Today,
we’re going to salute Gene Kelly:
with a look at him in the 1940’s ("DuBarry
Was A Lady), 1950’s ("Singin' In the
Rain"), and 1960’s ("What A Way to
Go").
Enjoy!
“DuBarry Was a Lady” (from 1943) was only
Kelly’s second feature at M-G-M.
That they put him in white-tie-and-tails
indicates they hadn’t quite figured out
what his screen image should be.
Gene Kelly had gone on record saying the
best hoofer he’d ever seen was Donald
O’Connor:
Which
would have been balm to O’Connor, who had
a very hard time learning this
number. He had been a vaudeville
performer in his childhood,
but
had no formal tap training and had to
learn all of the steps and combinations in
this challenging routine from
scratch.
Kelly, on the other hand, had taught dance
in his family’s dance school in the 1930’s
and was much more dance-educated.
You would never know the difference in
backgrounds watching them identically
demolish the floor in this tapping
extravaganza, choreographed by Kelly.
(FYI
-- “Moses Supposes …” is the start of a
real Victorian-era tongue-twister from the
19th Century.)
We have a third Gene Kelly number to show
you -- this one a musical extravaganza
from the 1960s featuring Shirley MacLaine
-- but, first, here are the items from our
website that we’re featuring today:
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