Gene Kelly: cultural icon

by Ted Schmidt

One of the great unknown Catholic stories in the history of Hollywood is that of the legendary Gene Kelly. Eclipsed by the longevity and star power of the two greatest popular singers of the twentieth century, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, both fellow Catholics, Kelly was in many ways a fascinating counterpoint to his co-religionists.

Sinatra, the quintessential outsider from Hoboken, New Jersey, early in his career was well-known for his embrace of those on the margins. Before he became bloated and extremely wealthy, he was a well-known champion of blacks, and despiser of racism. Perhaps because of his own Italian background, there is no doubt that he went out of his way to challenge the less-than-hidden racism of his era. Early on, he was an FDR Democrat before abandoning ship after his famous snub by the Kennedys. An interesting sidebar to his conversion to Republicanism was the fierce confrontation with his lifelong Democratic daughter, Nancy. He told her that it was natural that as one aged, one became more conservative.

Crosby was different. Extremely wealthy because of wise investments and also because of his lifelong hold on the public, Bing's witness was more on the personal level. His biographer, Gary Giddins, remarked that in all his interviews he could find nobody to badmouth Der Bingle, that he was unfailingly courteous, polite and kind to all who worked with him, and never took himself too seriously. Distant to be sure in many of his personal relationships, Crosby was a true democrat, feeling at home with stable boys, musicians and ordinary people. For a man with such fame, he was remarkably level-headed. Raised by strict Roman Catholic parents, he remained a church-goer to the end. His faith gave him real ballast at a time in pop culture when performers of like stature were sinking all around him.

Gene Kelly was, in many ways, more like Crosby than Sinatra. Like Bing, he was an anomaly in that both were educated way beyond the level of their contemporaries. Both had bachelor degrees and were in law school before they dedicated their lives to show biz. Kelly's Irish mother, like many working class parents, had him pegged for a professional life in the law, perhaps even the Supreme Court. Although this never came to fruition, she was inadvertently responsible for his great contributions to American popular culture and in particular, that of dance.

Attending Saint Raphael's school in working class Pittsburgh, Gene Kelly was the middle son and brother to two sisters. The five Kellys were sent to dance lessons and had to fight their way home, taunted by cries of "fags" and "sissies." Gene's dad, Jim, Canadian-born and a naturalized American, was a man of unimpeachable character and strong religious values, insisting on Mass no matter what. An extrovert who sold phonograph records for Columbia, his world began to fell apart as the Depression hit and he lost his job. As he started drinking heavily, it fell to the matriarch, Harriet, to raise the kids, instill discipline in them and help get husband Jim off the bottle.

It became obvious after awhile that Gene the natural athlete, (particularly adept at hockey and baseball) had been kissed by the goddess of dance, Terpsichore. His mother Harriet took over a failed dancing studio and her middle son quickly established himself as a natural teacher and choreographer, with a winning way with young people. Graduating at 16 while holding down several jobs, Kelly looked to university (Penn State) as his next challenge. He switched his major from journalism to economics and soon realized while helping the family weather the Depression, there might be a future for him in entertainment.

One of his first breaks was as a last-minute replacement in an all-black revue headed by the legendary Cab Calloway. As his fame spread around Pittsburgh, Gene Kelly continued to read voraciously, teach himself French and develop his muscular style of dancing, a rugged counterpoint to the classy and more urbane Fred Astaire. Dropping out of law school in 1933, Gene now had over 350 pupils in his dance school, allowing him in 1935 to open a brand new studio in Pittsburgh. At age 25 in 1937, Kelly caught his big break when he was invited to New York to choreograph a dance for a review, which in turn led to a role as "a specialty dancer" in a Cole Porter musical called Leave It to Me. Porter was amazed to see the young Kelly waiting for rehearsal time and reading Aldous Huxley's Point CounterPoint. The legendary composer immediately "adopted" Kelly and introduced him to the sophisticated salon society in the theatre world.

In the summer of 1939, preparing the choreography for Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones starring the well-known performer Paul Robeson, Kelly was shocked as he watched the laissez-faire lifestyles of the actors unfold before his puritanical Irish Catholic eyes. The final show of the summer introduced him to the Revuers, a small company which included the soon-to-be-famous Adolphe Green and Betty Comden (On the Town). Their left wing politics meshed perfectly with his pro-FDR sentiments.

Kelly and Catholicism

It was September, 1939 that Gene Kelly severed his official ties with the Catholic Church. Driving with his father to Mexico, he was appalled at the discrepancy between the stark poverty of the Mexican peasants and the ornate gold and silver brocaded churches. Already disgusted by the role of the church and its support of the fascist Franco against the Spanish Republic, Kelly saw his church failing to address the physical and spiritual needs of the poor. This cast a permanent pall over what he termed "organized religion."

Kelly's big break came on Christmas night 1940 with his breakthrough role of Joey Evans, the cynical heel of a nightclub MC in Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey (which played last summer at Canada's famous Shaw Festival). The following September he married the young Betsy Blair (the famous "dog" in Ernest Borgnine's breakthrough film, Marty, 1954). Only 18, Blair brought even a harder left perspective to their marriage and their parties in California became famous as intellectual salons which attracted a steady stream of progressive thinkers who were enamored of FDR.

It was during the next 12 years that Gene Kelly danced his way into American cinematic history. In a series of musicals (For Me and My Gal with Judy Garland (1942), Cover Girl (1944) with its stunning mirror sequence, Anchors Aweigh with Frank Sinatra (1945), Ziegfield Follies 1946)--the only film where he danced with Fred Astaire, Words and Music (1948), Take Me out to the Ball Game(1949), On the Town (1949), the endearing classics An American in Paris (1951) and his masterpiece Singing in the Rain (1952) Kelly solidified his iconic status in the history of American dance and pop culture.

Kelly never again reached his post-war status as a movie attraction, but thrilled television audiences with his "muscular dancing" which he described in this way.

"I tried to be completely different from Astaire. I had an objection to the kind of dancing I saw on the screen in those days. There was a lot of great dancing but the trouble was, everybody seemed rich. As a depression kid who went to school in very tough times, I didn't want to move or dance like a rich man. I wanted to do the dance of the Proletariat, the movements of the people."

A genuine progressive in his politics, Gene Kelly never forgot his Catholic working-class roots. Though he broke with his church at a period when it was often mired in dubious political alliances and sometimes-reactionary causes, Kelly, unlike Sinatra and Crosby, allied himself with political movements which championed the poor and the common good. An unregenerate New Dealer, his "muscular" dancing gave permission for young people to throw off their evening clothes and dance the people's story. It is this egalitarian thrust that stamps Gene Kelly as a Catholic cultural hero.