Gene Kelly

Eugene Curran Kelly was born on August 23, 1912, in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the middle of five children of James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman, and Harriet Catherine Curran Kelly. His father was born in Peterborough, Ontario, to an Irish Canadian family, while his maternal grandfather had emigrated from Derry, Ireland, and his maternal grandmother was of German ancestry. Kelly attended St. Raphael Elementary School in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and graduated from Peabody High School at age 16. His mother enrolled him and his brother James in dance classes when he was eight, though both boys resisted the training and, as Kelly later recalled, were regularly in fistfights with neighborhood boys who called them sissies. He did not return to dance until he was 15, by which point he had become an accomplished athlete.

Kelly entered Pennsylvania State College as a journalism major, but left following the 1929 financial crash to help support his family, earning prize money in local talent contests by performing dance routines with his younger brother Fred. In 1931, he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to study economics, joining the Theta Kappa Phi fraternity and becoming involved in the university's Cap and Gown Club, which produced original musical shows. He graduated in 1933 and continued directing the Cap and Gown Club through 1938. Kelly was also admitted to the University of Pittsburgh Law School, though he withdrew after two months to pursue performing full time. During his undergraduate and law-school years, he taught at the family's dance studio in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, which was renamed the Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance in 1932 and expanded with a second location in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1933. Beginning in 1931, he also taught dance and staged the annual Kermesse for Beth Shalom Synagogue in Pittsburgh, a relationship that continued for seven years.

In 1937, Kelly moved to New York City in search of choreography work. After an unsuccessful search, he returned to Pittsburgh, where in April 1938 he served as choreographer for Charles Gaynor's musical revue Hold Your Hats at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, also appearing in six of its sketches. His Broadway career began in November 1938, when choreographer Robert Alton, who had seen Kelly's work at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, hired him as a dancer in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me!, in which Kelly played the American ambassador's secretary supporting Mary Martin during her performance of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." When Alton moved on to choreograph One for the Money, he brought Kelly along to act, sing, and dance in eight routines. That production was produced by actress Katharine Cornell. In 1939, Kelly also received his first Broadway choreography assignment, for Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe, and he began dating cast member Betsy Blair, whom he married on October 16, 1941.

Kelly's first significant Broadway breakthrough came with the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Time of Your Life, which opened on October 25, 1939, and marked the first occasion on which he danced to his own choreography on Broadway. His star-making moment arrived in 1940, when he was cast in the lead role of Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, once again choreographed by Robert Alton. The role brought him to widespread attention, and during its run Kelly spoke publicly about his approach to dance, stating that he did not believe in conformity to any single school and that he used ballet technique only insofar as he could adapt it to serve mood and continuity. Colleagues noted his extraordinary dedication to rehearsal; Van Johnson, who appeared alongside him in Pal Joey, recalled observing Kelly still rehearsing alone on stage under a single lamp well past midnight after a full day of work. In 1986, Kelly received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Choreography.

Kelly made his film debut in For Me and My Gal in 1942, opposite Judy Garland, with whom he later appeared in The Pirate in 1948 and Summer Stock in 1950. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance in Anchors Aweigh in 1945. His directorial debut came with On the Town in 1949, which he co-directed and starred in alongside Stanley Donen. Kelly co-directed and choreographed An American in Paris in 1951, which won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, and Singin' in the Rain in 1952 with Donen. That same year, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements. Dance and art historian Beth Genné has written that Kelly, working with Donen and director Vincente Minnelli, fundamentally affected the way films are made and the way audiences perceive them, doing so from a dancer's perspective. He continued directing into the 1950s with Brigadoon in 1954 and It's Always Fair Weather in 1955, his final collaboration with Donen, followed by his solo directorial debut Invitation to the Dance in 1956. Kelly also appeared in the dramas Black Hand in 1950 and Inherit the Wind in 1960, both of which earned him critical praise. His later directorial credits include A Guide for the Married Man in 1967 and Hello, Dolly! in 1969, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. He co-hosted and appeared in Ziegfeld Follies in 1946 and later appeared in That's Entertainment! in 1974, That's Entertainment, Part II in 1976, That's Dancing! in 1985, and That's Entertainment, Part III in 1994. Kelly received lifetime achievement recognition from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1982, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Film Institute, which in 1999 ranked him 15th on its list of the greatest male screen legends of Classic Hollywood Cinema. He died on February 2, 1996.