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Gene Kelly
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Gene Kelly was part of another movie-making first in nineteen forty-nine. It happened in "On the Town." It was the first movie musical to be filmed in a real city. "On the Town" is about three sailors in New York. The movie shows sailors getting off their ship. Then they sing and dance through the city streets.
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Gene Kelly was a lifelong Democratic Party supporter with strong progressive convictions, which occasionally created difficulty for him as his heyday coincided with the McCarthy era in the US. In 1947, he was part of the Committee for the First Amendment, the Hollywood delegation which flew to Washington to protest at the first official hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His first wife, Betsy Blair, was suspected of being a Communist sympathiser and when MGM, who had offered Blair a part in Marty (1955), were considering withdrawing her under pressure from the American Legion, Kelly successfully threatened MGM with a pullout from It's Always Fair Weather unless his wife was restored to the part.[2][11] He used his position on the board of directors of The Writer's Guild of America on a number of occasions to mediate disputes between unions and the Hollywood studios, and although he was frequently accused by the Right of championing the unions, he was valued by the studios as an effective mediator.
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Gene Kelly established his reputation as an actor and dancer, but his contribution to the Hollywood musical includes choreography and direction. His experiments with dance and with film technique include combining the two, as demonstrated in such films as Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Invitation to the Dance (1956). He ... made use of special effects, as in the "Alter-Ego" number in Cover Girl (1944), where he danced with his reflection, or in the split-screen dance of It's Always Fair Weather (1957). His first attempts at film choreography relied on the established formulas of the film musical, but subsequently he developed a flexible system of choreography for the camera that took into account camera setups, movement, and editing.
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Three sailors on a 24-hour pass -- Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) -- decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett), and Ozzie with paleontology student Claire Huddesten (Ann Miller). That's all, right? Wellll....Ivy passes herself off as a celebrity, but she's actually a kootch dancer in Coney Island. Claire and the boys inadvertently topple a dinosaur replica at the Museum of Anthropological History. And Hildy breaks any number of speeding laws attempting to get the lovers together and straighten out all misunderstandings.
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Born Eugene Curran Kelly in Pennsylvania in 1912, Gene Kelly was enrolled in dance classes by his mother at the age of eight. Although he created dance routines and entered talent contests with his brother, Kelly was keen to contribute to his family’s finances and so graduated from University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Economics. Eventually he made the decision to pursue dance full-time and so moved to New York to find work as a choreographer.
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Gene Kelly will always be remembered for his incredible contribution - through dance performance, choreography, and photography - to the genre of the movie musical. While he had some success in nonmusical films - Christmas Holiday, Marjorie Morningstar, Inherit the Wind - his legacy lies in dance. Kelly died on February 2, 1996.
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Gene Kelly