 1947. Van Johnson

My initial feeling of knowing what made Kelly, the great entertainer, tick, was on the first day of merged rehearsals. [Pal Joey]. Previously the chorus rehearsed in one theatre, the principals in another. I remember so well how all of us chorus kids sat around waiting for the stars to arrive. Some of them were dressed to the teeth, which didn’t impress us too much. Then in came Kelly, with that characteristic jaunty walk: he was dressed strictly for rehearsal – old slacks, T-shirt and tap shoes. No swank, no pretense, ready to go to work, but he inspired the ladies and gentlemen of the ensemble to prod each other in the ribs and say, “There’s Kelly,” with more than a little awe in their voices.

 

Modern Screen October 1946.

In the living room of [Gene’s] little apartment, Gene set the record changer, poured beer into oversized steins, and uncovered the sandwiches. Then he began to talk. [Robert] Alton, sunk in a deep chair, his feet up on an enormous puff, was in a mood for listening…

It hadn’t occurred to Alton that Gene was a little lonely, that the theatre and success and the disenchanted, hard-bitten, sophisticated society of Broadway were not enough to fill his life…

Sipping his beer and listening, Alton caught the need in his young friend for all the things that are genuine and secure and lasting – the warmth of knowing someone else is in the house, of hearing voices in the next room, of children’s laughter, of a fire already burning in the fireplace, of companionship and affection...

“What you need is a girl.”

“I’ve got a girl.”

“I meant a wife.”

“All,” said Gene, “in good time.” And the subject was changed.

Alton did not remember that evening again until he was deep in rehearsals for Panama Hattie. Among the cast was a lovely little girl named Betsy Blair, whom Alton had noticed particularly for the indefinable quality of innocence which she seemed to wear like a garment. She was also a competent actress, which set her up in Alton’s books; and after he had talked with her…and watched her out of the corner of his eye…he went around to the cast with what…was an astonishing request.

…”Will you please watch your language when Betsy Blair’s around?"…Strangely none of the other girls took offence. They knew what he meant. They also knew something about Betsy that he did not. He found it out one afternoon, though, when, emerging from the stage entrance, he ran into Gene.

“This,” said Alton, “is at least the tenth time I’ve caught you hanging around here. You’ve got a perfectly good job of your own. What’s up?”

Gene did not answer. Alton discovered he was looking past him, smiling with his brown Irish eyes; turning, the director saw Betsy coming through the door.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

“Start believing it now then,” Gene said. “Remember what you told me that night at my apartment? All right, I’ve followed your advice before and I can’t say I regret it.”

 

Gene 1981: You can get away with more in theatre than you can in motion pictures. Dim a light in theatre and you get an effect. Do it in a movie, and someone will think there’s something wrong with the projector. A movie is two-dimensional; the theatre is three-dimensional. One is like a painting. The other is like a sculpture. When I first came to Broadway in the 1930s, the myth was ‘Ho, ho, lets do a musical’. It was supposed to be easy. Now everyone knows it’s the hardest of all things. Dancing on Broadway has changed, too. It’s less eclectic. There’s less ballet. Loosely, Broadway dancing sticks more to jazz and modern. The American gypsy is the best trained in the world, but he ignores acrobatic and tap. The more variety in a show, the better it is as a dancing show.

 

Gene. Theatre Arts December 1958

Musical Comedy Is A Serious Business

It is one of the strange and wonderful qualities of the theatre that once you have been part of it, once you have known it intimately, it always stays the same. You can be away from it for sixteen years, as I have been, and then one day you walk through a stage door and roll up your sleeves and start working and you find that you feel very much at home…coming back to the theatre is coming back to reality, to human contacts. These are the lasting, familiar facts of theatre. These are the things that instantly make the prodigal feel at home when he returns.

 

 Modern Screen. June 1943

He misses the stimulation of New York. On a visit last February, he and Betsy, his wife, stopped at the hotel only long enough to drop their bags before diving happily through slush and 8-below temperature for a cup of coffee at the automat. How keenly he misses the theatre he didn’t realise till This Is The Army opened in Los Angeles. His brother Fred’s a member of the cast. As the house darkened and the overture started, his spine went cold and his eyes wet.

 

LEAVE IT TO ME.  Imperial Theatre.  9th November 1938-15th July 1939

Lyrics and Music by Cole Porter. Choreography by Robert Alton.

Gene's first Broadway appearance. He played the role of secretary to Mr Goodhue and was involved in at least two songs: I'm Taking The Steps To Russia, and Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love.

Mary Martin also made her stage debut in this show, to great acclaim.  Sophie Tucker was in the cast.

Mary Martin, 'Leave It To Me' Broadway 1938
I liked him from the very first day. He was so talented, had so much drive. I've never know anyone who worked so hard perfecting his art...I knew he was going to be somebody very great.

ONE FOR THE MONEY.  Booth Theatre.  4th February 1939-27th May 1939

Directed by John Murray Anderson. Musical staging; Robert Alton. Presented by Gertrude Macy and Stanley Gilkey, in association with Guthrie McClintic and Katherine Cornell.

Gene had six roles in this revue, which was right-wing in emphasis: Friend, Ensemble, Mr Gordon, The Best Man, Reporter, Singer, and Western Union Boy. He wore white tie and tails for part of the show.  Also in the cast were Keenan Wynn and Alfred Drake.

Gene, quoted in Hirschorn 1974: "I suppose I was the juvenile lead...except that there weren't any leads. It was an ensemble revue of six performers without stars as such, and where everybody was equally important."

 Modern Screen October 1946

During the first tryout, and later in rehearsals, Alton began to recognise in his new find a shrewd natural showman. There was no labor connected with their onstage relationship. He could give Gene the barest idea of what he wanted so far as characterisation was concerned, and without more ado Gene filled in the blank spaces and perfected the part on his own. But when it came to dancing it was a different story. –

“Now at this point,” Alton explained one afternoon., “you do a gliding soft-shoe number here in this clear space.”

“Why?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why do I do the dance?”

“Because the action’s slow, the dialogue’s too wordy but can’t be cut, and I want to brighten things up. Get a little pathetic humor in it if you can. Go ahead, see what you can work up.”

…He found Gene pacing the floor, all but wringing his hands. “I can’t do it,” Gene said. “Nothing comes. There’s no reason for the dance, no motive. A dance is supposed to say something, and here there’s nothing to say.”

Alton thought fast. “But there is,” he said. “Plenty. You’re lonely, d’y see? And the girl over at that table with the man she doesn’t love, is lonely too – right here in the midst of this big noisy crowd. You want her to know that you have a kinship of spirit, that you understand how she feels, that you think she is beautiful.”

The trouble went out of Gene’s eyes. “Oh, why didn’t you say that before?” In ten minutes he had created a dance that said all those things, and more.

Hirschorn 1974:  McClintic, who with his wife did much to improve the standard of Broadway production and acting, was tremendously impressed with Gene and his capacity for hard work.... Katherine Cornell was also taken with Gene and his engaging personality, but so appalled by his diction, that...she packed him off to an elderly elocution teacher of immense experience.

Gene: "I've never had a good speaking voice...but in 1939 my flat Pittsburgh accent must have sounded really terrible...this teacher would ask me to say 'water' and I'd say 'wadder'...just like the Jean Hagen character in Singin' In The Rain...after a few months of hard work, I felt I was ready to play Shakespeare."

The show took to the road during the summer, to Chicago, and Gene took over much of the choreography, working out simpler routines for replacement cast.

Gene: "I learned more about staging a show from Murray than anyone else in the business. During rehearsals for One For The Money I never took my eyes off him....no-one has had as great an influence on my work as John Murray Anderson. The biggest compliment I ever had, certainly up to then, was his approval of my work on One For The Money."

WESTPORT SUMMER STOCK 1939

 

During the summer months there was usually a ‘lull’ on Broadway, with shows going ‘out of town’ or closing. Gene took a job as choreographer for three shows at the Westport Country Playhouse, a prestigious venue.

One show was The Emperor Jones, a Eugene O’Neill play, with an all-black cast, for which he created dances which enhanced the production enormously.

The second was Green Grow The Lilacs, by Lynn Riggs. Gene’s musical additions to what was a ‘straight’ play, were very successful, and eventually it became Oklahoma.

In the third production he was Master of Ceremonies in a revue called The Magazine Page. It was here that he first worked with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, an association and a friendship which was to culminate in Singin’ In The Rain.

Gene did ‘send-ups’ of various dancing types attempting to do a tap routine, and ended with a highly original mix of dance and acrobatics.

His summer experience was excellent experience for him and did his growing reputation no harm at all.

 

Adolph Green on seeing Gene for the first time, in Westport summer stock 1939
He was a hoofer with something extra hidden away....I was knocked out immediately....what struck you most was his charm and his clean cut good looks...he was full of grace and vitality, and what I remember most was the effect he had on an audience. They just loved him. He could do no wrong. He exuded 'star quality'... He had the ability to make the most complicated things look ridiculously simple.

 

Nolan. The Story Of Rodgers & Hammerstein 2002

The idea of making a musical from Riggs’ play [Green Grow The Lilacs] had originated in the fertile brain of Theresa Helburn. A revival of the play ten years later at the Westpoint County Playhouse lightened the piece by adding folk songs and a square dance choreographed by Gene Kelly…Noting how the audience warmed to the  music, she began to wonder how the play might go with a complete musical score…Richard Rodgers came up to take a look.

 

Betty Comden:  Gene came into the show at the last minute, and I remember thinking how attractive and how full of vitality he was.

 

Adolph Green: Everything that Gene was, or was later to become, was already there in a nugget in that act. His qualities were immediately apparent

 

The Bridgeport Post, 1939

Gene Kelly…was probably the individual hit of the show.

 

 

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE. Booth Theatre. 25th October 1939-6th April 1940. Return engagement 23rd September 1940-19th October 1940

Produced by the Theater Guild, written by William Saroyan. Staged by Eddie Dowling and William Saroyan.

Also in the cast: William Bendix, Julie Haydon and Celeste Holm. It won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Drama Critics Award. 

Gene played the role of Harry, described as a 'dumb young fellow' whose simple philosophy is that the world is full of sorrow and needs laughter.

Gene was initially thought to be 'too posh' for the role, but came to the second audition, for Saroyan himself, dressed for the part.

William Saroyan: I was considering casting...Ray Middleton...if he had been able to shout. But he couldn't...suddenly, from the deep shadows of the Guild Theater on 52nd Street, a voice boomed out; 'I can shout!'

Saturday Evening Post. July 1950

The plot called for Gene to “improvise a dance”. He made it so convincing that, although he had worked the dance out down to the last clean tap and never varied it, seasoned playgoers who saw the show not once but several times marvelled at his ability to “create a new dance for every performance”

Saroyan: "Gene Kelly helped me get the play in its true dimensions of theatre....Gene was inventive and full of useful ideas which I instantly was sensible enough to seize upon and put in the play: and his ballet leaps near the end of Act Two were especially effective...Gene Kelly helped both the playwright and the other players by doing his part magnificently...Gene Kelly is a great man of the theatre."

Hirschorn 1974: Any doubts...about Gene's ability to breathe life into Harry the Hoofer disappeared on the opening night on Broadway, when his performance stopped the show. "I knew", said Gene, "If I didn't make it that night I might as well pack up and go home. But by some miracle, it all worked."

If you want to get some idea of the role which Gene played, there is a film starring James Cagney available from the usual sources. But you have to use your imagination!

 

BILLY ROSE'S DIAMOND HORSESHOE REVIEW. 1939

It was here of course that Gene and Betsy met, when he fought for her to get a job as one of Rose's 'long-stemmed beauties.'

 Playbill, Billy Rose Diamond Horseshoe Review.

Of all the chorus routines presented in Nights Of Gladness the hardest to create, the most tangle-footed to direct, and the most rhythm-wrecking to score was the Irish number, according to Gene Kelly, the Diamond Horseshoe choreographer.

Here’s the problem that Kelly posed for himself, and that with endless patience, he solved: take the strictly Celtic measures of the jig, the clog, and the reel; convert their basically 6/8 tempo to 4/4 swing and still retain the distinctive ‘nationality’: keep the melodies true and sentimental, and develop the tap sequences in up-to-the-minute fashion but be careful to keep the tone of it all truly Irish…the job…was to give the tap back to its ancestors yet make the finished product as modern as – well as modern as old-fashioned sentiment…

His title, in this company, is Dance Director, which means far more than it seems. Every movement on stage and floor is his direct responsibility. The gestures, walk, posture, and stance of every member of the cast was planned, rehearsed, corrected, timed, scored, wept and conferred over by him, and was discussed tirelessly with Mr Anderson and frequently with Billy Rose…

 

 

PAL JOEY. 

Ethel Barrymore Theatre. 25th December 1940-16th August 1941

Producer George Abbott, Choreographer Robert Alton. Cast also included Vivienne Segal, Stanley Donen, June Havoc and Van Johnson

 

New York Times. 2^nd March 1941

“What I like about Pal Joey is not only that I have the name part but that the whole show is gutsy.”

The stage manager rapped on Kelly’s dressing room door and invited him to come on stage and help clear up a snag that had developed in the “I Could Write A Book” number. The difficulty involved a quick embrace with Leila Ernst: the actors and the music weren’t quite together by a split second. Kelly went at the work with great good cheer. On the way back to his dressing room he confessed that the number bothered him a little because it was “Too good for my voice.” “A real singer could do a lot more with it than I do. My feet are all right but they tell me that when I sing all I need do is make sure that the audience can understand the lyrics. There is no use my trying to let my voice out because there is not enough to it to show.”…

His personality is such that he has, in effect, bowdlerized the name part in Pal Joey. As Kelly plays Joey, Joey is a heel all right, but a quite naïve heel. Everyone cusses him out, and he in general makes a fool of himself, but somehow the viciousness that marked Joey in the stories has disappeared.

 Kelly has given a lot of thought to this. “There are those who say that this is a dirty show. It isn’t dirty to me. My favourite critic said that maybe Joey was a rat infested with termites. I don’t see it that way. We opened Christmas Eve, if you remember, and sometimes I have wondered if maybe my favourite critic had spent the day at Walden Pond singing Christmas carols and that is why he was shocked.”

And again: “Before I took the part, a lot of my friends said, ‘Don’t do it.’ They said that I would get myself marked as a lousy heel and that whenever managers thought of me or whenever the public thought of me they would say to themselves, ‘that lousy heel who was the punk in Pal Joey.’

“Well, if that is to be, let it.”…

The part in Pal Joey is sufficiently strenuous to take up most of his energies. During the try-out period his weight dropped from 163 pounds to 147, and he went to see a doctor. “The doctor gave me some Vitamin B-1 pills and my weight is climbing a little – not much.” He has “practically gone on the wagon” for th erun of the show. “One thing that got me during the try-outs was that after the shows we would go to a ‘cloop’ with O’Hara and Hart and sit until 4 in the morning or so, then up early for rehearsals.”

Now he has a steak and one glass of beer after the show, gets to bed by 1:30most nights.

“So far I haven’t saved a cent. What I like to do, when I have any money, is to go to Maine for six weeks. I know an island there where I can do anything I want to. It’s a swell place to be. But I don’t expect to get to Maine for some time. The show is going well and they keep us snapped up on our parts – it should keep going. I don’t see why not. There is one spot though, where I can’t seem to keep myself on my best form. There is one scene where the ingénue, Leila Ernst, comes on, and she wears a blue dress that is not as blue as her eyes. It is a bright blue, but not as bright. You know, that fascinates me. Every night I look at her eyes instead of putting myself over as I should be putting myself over all the time.”

 

Irish America magazine. December 1990

...He landed the part of Harry The hoofer in William Saroyan's whimsical hit The Time Of Your Life where composer Richard Rodgers spotted him and asked him to audition for Pal Joey. Gene sang a slow ballad at the audition but Rodgers wanted to hear an 'up' number. Caught off guard for the moment, Kelly quickly recalled a lively ditty he used to sing called “It's The Irish In Me.” He sang it with all the gusto he had and when it was finished, a voice piped up from the darkness in back of the theater saying: “That's it, take him!” The voice belonged to the man who had written the book for the play – John O'Hara. Kelly's success in Pal Joey was total and unqualified and it made him a star.

 

Seventeen magazine. September 1946

His role as Joey, the perfect heel, will long be remembered by those lucky enough to have seen it. Critics raved about his ability to carry acting talent over into his singing and dancing, started referring to the show as “Pal Kelly.”

 

Stanley Donen on Gene Kelly

In terms of a Broadway man, Gene Kelly was playing a tricky role: a very brash, cocky, sure person, who was very randy with the girls, but who was needy and not well educated, which made him funny. He was an energetic, fresh, aggressive Irish-American presence, which had a great charm. There are those moments on Broadway when these people suddenly come forth – it’s a big moment – and Gene was one of them.

 

Gene: Theatre Arts. December 1958

I was lucky enough to have been on Broadway when the trend toward the new musical comedy was beginning. To some slight degree I even became a part of it by playing the title role in Pal Joey, an assignment that, you may recall, was considered pretty radical for musical comedy in those days. It was Pal Joey that sent me to Hollywood…people tell me I must have been one of the first song-and-dance men to be lifted out of a musical comedy for a Hollywood acting assignment.

 

Nolan. The Story of Rodgers & Hammerstein 2002

They needed someone special to play the lead, a dancer rather than a singer, someone who could make the audience like the hero even though they knew they ought to despise him. They found him, playing a small part in a show called The Time Of Your Life. His name was Gene Kelly.

 

Saturday Evening Post July 1950

His Diamond Horseshoe job followed, and after that came his big break. Producer George Abbott and Song Writers Rodgers and Hart were preparing a production to be called Pal Joey, after a character in a series of New Yorker short stories written by John O'Hara, who was also doing the dramatization. These four had seen Kelly in The Time of Your Life and had liked him in it, but before entrusting the Pal Joey title role to him they wanted to find out if he could sing.
  "I didn't try to let my voice out for them," Gene says. "There wasn't a lot of it to show if I had, but what they got of it they got on the level. I picked one of Rodgers’ songs to warble.  The average singer thinks it's smart apple-polishing to choose a songwriter's own composition for an audition, but it seems to me that this psychology is all wet.  If you sing a man's own song badly or in a way he doesn't think it ought to be sung, you're worse off than if you'd kicked around one by another composer. I selected a Rodgers song for a different reason.  If I had a worst foot, I wanted it to stick out right in their faces so I'd be nixed then, instead of rehearsing and being canned later, leaving me holding a hatful of busted hopes."
Kelly's worst foot must have been all right, for he got the job. On the morning after its opening Gene found himself holding a hatful of glowing critical notices instead of shattered hopes.

O’Hara had written Joey as a despicable heel, but without watering down what he called “the gutsiness of the part,” Gene worked out his own conception of the role. “I tried to get over the thought that with his background and bringing up, Joey just didn’t know any better,” Kelly says. “He might lie to the girls in the cast to mooch something he wanted from them, but the next minute I’d have him looking like a bad Irish boy on his way to confession, and the audience would think ’This jerk isn’t such a jerk after all. The jerk!’”

 

Playbill 'Pal Joey' 1941
Gene Kelly tapped his way into the theatrical limelight last season by his brilliant performance as the hoofer..in Saroyan’s prize winning play The Time Of Your Life. He is a Pittsburgh lad who earned his way through university by conducting a dancing studio…

Theatre World April 1941. On 'Pal Joey'
Gene Kelly plays the hard boiled Joey with a 21/2 minute charm that keeps the appeal soft and at all times ingratiating. He is always in character but never makes Joey obnoxious from an audience standpoint.

Van Johnson. 
I watched him rehearsing, and it seemed to me there was no possible room for improvement. Yet he wasn’t satisfied..it was midnight..I could see a single lamp burning on the stage..under it a figure was dancing..he was Gene Kelly

Gene: 

After some scenes I could feel the waves of hate coming from the audience. Then I’d smile at them and dance and it would relax them. It was interesting to use the character to manipulate the audience.

 

http://www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/movie/palvideo.htm   2 performances from the Ed Sullivan show, of Vivienne Segal singing Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered, and Harold Lang instead of Gene, sorry, doing Happy Hunting Horn. Use your imagination and put Gene in Harold's place!!

 

John Martin, New York Times

A tap dancer who can characterise his routines and turn them into an integral element of an imaginative theatrical whole, would seem to be pretty close, indeed, to unique….He is not only glib-footed, but he has a feeling for comment and content that both gives his dancing personal distinction and raises it several notches as a theatre art.

 

Cleveland Amory, magazine clipping ?1964

Kelly as the heel – and toe – hero, was sensational in what is still regarded as possibly the most physically difficult role ever performed – he had 80 ‘sides’ and no fewer than 11 acrobatic numbers. 

 

Theatre Arts 1946

Kelly was the man for the role…a dancer’s body, a good enough voice…and a combination of economy and sincerity that reached right across the footlights. As for his dancing, its inventive patterns, its lusty vitality schooled with precision were like an electric charge through the fabric of the show.

 

 Flying High, magazine article 1975

He won…the most coveted role of the year – that of a charming heel who could turn women into jellyfish.

Pal Joey opened on Christmas night 1940. As the next day dawned, Broadway had a star of major magnitude.

 

 

 

Side By Side. Irish Jews in American Theater. By Robert Moss. January 2008.

From www.forward.com

Novelist and short-story writer John O’Hara, who had just published “Pal Joey,” a collection of 14 short stories about a smalltime nightclub master of ceremonies and singer, wrote to Richard Rodgers suggesting that Rodgers and his partner, Lorenz Hart, might want to work with him on a musical version of the collection. Rodgers and Hart immediately recognized the possibility of a show that would be, as Rodgers put it, “totally different from anything we had ever done before… different from anything anyone else had ever tried.” The collaborators took an additional gamble when they cast the then-unknown Gene Kelly as Joey.

Of course, everyone was vindicated. The show that opened on Christmas Eve, 1940, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre was a landmark in the history of American musical theater, the first musical comedy whose male lead was decidedly un-heroic and irreducibly three-dimensional. Joey Evans is a self-centered lowlife who sees women as “mice,” to be seduced and exploited. Eventually, his sleazy scheme to acquire his own nightclub collapses, and even his long-suffering girlfriend deserts him; yet, having lost everything, he has learned nothing and merely sets off in pursuit of a new “mouse.”

For Kelly, the show was a personal triumph. He broadened Joey’s performance skills to include dancing, and invested his seedy character with enough charm and élan to make him believable as a lady-killer — and to make an audience want to put up with him for an evening. Like Cagney, Kelly was totally comfortable with Jewish colleagues, having staged numerous shows at a local synagogue in his hometown, Pittsburgh.

 

Brooks Atkinson NewYorkTimes. 1940

Whether Joey is a punk or a heel is something worth more careful thinking than time permits. Perhaps he is only a rat infested with termites. A night club dancer and singer, promoted to master of ceremonies in a Chicago dive, he lies himself into an affair with a rich married woman and opens a gilt-edged club of his own with her money. Mr. O'Hara has drawn a pitiless portrait of his small-time braggart and also of the company he keeps; and Gene Kelly, who distinguished himself as the melancholy hoofer of The Time of Your Life, plays the part with remarkable accuracy. His cheap and flamboyant unction, his nervous cunning, his trickiness are qualities that Mr. Kelly catches without forgetting the fright and gaudiness of a petty fakir. Mr. Kelly is also a brilliant tap dancer-"makes with the feet," as it goes in his vernacular-and his performance on both scores is triumphant. If Joey must be acted, Mr. Kelly can do it.

 

Nolan. The Story of Rodgers & Hammerstein 2002

Gene: The flower-hatted matinee audiences stayed away in their thousands.

 

Herald Tribune Richard Watts 1940

This young man is genuinely life-saving to Pal Joey for, if the chief part were not properly cast, the new musical show might have been too merciless for comfort. Mr Kelly…combines a certain amount of straightforward personal charm with the realism of his portrait so that Joey actually achieves the feat of being at once a heel and a hero.

 

BEST FOOT FORWARD  Ethel Barrymore Theatre 10th November 1941-7th April 1942

Produced by George Abbott, music and lyrics by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.

Cast included June Allyson, Danny Daniels, Stanley Donen. Gene was choreographer.

A light-hearted show, set in a High School, about a famous film star who attends a school prom.

During the summer 'lay-off' of Pal Joey, Gene was asked by Abbott to take over the dance direction of this show.

It gave Gene his first Broadway credit as a choreographer.

Hirshorn 1974: Gene kept the show bouncing amiably along, and as the accent was on youth, it gave him an opportunity to use several of the more talented dancers from Johnstown, which did the [Kelly] dance school no harm at all.

A film was made in Hollwood in 1943, Charles Walters was the dance director.

In an off Broadway production in 1963, Liza Minnelli made her stage debut.

 

FLOWER DRUM SONG 1958

This show heralded Gene's return to the Broadway stage, but as director, not performer. It was a Rodgers & Hammerstein production, and starred Miyoshi Umeki, Larry Blyden and Pat Suzuki. Choreography was by Carol Haney, and the costumes were designed by Irene Sharaff. It ran at the St. James Theatre from 1st December 1958 to 7th May 1960, 600 performances. It was nominated for a Tony award for Best Musical. Larry Blyden and Miyoshi Umeki were nominated also, as were Irene Sharaff for costume design and Carol Haney for choreography. Salvatore Dell'Isola won the award for musical direction. Pat Suzuki won a Theatreworld award.

Songs from the show include: You Are Beautiful, 100 Million Miracles, I Enjoy Being A Girl, Chop Suey, and Love Look Away

Richard Rodgers:

Flower Drum Song required the surefire touch of an experienced professional to spark it all off, and in Gene Kelly we got a man who was not only experienced and professional to the very marrow of his bones, but also hard-working and inspired. Without him, who knows how it all would have turned out.

 

Theatre Arts. December 1958

The stage door I walked through when we began auditions for Flower Drum Song at the Schubert Theatre was the very same stage door by which I had left Broadway for Hollywood in 1941.

 

From the Playbill:   Set in San Fransico's Chinatown, it tells a love story against a background of family tradition and the age-old differences in viewpoint of the elder and younger generations...practically everyone lives happily ever after.

Of Gene:   Gene Kelly is a many-faceted artist. Long celebrated as a dancer, choreographer, actor and singer, he has more recently acquitted himself with equal distinction as a producer and director of motion pictures. To this list of admirable accomplishments, he has now added that of directing the Broadway musical production, "Flower Drum Song."

http://www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/movie/flowerdrumvideo.htm This is a link to a performance by the original cast on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Clive Hirschorn. Gene Kelly, 1974.

Gene: [Oscar Hammerstein] asked me whether I would be interested in directing it for Broadway...As I'd never directed a full-scale Broadway musical before, the challenge appealed and I agreed. After seventeen years in the picture business, it would make a nice change......

It had a warmth about it and a sweet sentimentality...I knew that as long as I crammed the show brim-full of every joke and gimmick in the book, I could get it to work

Yudkoff  A Life Of Dance And Dreams.1999

Gene needed Asians who could sing and act in understandable English. It was a task that required far more than theatrical know-how and had much to do with why, surprisingly, Gene had been chosen over directors with many more credits listed in Broadway playbills…Gene’s relaxed attitude about people of color and his ‘couldn’t-care-less’ feelings about ethnicity were well known to Rodgers and Hammerstein. He was one of the very few who could direct a story about the clash of a gentle, ancient Asian culture against the bruisingly modern American way, without patronising or insulting….He and Jeannie worked hard at casting interviews and auditions…they were guided by Gene to successful Broadway debuts…The ticket lines were long and gratifying to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Hirschorn. 1974

The casting was left to Gene who, with Carol Haney and Jeannie Coyne, spent quite a bit of time in San Fransisco and Hawaii scouting around for Orientals who could sing and dance. ...On August 29th, Gene, Jeannie and Lois ...moved into Milton Berle's apartment in Park Avenue.

...As Gene predicted, audiences adored it and before the show even opened, the advance bookings had reached a staggering one and a half million dollars...it ran for 600 performances....he had done the best job he could,,,and his direction hit the right note exactly.

The Musical Theatre. Alan Jay Lerner 1986

Flower Drum Song was a definite success....the reviews were restrained but uniformly good.......Gene Kelly returned from Hollywood to direct.

Brooks Atkinson

Everything is done with ease, taste and pride in the theatre

Gene. Edward Murrow TV interview December 1958

"It’s been a wonderful experience mainly because I worked with wonderful people, and I guess mainly because we have a hit show. Working with Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, Carol Haney and all that gang was a lot of fun and they’re great people. And coming back to Broadway after fifteen or sixteen years well, it wasn’t a chore, and that’s an understatement."

Theatre Arts. December 1958.

Gene: As a director, I can do Flower Drum Song and then move on to other things. If I were to come back as an actor and then, after a few months, leave to go on to some other project – oh, the cries of ‘treason’ that would go up! There is no little irony that those who raise the biggest ruckus, when actors leave Broadway to fulfil commitments in Hollywood or elsewhere, are usually people who have steady jobs… does it ever occur to the newspaper critic who complains because an actor does not remain with a play throughout a long Broadway run that the actor, unlike the critic, has to consider where his next pay check is coming from,, that…he may go back to Hollywood and find that he has been gone too long?…The only sensible attitude one can take toward the New York theater is a thoroughly commercial one…to survive, it needs hits, big hits, and when it gets one there inevitably is a lot of unattractive scrambling and chiseling…What makes the New York theatre so wonderful…is the handful of people – writers, composers, choreographers and others – who create for it. They are the people who can bring one back to Broadway. And here I am.

 

CLOWNAROUND. 1972

This was to be a mobile family show somewhat similar to Disney On Parade. Gene was asked if he would like to be involved as performer and choreographer early in 1971

Clive Hirschorn. Gene Kelly. 1974

"The piece de resistance was to be a giant 'clown machine' designed by Sean Kenny, the British set designer and architect, in, on, and around which the entire entertainment was to take place. To Gene the idea was utterly irresistible: not only did he approve of family entertainment of this sort, but the show had a circus feeling to it which he relished...it appealed to his sense of fantasy and wonderment..."

The music was by Moose (Morris) Charlap, lyrics by Alvin Cooperman, choreography by Howard Jeffrey. Ruth Buzzi and Dennis Allen were to star alongside Gene. The massive set could be transformed as necessary into a jungle, a fairground, a ship and other things as needed.

It opened in Oakland near San Fransisco, but closed after a few weeks when the producers ran out of money. Two performers had also been seriously injured after falling from the structure.

A 12 song cast album was produced, and sold at the venues, but all remaining copies were destroyed when the show closed. It has now become one of the rarest of all cast albums, usually with a price tag of more than $200 when one becomes available.

The show was featured in an Ed Sullivan special in 1972

Jeanine Basinger. Pyramid Illustrated History Of The Movies. Gene Kelly. 1976

Kelly began work on the extravaganza with enthusiasm and a sense of joy. It was an unparalleled opportunity for his creative urges to be satisfied... But during rehearsals Jeanne Coyne Kelly discovered she had leukemia... Kelly curbed his activities in order to spend as much time with her and the family as possible, and his happiness over the project naturally waned.

   

   

TAKE ME ALONG. 1974

Based on the play Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'neill

From the Merriam Webster Encyclopaedia of literature:

Ah,Wilderness! A comedy in four acts by Eugene O'neill, published and first performed in 1933. Perhaps the most atypical of the author's works, the play presents a sentimental tale of youthful indiscretion in a turn-of-the-century New England town. Richard, adolescent son of the local newspaper publisher, Nat Miller, exhibits the wayward tendencies of his maternal uncle, Sid Davis. Forbidden to court the neighbor girl, Muriel, by her father, Richard goes on a bender and falls under the influence of Belle, whom he tries to impress but whose worldly ways frighten him. It is the dissolute Sid who handles the situation upon the prodigal's drunken return, and with the aid of warmhearted Nat and the forgiving Muriel everything is put to right. 

Gene played the role of Sid, Richard's 'charming, nip-taking uncle'. A spinster, Lily, waits patiently for Sid's reformation and his proposal of marriage, but in the end Lily decides that if Sid is to be taken at all, he must be taken as he is...and she does. (From the playbill).

It was a production in Ohio by the Kenley Players. John Kenley the producer was famed for his superb entertainments featuring leading stage, movie and television stars. It also toured in a few towns including St. Louis and Dallas.

It was Gene's first stage performance in a musical for more than thirty years.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0329/p18s02-hfes.html  Follow this link to read a heartwarming story about Gene while he was appearing in this show.

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=22702;article=8188;title=Gene%20Kelly  Another great little tale from the show.

   

The Dallas Morning News. June 1974

…He has produced and directed television spectaculars and has proven his versatility in so many ways that one wonders, for instance, what Michael Maurer, the director for Take Me Along, must feel when he has to direct Kelly in some complicated piece of business. Not that Kelly, a regular fellow, would play the prima donna.

Kelly plays the Jackie Gleason role of Uncle Sid in Take Me Along. .Kelly has added three dance numbers to enhance the role. The show will play Municipal Opera in St Louis and could even become a television special.

 

People magazine 1974

At 61, Kelly has kicked off a summer revival of the stage musical Take Me Along, which will take him to a half-dozen cities in seven weeks. The show, which opened to standing ovations in Dallas, marks the first time Kelly has appeared as a song-and-dance man in a legitimate show since producer David O. Selznick shanghaied him to Hollywood after his 1940-41 Broadway smash, Pal Joey.

Why is Kelly returning? “I am working for pleasure, not for financial reasons,” he says. “Every week or so I have a chance to do something for more money than I am making from this show. But to put it succinctly, this came up at a good time, and in a weak moment I said I would do it.”

 

COQUELICO.1979 22 Steps Theatre (Formerly the Cotton Club). 22nd February 1979-1st April 1979

The Enchanted Circus.

Produced by Olivier Coquelin in association with Michael Butler, Gene Kelly and Alan Jay Lerner.

I don't have any details of exactly how Gene was involved in this production, except that he was an associate producer, but it sounds like the type of thing he loved to be part of. New innovative technology, fantasy with clowns, mime and dance, and a life-affirming story. I assume they ran out of money, as so often happened, and it lasted for only 21 previews and 45 performances.

 

International Herald Tribune. August 1977

The Enchanted Circus is described as “a fairy tale for grown-ups on the frontier between dream and reality.” It combines the latest techniques to form the clever amalgam of cinema and live theatre which made the Magic Lantern famous.…Imagine a multi-scope screen where actors and dancers are seen in spectacular settings and in a variety of situations and at the same time appear live on stage. In Coquelico, a loose plot provides the kind of  comic, dramatic or adventurous material which best lends itself to Coquelico’s special effects.

 

Kurier Polski May 1978

…The idea of intertwining the two forms of theatre and film is very simple. The result without doubt is very attractive and original. And the whole thing is performed by means of expression, not the spoken play, but ballet and music, gestures and mime. The production is understandable to everybody…

Use of all these various forms of design gives birth to a very suggestive, variable, colored and even original picture. It is really well worth seeing.

 

GENE KELLY SPECTACULAR. IRISH FESTIVAL WEEK.

RESORTS INTERNATIONAL CASINO.

ATLANTIC CITY NEW JERSEY MARCH 1979

(MORE TO FOLLOW)

 

Magazine interview with Margy Rochlin, 1985. Sourceunknown.

I had been asked to open a nightclub in Atlantic City. They offered me a ridiculous amount of money. They literally overpaid me. So I did one show a night. Then they asked me back by popular demand. So I went back. Then I said “To hell with this.” I was only doing it for the money, and I was doing easy routines.