Talk:Gene Kelly

message: I am sure that Gene Kelly was born in Ireland, and that his birth name was Eugene Curran, not Kelly at all. He got the name Kelly from his granparents, or his mothers MAIDEN NAME I think. This information is quite inaccurate, I should know as my Grandad, John Curran, is Gene's cousin. He tells me stories of him being there when he was younger, in Galway, West Ireland. I would edit the page but I don't know enough to do so. emma--195.92.194.11 16:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am pretty sure his father was James Kelly and mother was Harriet Curran. Arniep 21:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "When Harriet Kelly gave birth to her third child, a son she called Eugene Curran - better known as Gene - on 3 August 1912, at the Sacred Heart Parish in Pittsburgh's Highland Park district, her husband, James Patrick Joseph Kelly, could not have been more delighted" quoted from Clive Hirschhorn, Gene Kelly, A Biography W.H Allen, London, 1984. p.5 . Gene cooperated with Hirschhorn on this biography. Dermot 18:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth place 

message: What was his actual career if not in popular culture ? (Such sections are discouraged anyway aren't they ? Wikipedia:Avoid_trivia_sections_in_articles) -- Beardo 04:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It may be pointless removing them entirely as some of the items are probably genuinely noteworthy and will almost certainly be reinserted at sometime in the future. I've tried to integrate the most noteworthy as notes supporting comments such as "much-imitated" when used in relation to some of Kelly more famous routines. I don't claim this is a perfect solution, but at least it relegates such items to a less visible and arguably more appropriate place in the article, while enabling deletion of the section. Dermot 12:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Gene Kelly in popular culture" 

message: Per debate and discussion re: assessment of the approximate 100 top priority articles of the project, this article has been included as a top priority article. Wildhartlivie (talk) 07:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers]] priority assessment

message: I added a photo of the Gene Kelly plaque on the Pitt Campus. Hope everyone likes it.--Hepcat748 (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plaque 

message: as appearing in an episode of Family Guy isn't an actual award i think this bit of information should be incorporated elsewhere  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.154.110.103 (talk) 21:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Family Guy Awards 

message: I removed this phrase "How can this be true when he died in 1996?" which was written after the Family guy entry in the Television section. It should've been here in the discussion. I've replaced it with (posthumous)Pongley (talk) 16:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: pointless comment in Television section

message: The section about the early days of Gene Kelly do no justic to his name. Please change this part.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneKellyusa483 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:So fix it. Wildhartulivie (talk) 20:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Early days

message: Well, I saw a documentary of him on TV, and people that worked with him will tell you that he was a total hard-ass. The article on Singin' in the Rain mentions how he actually made Debbie Reynolds cry. Also, Cyd Charisse once said her husband could tell when she'd been working with Gene if she was bruised all over, and if she came home devoid of physical injuries, then she'd been working with Fred Astaire. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 07:53, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of how he was a complete asshole to work with? 

message: The guy was a very, very famous actor.  Of course he has pop references.  The only time a pop culture section makes sense is for something obscure.  But not John Wayne or Alber Einstein.  Similar with Kelly.  I wonder if the people making a pop culture section lack perspective?  TCO (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  pop culture section is a waste 

message: I'm not sure of the reference, so that's why I didn't change it, but it should be mentioned that another reason why Gene went to Europe to shoot more musicals was because his wife Betsy Blair was being blacklisted in Hollywood. This was during the horrible communist blacklisting in Hollywood. I know this information is on the documentary titled The Anatomy of a Dancer but I wasn't sure how to reference documentaries. I suggest a admin could add this info.Kpasby (talk) 02:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  /* 1953&ndash;57: The decline of the Hollywood musical */ 

message: Would someone take a look at the bare URL's? Otr500 (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link rot 

message: " ... [9] While at Pitt, Kelly became involved in the university's Cap and Gown Club, which staged original, comedic musical productions.[10] Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with his graduation from Pitt in 1933, he remained active with the Cap and Gown Club, serving as its director from 1934 to 1938, while at the same time enrolling in the University of Pittsburgh Law School.[11] Also during this period, Kelly's family started a dance studio on Munhall Road in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1932, the dance studio was renamed The Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance. A second location was opened in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1933. Kelly served as a teacher at the studio during both his undergraduate and law student years at Pitt. In 1931, he was approached by the Rodef Shalom synagogue in Pittsburgh to teach dance, and to stage the annual Kermess. This venture was successful enough that his services were retained for seven years until his departure for New York.[12] Eventually, though, he decided to pursue his career as a dance teacher and full-time entertainer, so Kelly dropped out of law school after two months. He began to increasingly focus on performing and later claimed: "With time I became disenchanted with teaching because the ratio of girls to boys was more than ten to one, and once the girls reached sixteen the dropout rate was very high."[6] In 1937, having successfully managed and developed the family's dance school business, he finally did move to New York City in search of work as a choreographer.[6]"
The above paragraph from your biography contains some significant errors.  I know, since I was a part of this phase, and I can document some of it over and above a simple reliance on "memory."
Kelly's dance studio was in the old "El Tower" apartment building on the hilly street above and behind where I lived for almost thirty years. The principal dancing teacher there for most of its existence was Louise, Gene's sister. 
Actually, Gene was hired by my mother, Anne U. Greenberg, in late 1933 or early 1934, to replace a dancing teacher at the Beth Shalom Synagogue (NOT the Rodef Shalom Temple, as reported above).  The Synagogue had to replace its original teacher, who repeatedly failed to show up for Sunday dancing classes that were sponsored by the Sisterhood.  So Anne, a Sisterhood member, "scouted" the University of Pittsburgh's "Cap and Gown" production, and asked its young director (Gene) if he would be interested in teaching.  He was, and he was hired at Beth Shalom, where he remained our Sunday afternoon dancing instructor in the social hall until he left for Broadway in 1939. 
Gene's dancing classes were an instant success, and they remained so even after Gene went to New York, since he left the school in the hands of his brother, Fred, and shortly afterward, in the hands of his sister, Louise.  All three of them used a pianist, named Connie ( ... can't remember her last name), and the business was masterfully managed by the Kellys' mother ... a very strong (but diminutive) person, who lovingly adopted the "tough old broad" role.  All three of Anne's kids were enrolled from the beginning, and I, the youngest, may have been Gene's worst student (but also one of his greatest admirers).  We all participated in the Kellys' "kermis," (dance recital), held annually at the Taylor Allderdice High School auditorium in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill.  Two features within those kermises that stand out in my memory are the roller skating routine performed as a special feature by Fred and Gene, and a sailor routine, performed by two senior students.  These were easy to remember, as we saw an almost identical skating routine in Gene's movie, "Xanadu," and recognizable elements of the sailor routine were performed in more than one of Gene's other films.  
Going beyond Gene's early years:
In October, 1954, my mother, father, and I were hosted on the MGM set and we watched Gene, Stanley Donen, and Dan Dailey preparing for a bar-sequence shot in the studio. Cyd Charise was in costume on a "leaning board," awaiting her turn in the following scene to be cut.  When Gene learned that I was taking graduate classes at his Alma Mater, he elaborated at length on his belief that he got more out of his Economics classes at Pitt than in any other classes in his entire career.  
I never met James, the oldest Kelly sibling, and I didn't meet Gene's sister Joan Radvansky (known as "Jaye") until 1975, at my parents' 50th Anniversary party, when Gene made a congratulatory phone call.  Mother and Gene continued regular correspondence throughout his Hollywood career, for the rest of both of their lives, and they both died within four months of each other in 1996.  
Late in his life, probably in the mid-eighties, Gene visited Pittsburgh, and drew a crowd at the downtown Mellon Park.  Gene's visit was being televised when he spotted my mother in the crowd, and dragged her up to the stage to dance with him (she was well into her eighties).  He announced that "This is the lady who gave me my first job."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.17.108.248 (talk) 05:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gene Kelly's Early Days 

message: In glancing through this article I noticed that it did not mention his difficult relationship with Stanley Donen, which has been discussed in many books and is covered at length in the Donen article. Similarly I think that the mentions of Hello Dolly and It's Always Fair Weather gloss over the difficulties those two films encountered at the box office, especially Dolly, and the tensions on the sets in both films. I'm going to try to build those up a bit. Coretheapple (talk) 14:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Donen and ''Hello Dolly''

message: The introduction to the article says "...in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered [Kelly] 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list." Per the Wikipedia article for that list, "The American Film Institute defined an 'American screen legend' as an actor or a team of actors with a significant screen presence in American feature-length (40 min) films whose screen debut occurred in or before 1950, or whose screen debut occurred after 1950 but whose death has marked a completed body of work." Thus, even veteran stars such as Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Robert DeNiro, and Jack Nicholson were not eligible for this honor.  I think it would be good to edit the language so that it is clear that the AFI didn't actually do an All Time ranking, even as of 1999 when the poll was done. Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 01:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: American Film Institute ranking

message: We have scores of free images of Kelly available at Commons alone. There are out-of-copyright trailers of Kelly's films which can easily supply additional images. Some of the images at issue add nothing of substance to the existing text; illustration is often valuable, but the WMF has made the policy judgment about reuseability and our opinions about aesthetics cannot override it. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006.   (talk) 16:49, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: But "scores of free images" are not representations of two of the most significant movies Kelly made: An American in Paris and Invitation to the Dance./  We do not need just any old pictures of GK, we need to show those films, and there are, to my knowledge, no free shots of those.  I have replaced the "Singin' in the Rain" shot (which wasn't great anyway" from one from the trailer. We are not a random gallery of images, the pictures in the articles are supposed to have significance to the subject matter. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:39, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  NFCC violations 

message: I've removed the sentence alleging Kelly's supposed contributions, credited to a Scottish newspaper and a "free library."  WP:V covers this by requiring that "Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources." Clearly that requirement is not met. Coretheapple (talk) 14:49, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this was a good removal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:13, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Kelly's nephew admitted Gene he did give money to the IRA in the 1970s. (2A00:23C4:6392:3C00:C8FF:D503:BC1:2737 (talk) 02:28, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can produce multiple high-quality reliable sources for that extraordinary claim, that he gave money to a terrorist group, please cite. Otherwise do not add it to the article. Coretheapple (talk) 02:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: What is extraordinary about it? Many Americans funded the Provisional IRA during the 1970s and 1980s, especially in New York and Boston. There are multiple sources online for Kelly's support for the IRA's bombing campaign. (2A00:23C4:6392:3C00:C8FF:D503:BC1:2737 (talk) 03:00, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: No, there is one source. You posted two links to the same source, Daily Record (Scotland), a Scottish tabloid. WP:V requires multiple sourcing for a claim such as this. One tabloid won't suffice. WP:EXCEPTIONAL takes you to the section of that policy covering situations such as this.  Coretheapple (talk) 12:31, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Alleged IRA contributions

message: The two images that an editor wants to remove from the article on the basis on NFCC #8 are seminal moments in Kelly's career, and no free images are available of those moments.  Therefore his continuing to removing them is out of process. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: NFCC image remvoal

message: Gene Kelly was part of the leadership of the PCA political party. Currently there's a sentence in this entry that states "Kelly was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party." Is there a way to mark that statement as needing a citation? Dragonarras (talk) 02:52, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lifelong Democrat 

message: * I think B is mandated by MOS:FIRST, as the first sentence summarizes the article, and dance (not acting) was his primary legacy. While he did perform in non-dancing roles, they were secondary to his roles in which he danced. (Indeed, as noted in the article, later in his career is television appearance focused on dance, and he even choreographed a ballet) That is also the consensus of reliable sources, which is apparent if one reviews the obituaries at the time of his death: 
:* New York Times: Headline "Gene Kelly, Dancer of Vigor and Grace, Dies." : "Gene Kelly, the dancer, actor, director and choreographer who brought a vigorous athleticism, casual grace and an earthy masculinity..." 
:*Los Angeles Times : "Gene Kelly Dies; Legendary Dancer Was 83":  "Gene Kelly, the exuberant, charismatic hoofer who danced, sang, smiled and splashed his way into the hearts of generations, died Friday..."
:*"Washington Post: "SONG-AND-DANCE MAN GENE KELLY DIES": "Gene Kelly, 83, the dancer whose joyful, brawny and exuberant choreography spoke of ballet and the athletic field yet made him seem like Everyman, died yesterday." Note that this article doesn't even describe him as an actor until far down.  
:*Here's an appreciation of his life as a "dance icon" by a Knight Ridder columnist, with a side piece describing him as a "dancer's dancer," in the Orange County Register. 
:* Here's a column at his death by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Paul Greenberg, celebrating Kelly as "The Other Half of American Dance." 
:*Likewise, the Associated Press emphasized Kelly as a dancer in its lavish coverage of his death. "He was charming, self-made and witty. But more than anything, the man could dance."  
 
--Coretheapple (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: (1) That's not true, it's just your ill-informed personal opinion. (2) That's not how Wikipedia works, which is based on coverage in reliable sources. Softlavender (talk) 22:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey