Gene kelly biography height

He was shorter than Fred Astaire and Danny Kaye. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Died He passed away on February 2, , in California at the old age of 83 years following a series of strokes. The couple welcomed a daughter named Kerry Kelly b. The couple shared 2 children together named Bridget Kelly b.

Patricia Ward — He married Patricia Ward, who was 47 years younger than him, on July 20, Bridget Kelly. Tim Kelly. James Patrick Joseph Kelly. Harriet Catherine Curran. Fred Kelly Sibling. Known for his innovative, athletic style of dancing. Often played likable, working-class characters. Polo shirt and loafers. Muscular build. If she came home covered with bruises on her, it was the very physically-demanding Gene Kelly , if not it was the smooth and agile Fred Astaire.

Was sick, and had a fever of degrees while filming the famous rain scene in Singin' in the Rain He and his younger brother Fred Kelly appeared together in a dancing vaudeville act. When Gene got his big break as Harry the hoofer in the dramatic Broadway production of "The Time of Your Life" in , he was eventually replaced by brother Fred, who took it on the road and won a Donaldson award for his efforts.

In the s, Kelly largely retreated from acting. He made his last film appearance in the musical fantasy Xanadu with Olivia Newton-John , which proved to be a box-office dud, but a cult classic decades later. He often appeared as himself on tribute specials. In and in , Kelly suffered a series of strokes. He died on February 2, , at his home in Beverly Hills, California.

Many Hollywood stars mourned his passing, including his Singin' in the Rain co-star, Debbie Reynolds. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Derek Hough. Laverne Cox. JoJo Siwa. Josephine Baker. Michael Jackson. Patrick Swayze. But I have tried to develop a style which is indigenous to the environment in which I was reared.

Cohan : "I have a lot of Cohan in me. It's an Irish quality, a jaw-jutting, up-on-the-toes cockiness—which is a good quality for a male dancer to have. Biographer Clive Hirschhorn writes: "As a child, he used to run for miles through parks and streets and woods—anywhere, just as long as he could feel the wind against his body and through his hair.

Ballet gave him the same feeling of exhilaration, and in , he was convinced it was the most satisfying form of self-expression. According to Delamater, Kelly's work "seems to represent the fulfillment of dance—film integration in the s and s". While Fred Astaire had revolutionized the filming of dance in the s by insisting on full-figure photography of dancers, while allowing only a modest degree of camera movement, Kelly freed up the camera, making greater use of space, camera movement, camera angles, and editing, creating a partnership between dance movement and camera movement without sacrificing full-figure framing.

Kelly's reasoning behind this was that he felt the kinetic force of live dance often evaporated when brought to film, and he sought to partially overcome this by involving the camera in movement and giving the dancer a greater number of directions in which to move. To accomplish this, the camera is made fluid, moving with the dancer, so that the lens becomes the eye of the spectator, your eye ".

Kelly's athleticism gave his moves a distinctive broad, muscular quality, [ 38 ] and this was a deliberate choice on his part, as he explained: "There's a strong link between sports and dancing, and my own dancing springs from my early days as an athlete I think dancing is a man's game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman. Dancing does attract effeminate young men.

I don't object to that as long as they don't dance effeminately. I just say that if a man dances effeminately, he dances badly—just as if a woman comes out on stage and starts to sing bass. Unfortunately, people confuse gracefulness with softness. John Wayne is a graceful man and so are some of the great ballplayers In his view, "one of our problems is that so much dancing is taught by women.

You can spot many male dancers who have this tuition by their arm movements—they are soft, limp, and feminine. His first wife, actress and dancer Betsy Blair said:. A sailor suit or his white socks and loafers, or the T-shirts on his muscular torso, gave everyone the feeling that he was a regular guy, and perhaps they, too, could express love and joy by dancing in the street or stomping through puddles In particular, he wanted to create a completely different image from that associated with Fred Astaire, not least because he believed his physique did not suit such refined elegance: "I used to envy his cool, aristocratic style, so intimate and contained.

Fred wears top hat and tails to the Manor born—I put them on and look like a truck driver. From the mids through the early s, his wife Betsy Blair and he organized weekly parties at their Beverly Hills home, and they often played an intensely competitive and physical version of charades , known as "The Game". The application was initiated on his behalf by his wife Patricia Ward Kelly.

On December 22, , the actor's Beverly Hills mansion burned down. His family and pets escaped and he suffered a burned hand. Kelly married three times. His first marriage was to actress Betsy Blair in They had one child, Kerry b. In , Kelly married his choreographic assistant Jeanne Coyne , who had previously been married to Stanley Donen between and Kelly and Coyne had two children, Timothy b.

This marriage lasted until Coyne died in Kelly married Patricia Ward in when he was 77 and she was Kelly was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party. His period of greatest prominence coincided with the McCarthy era in the US. In , 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.

His first wife, Betsy Blair, was suspected of being a communist sympathizer, and when United Artists , which had offered Blair a part in Marty , were considering withdrawing her under pressure from the American Legion , Kelly successfully threatened MGM's influence on United Artists with a pullout from It's Always Fair Weather unless his wife was restored to the part.

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. Kelly's health declined steadily in the late s and early s. In early , he had another stroke which made him severely disabled. Kelly died on February 2, Kelly appeared as actor, singer and dancer in musical films.

He always choreographed his own dance routines and often the dance routines of others and used assistants. As was the practice at the time, he was rarely formally credited in the film titles. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item.

American actor, dancer, singer, and producer — For other people named Gene Kelly, see Gene Kelly disambiguation. Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , U. Beverly Hills, California , U. Dancer actor singer director choreographer. Betsy Blair. Jeanne Coyne. Patricia Ward. Early life [ edit ]. Stage career [ edit ]. Film career [ edit ]. Military service [ edit ].

Working methods and influence on filmed dance [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Marriages [ edit ]. Political and religious views [ edit ].

Gene kelly biography height

Illness and death [ edit ]. Awards and honors [ edit ]. Work [ edit ]. On the Town An American in Paris Singin' in the Rain Musical films [ edit ]. Main article: Gene Kelly filmography. Theatre [ edit ]. Television [ edit ]. Documentaries [ edit ]. Radio [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Archived from the original on July 29, Retrieved October 27, In Mitoma, Judy; Elizabeth, Zimmer eds.

Envisioning Dance on Film and Video. ISBN Archived from the original on April 8, Retrieved April 4, In Nicholas, Larraine; Morris, Geraldine eds. Rethinking Dance History: Issues and Methodologies. Archived from the original on April 9, Retrieved April 5, Limelight Editions. Archived from the original on April 14,