Word: singin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...scenes with an old Broadway pal (actually a young one, since he was 19 at the time), Stanley Donen. Off and on, mostly on, for the next decade, Kelly and Donen would shape their film?s dances, then their dances and direction. They co-directed "On the Town," "Singin? in the Rain" and "It?s Always Fair Weather." Their work together was, in Silverman?s words, "a magical combination of Gene Kelly?s charisma and Stanley Donen?s chutzpah...
Astaire danced on clouds, descending to earth occasionally to sweep a lucky woman into his arms; Kelly was grounded, seemingly welded to terra firma, and when he held a woman, she felt the imprint for days. Cyd Charisse, who danced with Kelly in "Singin? in the Rain" and, the next year, with Astaire in "The Band Wagon," says her husband always knew which dancer she?d been working with. "If I didn?t have a mark, it was Fred Astaire. And if I was black and blue, it was Gene Kelly." Not to say that both men didn?t work...
...hard, nailing them, pounding them into the floor so hard they almost left permanent depression marks in the wood. You saw the grinding work, as much as the fun, in Kelly?s favorite maneuvers. Some of them - like the chop step with straight, churning arms, or the bit in "Singin? in the Rain" where he briskly windmills his arms - could be adapted to a power-workout regimen. Kelly could be imitated, and was, widely. Astaire and his finesse were inimitable; they could only be appreciated...
...There?s just one CD of Kelly songs, to Astaire?s dozen or so.) It could be that most of Fred?s tunes were written for him, while most of Kelly?s were oldies; and the new songs that Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote for "On the Town," "Singin? in the Rain" and "It?s Always Fair Weather" didn?t click. But the title number from "Singin? in the Rain" is nearly as memorable for Gene?s pipes - the giddy catch in his voice at "And I?m ready for love," the unaffected...
...didn?t), would declare that it was... Kelly. Kelly?s favorite may have been himself. He was his own partner (and nemesis) in the "alter ego" number from "Cover Girl." He expressed both love and self-love - the potent giddiness of feeling that surge of ardor, ? etc. in "Singin? in the Rain." He danced with a mop in "Thousands Cheer," and he sometimes led his leading ladies the same way. A different leading lady, often a movie ingenue, in almost every picture: Leslie Caron in "An American in Paris," Reynolds in "Singin? in the Rain" (both were 19 when...