Gene Kelly is one of those rare performers who became a star with his first film. In 1942 MGM borrowed Kelly from David O. Selznick to star opposite Judy Garland in For Me & My Gal, a Busby Berkeley directed opus that takes place just before and during the Great War. Kelly plays a heel, an opportunistic song and dance man who wants nothing more than to play the Palace, the ultimate showcase that all vaudeville performers aspired to in pre-WWI entertainment. Kelly's ambition runs so high that, despite his love for leading lady Judy Garland, he smashes his hand with the lid of a costume trunk rather than get drafted into fighting a war he doesn't believe in. The movie wasn't as heavy as related here, but in 1942 with America involved in a new war, Kelly's character seemed cowardly at best and un-patriotic at worst. Re-shoots were made so that Kelly is a bit more sympathetic and all's well that end's well. It also made Gene Kelly a star first time out of the box. His contract was sold to MGM, Selznick not making many movies in the early forties and the few he did make were not musicals. So the MGM dream factory put Kelly to work in a lot of films some musical, some not, almost all forgettable: Pilot no.5, DuBarry Was A Lady, Thousands Cheer, The Cross of Lorraine. Then in 1944 MGM loaned him out to two different studios for two very different films: Cover Girl at Columbia with the leading love goddess of the era and someone who'd already co-starred with Fred Astaire in two pictures, Rita Hayworth. It was a huge success both with critics and war weary audiences. The other loan out was to Universal for Christmas Holiday with their leading songbird, former child star Deanna Durbin, who was expanding her range somewhat and trying on more adult roles to fit her maturing size. Now this film may sound like a musical comedy but it is really a early example of film noir with Kelly as a charming killer. It was his most off beat performance to date.
Menacing Deanna Durbin for the Christmas Holiday, 1944
Having proven he could be team player and do and go where MGM told him, he was rewarded with his biggest hit to date, Anchors Aweigh, with 'The Voice' Frank Sinatra. This was the first of three pairings for the two and it started a life long friendship and mutual admiration society between them. Frank always credited Kelly with helping him fool the audience that he wasn't born with 2 left feet.
Helping Frank decide which is his left & which is his right, Anchors Aweigh
This movie, which also had a cute Kathryn Grayson as the love interest and a very young Dean Stockwell as her nephew [ watch this and Blue Velvet back to back for a real mind fuck ], won over a huge number of moviegoers, helping establish Ol' Blue Eyes as a legit film star and solidified Kelly's rep as the only serious rival to Astaire as king of the musical. It also brought Kelly his first and only nomination for Best Actor by the Academy. It must have been a weak year because Kelly is ok but not really a contender for one of filmland's biggest prizes. Clocking in at some 139 minutes the movie is at least 20 to 30 minutes too long, however it does contain some fine musical numbers including " I Begged Her ",
" Look at me, I'm Dancin' ! "
" The Worry Song " with Jerry the mouse of Tom & Jerry fame, " The Mexican Hat Dance " and a lovely, underrated Sinatra ballad, " I Fall in Love Too Easily ". From here Kelly's career was about to reach it's peak, but he first had to slog thru some Metro mush like Living in a Big Way and Words and Music. In these years he also had his one and only on screen appearance with Fred Astaire [ I don't count their appearance in 1976's That's Entertainment 2, as they were past their prime and didn't really dance ] in Vincente Minnelli's Ziegfeld Follies. Like Ziegfeld's famous shows of yesteryear, the film was a revue with no plot, only a tun of MGM talent. The star power is almost indecent, for besides Fred and Gene there was Garland, William Powell, Cyd Charisse, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Lena Horne, Red Skelton, Esther Williams among others. These two were, are, the supreme male dancers in the movies. No questions, no doubts. Kelly was a proletarian dancer, a man of the people so to speak while Astaire was the more upper class elegant one and not only in their attire did they differ. Kelly smoked cigarettes, Astaire didn't [ except on screen ], Kelly not only sang & danced, he choreographed and eventually directed movies, Astaire danced and left the rest of that stuff to others. Kelly was a lifelong Democrat, Astaire a Republican. Yet each knew the value of hard work and not quitting until they felt the number they were perfecting was just that: perfect. And there was no bitterness or rivalry for each knew and respected the others unique brand of dance. In later years, Kelly expressed regret about the number feeling it too lightweight, just a bit of fluff. But I think that is what gives the routine it's charm. It never fails to entertain me.
The years 1948 to 1952 were the golden years of Kelly's stardom. He seemed to go from one hit movie to another: An athletic turn as d'Artagnan in George Sidney's lumbering, yet sumptuous, version of The Three Musketeers and his equally physical turn as the ham actor posing as Mac the black Macoco in Minnelli's troubled production of The Pirate and Take Me Out To The Ballgame, again with Sinatra, all in 1948. The year 1949 would bring a major change in his career when, with buddy Stanley Donen, he co-directed On The Town. Besides Kelly the film co-starred him with Sinatra [ for the last time ], along with the talents of Ann Miller, Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett and Jules Munchin. An exuberant musical that never takes it's time to let the viewer catch it's breath, On The Town was an tremendous bell-ringer all around the nation's box offices when it opened in December 1949. It helped justify Donen and Kelly's insistence that location shooting in the Big Apple was necessary, as they both felt the backlot in Culver City just wouldn't do to bring that helluva town to life. Being an actor or dancer in 1940's Hollywood one just didn't direct his or her own movie. This was Von Stroheim or Orson Welles territory and those two men got brought down and destroyed in the process. Kelly on the other hand, for a time, seemed to thrive. He went on to Minnelli's An American in Paris, 1951's Best Picture Oscar winner over the tough competition of A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place In The Sun and was presented with a special Oscar himself. That film ended with a 16 minute ballet sequence that was quite revolutionary in Hollywood films at the time, though similar things were done with Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes in 1948 but that film was an English, not a Hollywood, production. Though it may have dated since it's debut some 61 years ago, and taken over by such pictures as Meet Me in St. Louis and Kelly's own Singin' in the Rain among buffs, in it's day An American in Paris was received as the ultimate in Hollywood musicals. It made a pocketful of green for MGM's coffers, not to mention some prestige when the studio really needed it [ Metro was actually in turmoil at the time the film was in production and co-founder Louis B Mayer was forced out of his job as head of MGM just 9 months before the film won it's Oscar, a position he'd held since 1924 ]
1952 brought another triumph, everybody's favorite musical, Singin' in the Rain. I'm telling you if you don't like this valentine to the early days of talking pictures, when sound was supplanting silents, you don't like movies. It covers much the same ground as last year's Oscar winner The Artist, a big star in silent movies see's his secure position in the Hollywood pecking order shaken by the earth-shattering advent of all-singing ,all-dancing, [ this is the big one ] all-talking pictures. But while The Artist played it serious, Singin' in the Rain is musical comedy of the highest order and, with 1953's The Band Wagon, probably the finest example of the Hollywood musical, something no one else but Hollywood seemed to get quite right. Somewhat based on facts, but not on any one in particular, Singin' in the Rain charts the rise, fall and rise again of one Don Lockwood played by Kelly. His best friend is played by Donald O' Connor in what would be his best film role [ his show stopping ' Make Em' Laugh ' number still brings down the house ] and the ingenue is played by wet-behind-the-ears Debbie Reynolds, all of 20 years old, in what was only her sixth screen appearance. At the time of it's release, Singin' in the Rain garnered generous reviews and good box office but fell somewhat short of On The Town and An American in Paris in effect with both critics and audiences. To them it was just another good, ol' entertaining song and dance show. It is that but it's also art of the highest order, which critics and audiences acknowledge today.
1952 would mark the high point in Kelly's career as far as complete, total classic film is concerned. In 1952 he went to Europe to begin filming his ballet film, his " dream " film, Invitation To The Dance, which was a commercial and critical flop when it finally reached the screens in 1956. Before that the adaptation of Brigadoon reuniting him with director Minnelli and co-star Charisse should have brought big box office and hosannas from the critics, but instead brought shrugs. Another reason for this indifference to Kelly's post-Singin in the Rain output was the changing times in American, indeed world, film. With the occasional exceptions of Gigi and West Side Story, the musical in the mid-50's to early 60's had a rough time, especially with moviegoers. Kelly would have a few highlights in the years ahead: 1957's Les Girls, his last musical at MGM and his real swan song to the genre, directed by George Cukor, is a personal favorite of mine and 1955's It's Always Fair Weather is another highlight, but Singin' in the Rain, in retrospect, was the pinnacle, the summit of his achievement as a whole. It's Always Fair Weather, his last collaboration with Stanley Donen, is the one movie which I feel contains Gene Kelly's finest moment on film: This clip demonstrates Gene Kelly's ability to make one glad to be alive. That vibrant, joyous, exuberant, heart pounding, anything-could-happen-to-me-glad-to-be-in-love feeling we all have from time to time. He was able to bottle it and thanks to home video and cable it is our privilege to uncork that bottle, sample that vintage and bask in the flowing champagne of his genius. Because of you, sometimes I like myself too. August 23 is your 100th birthday, so happy birthday Gene Kelly and thanks for making my world a more joyous place.
Today is the 113th birthday of Alfred Hitchcock, the universally acknowledged ' Master of Suspense ', which is a fairly accurate description of his work as a whole for no one has really gotten the anxiety, paranoia, that unsettling feeling we sometimes get in the pit of our stomach, quite as well. It has been documented in the last 30 years or so, that Sir Alfred was a bit creepy or that, at least, he had certain hang ups. These so called obsessions worked their way into his film time and again: The voyeurism [ Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo ], domineering or overbearing mothers [ The Birds, Notorious, Psycho, To Catch a Thief ], the cool blondes [ Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, Marnie or just about any film Hitch made ] sex and food [ Frenzy, Rope, To Catch a Thief ], misogyny [ Marnie, Vertigo, Psycho, Dial M for Murder ], fear of heights [ Vertigo, North by Northwest, Saboteur, Rebecca ], role-playing [ North by Northwest, Stage Fright, Vertigo, Psycho, To Catch a Thief ], wrongful accusation [ Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, I Confess, Saboteur, North by Northwest, The 39 Steps] etc; these and other themes crop up in his films over and over. These, among others, are the things Hitchcock feared, fantasied and preoccupied him all his adult life.
Jimmy is watching you.
The chubby, shy, Catholic-British boy grew up to become one of the most celebrated movie directors ever. Recognized round the world, Hitchcock had everything a man could possibly want except, perhaps, true love. It's pretty well known that Hitch was obsessed with the ice-blonde female princess, best personified by Grace Kelly in ' Rear Window ', ' Dial M for Murder' and ' To Catch a Thief '.
Alfred's Muse
The ultimate cool blonde that Hitchcock said was a perfect lady, until one got her into the back of a taxi cab and then watch out! That elegance would unleash itself and devour the male. Or so he liked to believe. According to legend this impulse to pursue such a woman remained a fantasy of his that he never acted upon. His lust for Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly or Joan Fontaine remained private. Then he met Tippi Hedren in 1962. Hitch cast her as Melanie Daniels in ' The Birds' and he was besotted. It wasn't until he made ' Marnie ' with Miss Hedren the following year that Hitchcock's lust got the better of him. He supposedly made a pass at her, she rebuffed it and the rest, as they say, is history. Hitch, who had her under personal contract, refused to let her work for either himself or other directors [ one exception was 1967's ' A Countess from Hong Kong ' Charlie Chaplin's last directed feature ] for years. So her career was ruined. Not so her life, Miss Hedren says.
Alfred's obsession
But such bad manners doesn't prevent one from still enjoying his films. For Hitchcock was a master. Has any one filmmaker had such a run of classics? Without even going into his output from the previous 10 or 15 years, consider this run of films from 1951 to 1960: ' Strangers on a Train ', ' I Confess ', ' Dial M for Murder ', ' Rear Window ', ' To Catch a Thief ', ' The Trouble with Harry ', ' The Man Who Knew Too Much ', ' The Wrong Man ', ' Vertigo ', ' North by Northwest ' and 'Psycho '. That's 11 films in 10 years. No, not every one is a masterpiece but each one is at least watchable [ I Confess , Trouble with Harry ], or at least entertaining [ Dial M for Murder , To Catch a Thief , Man Who Knew Too Much ] with the remaining excellent examples of brilliant cinema with at least 3 of those being masterpieces [ you can pick at least 3 can't you ? ]. For today's audiences it's possible that some have highly improbable plots that at times stretch the limits of believability, but Hitchcock always regarded his films not as " a slice of life, but a slice of cake ". All of very high quality, that I dare say is impossible to match in almost anyone's filmography.
The famous nude swim on the set of her last uncompleted film, Something's Gotta Give
This Sunday August 5th, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the biggest sex symbol the movies ever produced: Marilyn. No other name
is needed. For like Madonna or Elvis or Cher or Beyonce, Monroe is instantly recognized as 'Marilyn', the 20th century's wet dream. This August 5th then is a milestone. That early morning when she took her last breath also fell on a Sunday. An anniversary can't get more precise than that. Was she murdered? This theory has had A LOT of popularity in the last 40 or so years. Certainly there seemed to be some kind of foul play. But by whom? The Kennedys? Marilyn's own maid? Her P.R. rep? Peter Lawford? The mob? 20th Century Fox? Everyone seemed to have a motive or at least something to hide. So many people were mysteriously seen in the dark of night coming and going from her house in Brentwood, or so say the neighbors years after the fact. Or was it suicide [the official verdict]? Like Garland, Monroe was a classic Gemini. Torn between Norma Jean [her birth name] and Marilyn, she always an unhappy camper [her suicide attempts are too numerous to relate here] and she didn't seem much better the last 6 months or so of her life. I think it was just her fate. Kismet. After so many attempts or false attempts, so many late night/early morning calls to friends, who could take those threats seriously anymore? Marilyn, the person, was a train-wreck: a ton of affairs, abortions, an unstable childhood, analysis, 3 unhappy marriages, chronic insomnia, pills, booze -- you name it.
With fellow sex-symbol Jane Russell on set of ' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ', 1953
Marilyn relaxing. A favorite pic
With Geraldine, er , I mean Tony Curtis on set of ' Some Like It Hot ', 1959
But Marilyn the star, the icon, the sex symbol of all-time, that was something special. She made magic on the screen. Marilyn was what the movies were made for. Or maybe she was made for the movies. From 1950-1962 Marilyn was what people referred to when they thought of sex and the ultimate female animal, hands down, no argument. That's pretty much the characters she played. Whether she was psychotic as in 'Don't Bother To Knock' or adulterous as Rose in 1953's 'Niagara' or how the public probably remembers her best as the ditzy, child-like innocent from 1955's 'The Seven Year Itch', Monroe epitomized the image of what American men fantasized, who they wanted their girlfriend or wife to emulate.
For modern day audiences Monroe has probably been seen by most in 1959's 'Some Like It Hot', Billy Wilder's still hilarious gender-bending sex comedy that also starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, retains the power to entertain some 53 years after it's release. The cross-dressing, hints of homosexuality and carnality must have raised some eyebrows in 1950's Eisenhower America. And speaking of dressing, Monroe practically falls out of one costume after another.
In 1961 Monroe, who always wanted to be taken as a serious actress, signed on to make 'The Misfits' with Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Well, "signed on" may not be the correct term as it was written for her by her then-husband Arthur Miller, one of America's leading dramatists. This is a legendary film. A film whose production has been much written about. From Monroe's lateness on set to the strenuous work of Gable in 100 or more degree heat in the Nevada desert, to director John Huston's all night gambling sessions in nearby Reno, this was a movie with unrealistic expectations thrust upon it. Gable, the leading male sex symbol of his generation, Mr Rhett Butler ['Frankly, my dear...'] playing opposite Miss Monroe, sex symbol 1960 version. Everyone expected sparks to fly. Throw in a unstable, alcoholic, homosexual, highly-talented, highly-neurotic Montgomery Clift and macho director Huston into the mix, well one just drools at the thought of such a collection of new and old Hollywood all out there in the Nevada desert heat sweating their boobs and balls off. The press was taking bets as to who would kill who first. It seems Marilyn never was on time, which tried just about everyone's patience except maybe Clift's. Monroe and Miller were in the middle of a break-up of their 4 year marriage which naturally tightened the screws to an already tense shoot.
Photo op on the set. Clift, Monroe, Gable in front. Wallach with black baseball cap, Huston in white cowboy hat, Miller in glasses and producer Taylor under the ladder, 1960.
Gable at 59 was not quite the King he once was. He had aged noticeably during the 1950's, his excessive drinking and smoking habits had done him no favors. But he was still perceived as The King of Hollywood and United Artists, which was bankrolling the film, figured they had sure-fire marquee value with Gable & Monroe as the above-title stars. And he and director Huston had been wanting to collaborate for awhile. Huston originally wanted to work with Gable & Bogart in 'The Man Who Would Be King' as far back as 1950. The plan for the film fell though, but Huston did realize a long-standing dream when he made an epic of it in 1975 with Sean Connery & Michael Caine. No longer a young man, Gable, who had a love/hate relation with acting, was looking for a good one to 'go out on'. When he read Miller's screenplay, he immediately felt a connection to the cowboy Gay Langland and felt this might be the one to top off his career.
Montgomery Clift as Perce Howland, punch drunk rodeo rider.
Clift was a wreck. Alcoholic, unstable, as unreliable as Monroe, he somehow was on his best behavior during the 'Misfits' shoot. So much so that Huston, who abhorred gays and couldn't tolerate men who couldn't hold their liquor, cast Clift in his very next production, 'Freud', in 1961 which was another catastrophic shoot and pretty much ended Clift's film career. On 'The Misfits' however Huston saw a dedicated craftsman who would give anything to make the picture better. And it is better for his participation. His bronco-riding Perce Howland is touching, pathetic, funny, sad, broken, brave, lost, lonely. It is a great performance.
With Gable, pushing the censors envelope of acceptable skin.
And Marilyn, what of her performance? As Roslyn, the perennial woman-child that drives the story, she is asked to play someone who seems not to far from her reel and real self. More serious than, say, Lorelei Lee in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes', more desperate than Pola Debevoise in 'How To Marry A Millionaire', and as innocently sexy as The Girl, that iconic creation from 'The Seven Year Itch', Roslyn casts a spell on all she encounters, even to some extent Thelma Ritter's character Isabelle Steers. Roslyn seems to infuse parts from
Getting ready on the set. Was every day like this ?
her public life as well. A woman whose parents weren't there for her in childhood, Roslyn keeps going back to square one time and again. Recently separated from hubby Kevin McCarthy in the film, Monroe would soon be divorced from Miller and would gravitate to another bunch of man/boy group of delinquents, Sinatra's infamous Rat Pack. So instead of cowboys the real Marilyn would get not only gangsters but politicians -- for Sinatra's reach in 1960 was ever-widening. So life imitates art. The end of 'The Misfits' has Roslyn and Gay drive away after they round up of the stallions, which Roslyn abhors and which Gay now sees is wrong [the horses are being made ready for dog food], and are set free. Free to return home to the mountains they came from. That is what the movie is about: home. How all the people who inhabit this universe have lost it and how they so much want to find it again. A place to live free and be happy and content. I fear Perce won't find it. He will go back to his rodeos and broken bones and lost dreams, Guido [Eli Wallach and the villain of the piece, if there is one] is too self-centered and petty to find any lasting happiness, Isabelle leaves before the round up in the desert to hang out with her ex-husband who is now married to her old childhood friend [wtf?]. Only Roslyn and Gay appear to make an attempt to build a place where no fear of abandonment will infiltrate their lives. I feel this was Miller's attempt at his fantasy of going off with Monroe to the theater in New York and creating character's for her to inhabit.
'The Misfits' premiered in February 1961 by which time Gable had died of a heart attack the previous November. Many would blame Marilyn for those torturous waits in 100 degree heat on location and Gable's decision to do alot of his stunts rather than wait it out. Marilyn put blame on herself also and was haunted by it. Marilyn was always haunted by something. As for the film, it has a haunting quality itself, but at the time most critics were divided as to its merits. The public failed to turn out for The King's last film and it was a box office loser. Time has been kind to it, however, and it plays better than it probably did at the time, it currently holds a 100% 'fresh' verdict on RottenTomatoes. The movie was the last of Monroe's too. She would be dead little more than 18 months after it's release.
Death house. Marilyn's final home in Brentwood. She was found here, dead on Aug 5, 1962.
Marilyn died before women's lib. Before the 60's got started, before nudity on screen was acceptable. What would have became of her? Of course no one can say, but it is interesting to speculate. She would have been 86 this past June 1st. I for one wouldn't want to know what she would have looked like. She may have wound up like 'Sunset Blvd's' Norma Desmond, alone in a great house, living out past achievements and exploits in her mind? Or would she have been like a Liz Taylor, going from husband to husband, looking for love but finding a lasting one elusive? Most all the great stars from the 1950s died somewhat young or at least middle-aged. Only Brando & Liz lived on past their 70s. Grace Kelly died 1982 at age 52, Audrey Hepburn in 1993 at age 63, James Dean at 24. They all died tragically and the one's who did survive to an old age had enough pain to last more than one lifetime. These few along with Marilyn, epitomized the 50s Hollywood. They ruled it like Clooney, Brad and Angelina, etc do today. As heartless as this may sound, Marilyn's death, like Elvis's, was big box office and has kept her legend alive long after she has past. But her movies. Watch her movies, remember her movies, for that is where the real Marilyn Monroe still lives and still reigns supreme.
Gene Kelly is one of those rare performers who became a star with his first film. In 1942 MGM borrowed Kelly from David O. Selznick to star opposite Judy Garland in For Me & My Gal, a Busby Berkeley directed opus that takes place just before and during the Great War. Kelly plays a heel, an opportunistic song and dance man who wants nothing more than to play the Palace, the ultimate showcase that all vaudeville performers aspired to in pre-WWI entertainment. Kelly's ambition runs so high that, despite his love for leading lady Judy Garland, he smashes his hand with the lid of a costume trunk rather than get drafted into fighting a war he doesn't believe in. The movie wasn't as heavy as related here, but in 1942 with America involved in a new war, Kelly's character seemed cowardly at best and un-patriotic at worst. Re-shoots were made so that Kelly is a bit more sympathetic and all's well that end's well. It also made Gene Kelly a star first time out of the box. His contract was sold to MGM, Selznick not making many movies in the early forties and the few he did make were not musicals. So the MGM dream factory put Kelly to work in a lot of films some musical, some not, almost all forgettable: Pilot no.5, DuBarry Was A Lady, Thousands Cheer, The Cross of Lorraine. Then in 1944 MGM loaned him out to two different studios for two very different films: Cover Girl at Columbia with the leading love goddess of the era and someone who'd already co-starred with Fred Astaire in two pictures, Rita Hayworth. It was a huge success both with critics and war weary audiences. The other loan out was to Universal for Christmas Holiday with their leading songbird, former child star Deanna Durbin, who was expanding her range somewhat and trying on more adult roles to fit her maturing size. Now this film may sound like a musical comedy but it is really a early example of film noir with Kelly as a charming killer. It was his most off beat performance to date. 
