When Kelly died last week at 88, after a series of strokes, his legacy ranged from the climactic ballet with Leslie Caron in “An American in Paris” (1951) to a lighthearted duet with Fred Astaire in “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946). But nothing captured his incomparable gifts like “Singin’ in the Rain,” released in 1952 and often called the greatest movie musical ever. This buoyant, still-hilarious evocation of Hollywood at the dawn of talkies is full of marvels, including the effervescent “Good Morning,” a multilevel tap number on stairs and furniture with Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. But it’s dancing in the rain that everyone remembers-best. As Kelly sails and splashes along the pavement, he brings the whole audience with him.
Kelly introduced something new to American movies: the image of the ordinary joe who dances. That big, friendly presence and neighborly singing voice made him, as choreographer Bob Fosse said, “like a guy [on a] bowling team–only classier.” Growing up in Pittsburgh, Kelly played ice hockey, became a local sensation at gymnastics, and reluctantly took tap-dancing at his mother’s insistence. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he fell in love with ballet; he also did vaudeville gigs with his brother. Everything he gained from this eclectic, thoroughly American apprenticeship showed up in his dancing, which was as eloquent as ballet, as unfussy as a dash across the ice and as generous in spirit as a hoofer who’s after your heart.
After several years on Broadway, culminating in his starring role in “Pal Joey” (1940), Kelly was lured to Hollywood. His movie career took off with a 1942 Busby Berkeley musical, “For Me and My Gal,” with Judy Garland. In “Anchors Aweigh” (1945), he swung on a vine from a rooftop to impress Kathryn Grayson and taught a cartoon mouse to cakewalk in “On the Town” (1949), he bounded through the streets of New York with Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin, sailors on a spree. “I was determined to upset the tradition of Fred Astaire, white-tie-and-tails dancing,” he told writer Charles Higham in 1970. “I wanted to bring dance to the people. . . . I got rid of the white tie [for] sweatshirts, jeans and loafers. When the audience went to a movie house to see one of my pictures, they saw themselves up there, dancing.”
And when he felt he could no longer stir up that reaction, he had the grace to quit; he was 46. “There’s dancing you can do till you’re 150, but it’s not exciting,” he said. “I can’t be satisfied with dancing. . . when you can’t jump over a table but you have to take a run at it.” Will into his 60s, he continued to act, direct and choreograph–that’s Kelly playing Noel Airman in “Marjorie Morningstar” (1958)–and he demonstrated another kind of joie de vivre by marrying for the third time in 1990. (His bride, Patricia Ward, was 36.) But the age of movie musicals was over. Even in Kelly’s long run, nothing that followed “Singin’ in the Rain” could equal it. Today, when Kelly hands away his umbrella to a surprised passerby, we know the curtain is about to come down on an all-too-brief era in American entertainment. But Kelly makes it easy, as always. Just before he saunters off, he glances back–and tosses us that joyful smile.
