.jpg)
Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912-February 2, 1996) was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer.
He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, and the likable characters that he played on screen.
He starred in, choreographed, and co-directed with Stanley Donen, some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s.
Kelly is best known for his performances in An American in Paris (1951), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Singin' in the Rain (1952), which he and Donen directed and choreographed, and other musical films of that era such as Cover Girl (1944) and Anchors Aweigh (1945), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
On the Town (1949), which he co-directed with Donen, was his directorial debut. Later in the 1950s, as musicals waned in popularity, he starred in Brigadoon (1954) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955), the last film he directed with Donen. His solo directorial debut was Invitation to the Dance (1956), one of the last MGM musicals, which was not a commercial success.
Kelly made his film debut with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942), with whom he also appeared in The Pirate (1948) and Summer Stock (1950). He also appeared in the dramas Black Hand (1950) and Inherit the Wind (1960), for which he received critical praise.
He continued as a director in the 1960s, with his credits including A Guide for the Married Man (1967) and Hello, Dolly! (1969), which received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. He co-hosted and appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1946), That's Entertainment! (1974), That's Entertainment, Part II (1976), That's Dancing! (1985), and That's Entertainment, Part III (1994).
His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
Kelly received an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements; the same year, An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors (1982) and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute. In 1999, the American Film Institute also ranked him as the 15th greatest male screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
More information: Gene Kelly
Kelly was born in the East Liberty neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. He was the third son of James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman, and his wife, Harriet Catherine Curran.
After a fruitless search for work in New York, Kelly returned to Pittsburgh to his first position as a choreographer with the Charles Gaynor musical revue Hold Your Hats at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in April 1938. Kelly appeared in six of the sketches, one of which, La cumparsita, became the basis of an extended Spanish number in the film Anchors Aweigh eight years later.
His first Broadway assignment, in November 1938, was as a dancer in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me! -as the American ambassador's secretary who supports Mary Martin while she sings My Heart Belongs to Daddy.
Selznick sold half of Kelly's contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for his first motion picture: For Me and My Gal (1942) starring Judy Garland.
He achieved a significant breakthrough as a dancer on film when MGM lent him to Columbia to work with Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944), a film that foreshadowed the best of his future work.
After Kelly returned to Hollywood in 1946, MGM had nothing planned and used him in a routine, black-and-white movie: Living in a Big Way (1947).
Then followed in quick succession two musicals that secured Kelly's reputation as a major figure in the American musical film. First, An American in Paris (1951) and -probably the most admired of all film musicals- Singin' in the Rain (1952).
In 1958, Kelly directed Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical play Flower Drum Song.
Kelly continued to make some film appearances, such as Hornbeck in the Hollywood production of Inherit the Wind (1960) and as himself in Let's Make Love (also 1960).
In 1966, Kelly starred in an hour-long musical television special for CBS titled, Gene Kelly in New York, New York.
Kelly continued to make frequent TV appearances. His final film role was in Xanadu (1980), a surprise flop despite a popular soundtrack that spawned five Top 20 hits by the Electric Light Orchestra, Cliff Richard, and Kelly's co-star Olivia Newton-John.
More information: Gene Kelly Fans
Kelly was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party. His period of greatest prominence coincided with the McCarthy era in the US. In 1947, he was part of the Committee for the First Amendment, the Hollywood delegation that flew to Washington to protest at the first official hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
He was raised as a Roman Catholic and was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California. However, after becoming disenchanted by the Roman Catholic Church's support for Francisco Franco against the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, he officially severed his ties with the church in September 1939. This separation was prompted, in part, by a trip Kelly made to Mexico in which he became convinced that the church had failed to help the poor in that country. After his departure from the Catholic Church, Kelly became an agnostic, as he had previously described himself.
Kelly's health declined steadily in the late 1980s. In July 1994, he suffered a stroke and stayed in Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center hospital for seven weeks. In early 1995, he had another stroke which made him severely disabled.
Kelly died on February 2, 1996. His body was cremated without a funeral or memorial service.
More information: Interview Magazine
that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas.
It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea
that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.
Gene Kelly
No comments:
Post a Comment