Gene Kelly and Me (and Underrated Musicals)
This entry is part 11 of 13 in the series Essays / Analyses.With a new interest in modern musicals like Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Burlesque, Hairspray, Rock of Ages (right), Nine, Mamma Mia!, and the forthcoming Les Miserablés, it seems as though audiences are being reawakened by Hollywood’s finest predecessors. There was a time in cinematic history, namely throughout the 1930s and 1940s, in which some of the most successful motion pictures were those that...
Read MoreDebbie Reynolds’ Blog
Debbie Reynolds has a blog and it occasionally features entries like these that mention her Singin’ in the Rain co-star. No, not Donald O’Connor. That other...
Read MoreA Fan Comes Face to Face with Gene Kelly
Over at Dirty and Thirty, Celeste Donohue reminisces about the time she encountered Gene Kelly. Here’s a taste: So there we are, driving around, map in hand and as we started to drive down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills I said, “OMG, Gene Kelly lives on this street!” (back then I actually said “Oh my God”, not OMG, but now OMG is all you need). I’m looking at the map as we continued down the street and said, “THERE IT IS, THAT’S HIS HOUSE! Pull over, I have to take a...
Read MoreA Certain Cinema
Just stumbled across a lovely little site called A Certain Cinema: Not-So-Current Films and Filmmakers. It features glossy black-and-white photos and film stills of classical Hollywood stars including a gallery for (you guessed it) Gene...
Read MoreGene Kelly’s Family Tree
This entry is part 4 of 13 in the series Essays / Analyses.Moderator/creator of The Gene Scene, Donna Pointkouski climbs up Gene Kelly’s family tree. While she admittedly didn’t discover much new information, she did learn “more about Gene’s aunts and uncles” and that “it is much easier to start from scratch now than it was 21 years...
Read MoreMemories of Betsy
This entry is part 3 of 13 in the series Essays / Analyses.Upon hearing of Betsy Blair’s death in 2009, Donna Pointkouski wrote “I Remember Betsy,” in which she recalls her memories of meeting, conversing, and ultimately forming a friendship with Blair, Gene Kelly’s first wife. Here’s an excerpt: I didn’t ask questions as if I was interviewing her; we merely conversed. She understood that I admired the man who had once not only been a Hollywood star, but also...
Read MoreThe Quixotic Photograph and The Impossible Dream
Riffing off this photograph, The Meet Cute has written (at least I think s/he wrote this) posted a sort of love letter to Gene Kelly’s “ability to create and the excitement of innovation.” “The ability to create and the excitement of innovation is a mutual passion Gene Kelly and I share. His unwavering will to challenge complaisance and to transform his craft has distinguished him from the masses; he is a true virtuoso. To Kelly and me, the status quo is...
Read More“I kinda want to make shameless, dirty love to Gene Kelly.”
A guest post on The Film Experience, “Make Me Watch a Musical!: Singin’ in the Rain” is an hilarious account of Jason Adams’s first-time viewing of Singin’ in the Rain. Adams, who blogs at My New Plaid Pants, begins his review harshly, calling arguably the Greatest Film Musical Ever Made “two hours of shameless mugging and buffoonery.” Don’t fret though: he’s only kidding. Within moments, Adams admits that Singin’ in the Rain (as most...
Read MoreWhy Do You Cycle?
“Why did you start cycling?” this Bicycling.Hub.com blog post asks. Here’s one woman’s response: “In August 2008, I was 240 pounds and dreadfully out of shape. It didn’t really bother me though until I watched a marathon of Gene Kelly movies. I was in absolute awe of how fit the man was at the same age I was, and disgusted at the fact I could barely waddle across the room. A few months later, a co-worker died of a weight-related issue, and I realized I could...
Read MoreCreativity and Vincente Minnelli
On his blog A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli, Mark Griffin posts his interview with Michael E. Grost, a film historian and self-described “citizen scholar” whose website explores visual and thematic links in the films of film auteurs like Fritz Lang, George Cukor, and Akira Kurosawa. In this interview, Griffin and Grost consider what the latter calls “the seemingly endless use of creativity in Minnelli’s moves.” There is only...
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