You think you can dance? Check out this guy : Gene Kelly's Centennial

Love sick as An American in Paris, 1951

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.