Gene Kelly: A Life of Dance and Dreams

Film students will find this biography of Gene Kelly provides new insights on the man, based on new research and interviews with people who knew and worked closely with the danger. From Kelly's early Depression year dance schools to his fame on the Broadway stage and his move to Hollywood, biographer Alvin Yudkoff provides an excellent coverage.

This is a rather strange little tome that succeeds almost in spite of itself. It has the cheap look and feel of an eighth grade history textbook. It is not especially well-written, and it contains many, many factual errors. But, it nevertheless turns out to be a fairly interesting read -- especially once Gene hits the big-time on Broadway and in Hollywood. (The first -- and dullest -- part of the book contains way too much detail about Gene's life and times running his chain of dance studios in Pittsburgh, PA, and the surrounding 'burghs. This part may be of some regional interest to those from the Pittsburgh area, but otherwise: "Forget it.") In any event, the author takes the high road throughout, focusing almost exclusively on Gene's many professional successes (and, of course, a few major failures) as he climbed the ladder to 1940s and 1950s superstardom. A bit more information about Gene's family life, particularly his first wife, actress Betsy Blair (who was blacklisted as a Commie sympathizer during the Red scares of the '50s, and had to leave the United States to find work -- which this book doesn't mention, by the way) and his three children, might have added some additional interest. But it would also appear Gene may have had a few . . . ummmmm . . . pecadillos (concerning his attraction to "barely legal" young ladies -- one of whom he married when he was over thirty and she was just 18) that are best left to the imagination, so the author's discretion in terms of Gene's personal life is undoubtedly justified. Anyway, this is not a bad book for what is it, and it may come in handy as a ready-reference the next time "For Me and My Gal," "Cover Girl," "An American in Paris," "Singin' in the Rain," "Brigadoon," and many other film's graced by Gene's one-of-kind talent appears on TV.

I am a "younger" person (26) who has been impressed (but not obsessed) with Gene Kelly. Since I do not know too much about him other than seeing a few of his films, I absolutely loved this book. It read like a novel and was very hard to put down. It gave a great sense of how life changed for him as lifestyles were changing for all Americans (and the entertainment industry) during wartime and the advent of television. I learned much about his various films and projects. I definitely recommend this for anyone who is a fan (not fanatic) of Gene Kelly's work. (The fanatics seem to already know much more than this book offers.)

I have a hunch the authors of the two customer reviews I have just read - - one from Bloomington, Indiana, the other from Philadelphia - - are very much like me; female, long-time Gene Kelly devotees with a passion for his films, who have gone out of our way over the years to absorb the countless interviews (thousands by Kelly's own reckoning) in print and radio and TV when Gene reminisced about his life and career, the joyous moments and the disappointing ones, and expressed his forthright opinions and ideas.And because he was and is our idol, the head of the class, we surely paid attention. What he had to say really sunk in. Accordingly, self-appointed scholars of Gene Kelly's life and times, we tend to grade ourselves as the only Phi Beta Kappas around. We are the smartass know-alls who own the guy.But familiarity breeds conceit; the danger for us overheated Kelly fans is we begin to think we are the sole keepers of the flame. When somebody comes along with a fresh perspective, as does Alvin Yudkoff in the new biography "Gene Kelly: A Life of Dance and Dreams," all too often we go ballistic. We feel angry, almost violated and immediately join the "gotcha!" gang, almost lusting to ferret out inaccuracies of fact or attitude. We resist any imaginative approach to the telling of the life of a remarkable, and very complicated, man.A perfect example of such behavior is offered up by Lisa from Bloomington who, perhaps because Gene was a magnificent tap dancer, obsessively looks for footnotes, footnotes and more footnotes. (Sorry, I can't resist this not-so-wisecrack but I am always irritated by someone who primly expects a readable, riveting biography like this one to be a heavy PhD thesis with droning sidebars identifying sources - - such as a 1947 article in Cahiers du Cinema or snatches from a long-ago conversation on the Hillcrest golf course - - that only interrupt the overall narration flow.)So Lisa buys the book and is "disappointed" with the author's technique which she finds "irritating."She is referring, of course, to the author's choice of the American Film Institute's honoring of Gene Kelly in a 1985 CBS telecast, a very real event, as the launching pad, the imaginative matrix for the biography, allowing us to go back and forth in time, taking in the flow of Gene's feelings and thoughts, so we can begin to understand his life as he saw it. A cinematic technique, if you will, but what better way to render a film icon?And the point that this particular "gotcha!" groupie still hasn't got is that Kelly's thoughts, like his voice-over in a film, are not flights of fancy, cobbled together by the author. They are based (surely we, the avid Kellyites, know this) on the above cited, wide-ranging interviews Gene gave out for over fifty years. So when Kelly "thinks" badly of Cary Grant... or dwells on his creative differences with Stanley Donen and Barbra Streisand... or worries about his aging mothe

Gene Kelly : A Life of Dance and Dreams is well written and researched (the errors are only minor, such as the fact that Vera-Ellen did not speak at Gene's AFI salute since she died in 1981). Despite a fantastic and thorough beginning, the book really falls short in the end when it tries to cover the years 1952-1996 in only 35 pages. The second half of Gene's life deserves at least as much time as the first half! It's like there needs to be a second volume, but this one was going to press. More info was needed on Gene's relationships with his family, especially after the emphasis on his love of family in his early life. It was apparent that the author was unable to speak to Gene's surviving family members in writing this book. Despite that, the author did a good job with the sources he did use.