TCM Schedule for Thursday, August 23 -- Summer Under The Stars: Gene Kelly

[Staph]

Today's not just Gene Kelly day at TCM -- it's the one-hundredth anniversary of Kelly's birth, August 23, 1912, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I think his two most famous musicals, An American in Paris (1951), and Singin' in the Rain (1952), are among the best musical films ever made. And we get to see both of them today! Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- For Me And My Gal (1942)
An unscrupulous song-and-dance man uses his partner and his best friend to get ahead.
Dir: Busby Berkeley
Cast: Judy Garland, George Murphy, Gene Kelly
BW-104 mins, TV-G, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Roger Edens and George Stoll

Gene Kelly's film debut. It is known that Judy Garland got him the job after seeing him in the Broadway musical "Pal Joey".


8:00 AM -- Anchors Aweigh (1945)
A pair of sailors on leave try to help a movie extra become a singing star.
Dir: George Sidney
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly
C-139 mins, TV-G, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- George Stoll (On 10 September 2001 Kevin Spacey purchased Stoll's Oscar statuette at a Butterfields auction in Los Angeles and returned it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Gene Kelly, Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert H. Planck and Charles P. Boyle, Best Music, Original Song -- Jule Styne (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "I Fall in Love Too Easily", and Best Picture

When the dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Jerry the Mouse was screened for MGM executives, someone noticed that although Kelly's reflection shone on the floor during his dancing, Jerry's did not. This required Hanna, Barbera, and their team to go back in and draw Jerry's reflection on the floor as he was dancing.


10:30 AM -- The Three Musketeers (1948)
Athletic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic adventure about the king's musketeers and their mission to protect France.
Dir: George Sidney
Cast: Lana Turner, Gene Kelly, June Allyson
C-126 mins, TV-G, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert H. Planck

Fearing pressure from church groups, MGM had the script refer to Richelieu as Prime Minister rather than Cardinal and almost all traces of him being a cardinal or a man of the church at all have been removed, even though other versions of this story kept Richelieu explicitly a cardinal without any repercussions.

1:00 PM -- Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
A beautiful woman takes over a turn-of-the-century baseball team.
Dir: Busby Berkeley
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly
C-93 mins, TV-G, CC,

Baseball, the Great American Pastime, never has been widely followed in Britain. Consequently, the film's title for English audiences was changed to "Everybody's Cheering."


2:45 PM -- The Pirate (1948)
An actor poses as a notorious pirate to court a romantic Caribbean girl.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak
C-102 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Lennie Hayton

The torrid romance enacted by Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in the song-and-dance number "Voodoo" so enraged MGM chief Louis B. Mayer that he demanded the negative be burned.


4:30 PM -- Invitation to the Dance (1956)
Three stories told in dance: a circus clown loves a trapeze artist; a bracelet passes from one lover to another; a sailor enters an animated Arabian Nights fantasy.
Dir: Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Igor Youskevitch, Claire Sombert
C-93 mins, TV-G,

Gene Kelly's original intention was to make a film that would educate mainstream audiences about professional dancing in the world. To this end, he wanted to cast the greatest dancers in Europe for the four segments in leading roles. He himself would only appear in one - the Popular Song sequence, which ended up being cut. But MGM refused to allow the picture unless he appeared in all of them. Many of the professionals who worked in the film agreed that this was one of the film's great weaknesses.


6:15 PM -- On the Town (1949)
Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York City.
Dir: Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett
C-98 mins, TV-G, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Roger Edens and Lennie Hayton

Jules Munshin was terrified of heights. While performing on the tiny rooftop during the song "New York, New York" the only way he could perform the number was while one end of a rope was secured around his waist under his sailor suit. The other end of the rope was secured, off camera, to Stanley Donen. And even so, alert viewers of the scene will notice that during the scene Munshin is almost always touching a wall or a prop or another actor.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS: GENE KELLY



8:00 PM -- Cover Girl (1944)
A nightclub dancer makes it big in modeling, leaving her dancer boyfriend behind.
Dir: Charles Vidor
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman
C-107 mins, TV-G, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Carmen Dragon and Morris Stoloff

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- Lionel Banks, Cary Odell and Fay Babcock, Best Cinematography, Color -- Rudolph Maté and Allen M. Davey, Best Music, Original Song -- Jerome Kern (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) for the song "Long Ago and Far Away", and Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD)

Columbia Pictures gave Gene Kelly almost complete control over the making of this film, and many of his ideas contributed to its lasting success. He removed several of the sound stage walls so that he, Rita Hayworth, and Phil Silvers could dance along an entire street in one take. He also used trick photography so that he could dance with himself in one sequence.


10:00 PM -- An American in Paris (1951)
An American artist finds love in Paris but almost loses it to conflicting loyalties.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant
BW-114 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, E. Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason, Best Cinematography, Color -- Alfred Gilks and John Alton, Best Costume Design, Color -- Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett and Irene Sharaff, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Johnny Green and Saul Chaplin, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Alan Jay Lerner, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Vincente Minnelli, and Best Film Editing -- Adrienne Fazan

Irene Sharaff designed a style for each of the ballet sequence sets, reflecting various French impressionist painters: Raoul Dufy (the Place de la Concorde), Edouard Manet (the flower market), Maurice Utrillo (a Paris street), Henri Rousseau (the fair), Vincent van Gogh (the Place de l'Opera), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (the Moulin Rouge). The backgrounds took six weeks to build, with 30 painters working nonstop.


12:00 AM -- Singin' In The Rain (1952)
A silent-screen swashbuckler finds love while trying to adjust to the coming of sound.
Dir: Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds
C-103 mins, TV-G, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jean Hagen, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Lennie Hayton

In the "Would You" number, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) is dubbing the voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) because Lina's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is really speaking, it's Jean Hagen herself, who actually had a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Debbie is supposedly dubbing Jean's singing of "Would You", the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Debbie.


2:00 AM -- Inherit The Wind (1960)
In the twenties, a schoolteacher creates a national furor when he breaks the law against teaching evolution.
Dir: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly
BW-128 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Laszlo, Best Film Editing -- Frederic Knudtson, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith

When Stanley Kramer offered the role of E.K. Hornbeck to Gene Kelly, Kelly initially turned it down. Kramer told him that his co-stars would be Fredric March and Spencer Tracy, and Kelly changed his mind. This was a risky move on Kramer's part, as he had not yet asked March or Tracy to participate.


4:15 AM -- Black Hand (1950)
In turn-of-the-century New York, an Italian seeks vengeance on the mobsters who killed his father.
Dir: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Gene Kelly, J. Carrol Naish, Teresa Celli
BW-92 mins, TV-PG, CC,

"I never wanted to be a dancer. It's true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates." -- Gene Kelly

[CBHagman]

1. Whoa, those fun facts on "Singin' in the Rain."

I hadn't heard about the dubbing. It doesn't take anything away from the joy of the picture, but frankly I didn't know how much they'd tinkered with things. And Jean Hagen was certainly a good sport.