Gene Kelly Filmography

That's Entertainment! III

Actors: June Allyson, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Howard Keel, Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: In 1974, MGM Studios released its first compilation of musical highlights from 45 years of Hollywood extravaganzas. Entitled That's Entertainment!, it was a big box-office hit and inspired a second compilation two years later. Eighteen years went by before MGM tried again. The third installment of Read More

Christmas at the Movies: Hosted by Gene Kelly

The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell

Synopsis: This salute to the famous comedy team of the Marx Brothers is narrated by actor/director Gene Kelly. Shown are clips from many of their best-known films, including Duck Soup, Horse Feathers and Animal Crackers. Also shown are rare outtakes from their films and interviews with them, in addition to Read More

Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues

The Ship That Wouldn't Die

That's Dancing!

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis, Jr., Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli, Ray Bolger

Synopsis: Nine years after his last compilation of musical-movie highlights (That's Entertainment, Part II), producer Jack Haley Jr. offers another enjoyable nostalgia-fest, That's Dancing. Unlike his earlier films, which were confined to the output of MGM, That's Dancing offers vignettes from the best of Read More

Sins

Actors: Joan Collins, Timothy Dalton, Marisa Berenson, Gene Kelly, James Farentino

Synopsis: In this drama, a woman struggles to rise to the top of the fashion industry, but as she does, her past business sins come back to haunt her. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

North and South

Actors: Kirstie Alley

Synopsis: The expensively mounted miniseries North and South was originally telecast in six two-hour installments between November 3 and 10, 1985. Four screenwriters--Douglas Heyes, Paul F. Edwards, Kathleen A. Shelley, Patricia Green--were called upon to fashion a workable script from John Jakes' sprawling Read More

Smithsonian: American Treasure

Synopsis: This documentary takes the viewer on a tour of the series of museums that comprise the Smithsonian Institute. Located in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institute was created by an act of the United States Congress in 1846. British scientist James Smithson gave the money for "an establishment Read More

Swan Lake

Actors: Natalya Bessmertnova, Alexander Bogatyrev, Boris Akimov

Synopsis: The Bolshoi Ballet mounted and performs this production of Petr Ilych Tchaikovsky's 1895 Swan Lake, starring Natalia Bessmertnova and Alexander Bogatyrev in the principal roles. Yuri Grigorovich wrote and staged the choreographic movements; The Moscow Symphony Orchestra provides musical Read More

Xanadu

Actors: Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, Michael Beck, James J. Sloyan, Dimitra Arliss

Synopsis: In this film, the mysterious Kira (Olivia Newton-John) appears to assist and inspire a young artist, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). When she helps him meet up with the rich Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly), the two join up together to create an artistic and business success, an unique club called Read More

Bing Crosby: White Christmas

Actors: Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Crosby

Synopsis: As co-hosted by Gene Kelly and Kathryn Crosby (the wife of Bing Crosby), this exclusive video compilation presents priceless back-to-back clips from many of Bing's Christmas specials that aired from the early 1960s through the late 1970s. Featured guests include: Jackie Gleason, Twiggy, David Read More

Viva Knievel!

Actors: Evel Knievel, Gene Kelly, Marjoe Gortner, Lauren Hutton, Leslie Nielsen

Synopsis: Gordon M. Douglas' kitsch masterpiece starts as Evel Knievel (as himself) sneaks into an orphanage at midnight to distribute Evel Knievel action figures. Miraculously, one little boy casts aside his crutches and begins to walk. The plot kicks in as Evel, heading to a performance in Mexico, finds Read More

That's Entertainment Part II

Crew: Director

Actors: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn

Synopsis: This represents MGM's 1976 sequel to its enormously successful compilation film That's Entertainment (1974). In lieu of the multi-narrator device of the first film, director Gene Kelly chooses to limit the hosting chores to two people: himself, and his friendly rival Fred Astaire. Another Read More

That's Entertainment!

Actors: Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Donald O'Connor, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, James Stewart, Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Lawford

Synopsis: It's ironic that MGM, in such dire financial straits in 1974 that it was selling its fabled back lot and auctioning off artifacts from past movie triumphs, enjoyed one of its biggest box-office hits with That's Entertainment, a compilation of musical highlights from the studio's golden days. Read More

Frank Sinatra: Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back

Synopsis: A music performance video, with Frank Sinatra singing "You Will Be My Music," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Street of Dreams," "I've Got You Under my Skin," "I've Got the World on a String," a medley of "Last Night When We Were Young," "Violets for Your Fur", and "Here's That Rainy Day," and songs Read More

40 Carats

Actors: Liv Ullmann, Edward Albert, Gene Kelly, Deborah Raffin

Synopsis: Adapted by Jay Presson Allen from the French farce by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, Forty Carats is a standard-issue sex comedy elevated by the performances of its stars. Fortyish Realtor Ann Stanley (Liv Ullman) finds herself attracted to Peter Latham (Edward Albert) - a man literally Read More

The Cheyenne Social Club

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Shirley Jones, Sue Ane Langdon, Elaine Devry

Synopsis: James Stewart and Henry Fonda star in this light-hearted western comedy, directed by Gene Kelly. In 1870 Texas, John O' Hanlan (James Stewart), an itinerant cowboy, receives a letter notifying him that he has inherited a business establishment called the Cheyenne Social Club in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Read More

Hello, Dolly!

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, Louis Armstrong, Marianne McAndrew

Synopsis: Twenty-seven-year-old Barbra Streisand seemed an inappropriate choice for middle-aged, match-making widow Dolly Levi, but her energy carries her right through the role and dominates the lackluster movie around her. The plot, drawn from Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (itself based on a Read More

Christmas at Wells Cathedral

Synopsis: This BBC video production presents the Wells Cathedral Choir in a Christmas concert. The gala evening is hosted by Gene Kelly. The choir takes its musical selections from among the best-loved Christmas songs in the world. Some of the songs performed include "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Away in Read More

A Guide for the Married Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Matthau, Robert Morse, Inger Stevens, Sue Ane Langdon, Claire Kelly

Synopsis: Ed Stander (Robert Morse), with the help of an all-star cast, teaches Paul Manning (Walter Matthau) the fine art of philandering in A Guide for the Married Man. Paul, happily married to sexy Ruth (Inger Stevens), has no burning desire to cheat, but Ed makes the prospect sound very attractive. Read More

The Young Girls of Rochefort

Actors: Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Jacques Perrin, Grover Dale, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: Jacques Demy directed this frothy tribute to the Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, a follow-up to his earlier success The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Twin sisters Delphine and Solange (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac) live in the small coastal town of Read More

Jack and the Beanstalk

Crew: Director

What a Way to Go!

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: This lavishly produced, big-budget comedy (it cost $20 million in 1964 dollars) stars Shirley MacLaine as Louisa, a widow who is worth $200 million dollars. However, she's convinced that her fortune is cursed, and she wants to give all her money to the IRS. As she explains her sad tale to her Read More

Gigot

Crew: Director

Actors: Jackie Gleason, Katherine Kath, Gabrielle Dorziat, Jean Lefebvre, Jacques Marin

Synopsis: Jackie Gleason plays Gigot, a lumbering but lovable mute Parisian derelict. Shunned by the "respectable" people around him, Gigot is beloved by the children. One of the kids, a little girl, is the melancholy daughter of an insensitive prostitute. Gigot befriends the lonely child and protects her Read More

Hollywood: The Golden Years

Let's Make Love

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan, Wilfrid Hyde-White

Synopsis: Let's Make Love is a breezy comedy about an off Broadway musical production. Jean-Marc Clement (Yves Montand) is the richest man in the world and looking for someone who loves him instead of his money. He reads in Variety he is to be satirized in the new production and tries out for the part. The Read More

Inherit the Wind

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Florence Eldridge, Dick York, Henry "Harry" Morgan

Synopsis: The Evolution vs. Creationism argument is at the center of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee Broadway play Inherit the Wind. Lawrence and Lee's inspiration was the 1925 "Monkey Trial," in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in violation Read More

The Tunnel of Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Doris Day, Richard Widmark, Gig Young, Gia Scala, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: Though very tame by contemporary standards, Tunnel of Love was considered the last word in racy comedy back in 1958. Adapted from the Broadway hit by Peter DeVries and Joseph Fields, the film stars Doris Day and Richard Widmark as suburbanites Isolde and Augie Poole. Isolde and Augie desperately Read More

Badman's Country

Crew: Art Director

Actors: George Montgomery, Neville Brand, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Karin [Katharine] Booth, Gregory Walcott

Synopsis: A veritable honor roll of famed western heroes and villains appears in the fanciful oater Badman's Country. It all begins when Sheriff Pat Garrett (George Montgomery) draws up plans to lure the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, headed by Butch Cassidy (Neville Brand) and the Sundance Kid (Russell Johnson) Read More

Marjorie Morningstar

Actors: Gene Kelly, Natalie Wood, Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane, Martin Milner

Synopsis: Marjorie Morgenstern (Natalie Wood) is an 18-year-old, middle-class, Jewish girl from New York who wants nothing more than to be an actress, despite the hopes and wishes of her parents (Everett Sloane and Claire Trevor) that she graduate from college, marry, and settle down to have a family. At Read More

Saturday Color Carnival: Salute to Baseball

Actors: Gene Kelly, Robert Alda, Melvin Allen, Johnny Antonelli, Ernie Banks

Synopsis: Originally telecast live and in color, this NBC special would be especially valuable to see again, especially if one is a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fanatic. Emceed by Gene Kelly, the 90-minute extravaganza brings together dozens of special guests from Baseball and Showbiz to commemorate in song Read More

Les Girls

Actors: Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac

Synopsis: Les Girls is the Rashomon of MGM musicals. The film is told in flashback, as Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg, two-thirds of a popular cabaret trio, attempt to legally block the third, Kay Kendall, from writing her memoirs. Each of "Les Girls" has her own interpretation of the group's previous Read More

The Happy Road

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gene Kelly, Barbara Laage, Michael Redgrave, Bobby Clark, Brigitte Fossey

Synopsis: American in Paris star Gene Kelly returned to the City of Light as both star and director of The Happy Road. Kelly and Barbara Laage play single parents with one child each. Gene and Barbara don't know each other at the outset, but are drawn together when their kids run away from their Swiss Read More

Invitation to the Dance

Crew: Choreography, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Gene Kelly, Igor Youskevitch, Claire Sombert, Carol Haney, David Kasday

Synopsis: MGM's Invitation to the Dance was the fruition of Gene Kelly's long-standing dream to create a plotless "concert" feature. Eschewing dialogue, Kelly tells three stories entirely through the medium of dance. The first sequence is a mime-like Pagliacci story, with Kelly as the Clown and Igor Youskevitch Read More

It's Always Fair Weather

Crew: Choreography, Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, Michael Kidd

Synopsis: Cooked up by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, It's Always Fair Weather could well have been titled On the Town Ten Years Later. Like 1949's On the Town (also a Comden/Green collaboration), this MGM musical follows the exploits of three servicemen buddies, played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd Read More

Brigadoon

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Elaine Stewart, Barry Jones

Synopsis: Reportedly, Vincente Minnelli turned down the opportunity to film Brigadoon on location in Scotland insisting that MGM's studio mockups looked more Scottish than the genuine article. This lavish adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical stars Gene Kelly as an American tourist who Read More

Crest of the Wave

Actors: Gene Kelly, Jeff Richards, John Justin, Bernard Lee, Sidney James

Synopsis: Crest of the Wave is the original British title of Seagulls over Sorrento, filmed at MGM's Elstree facilities in 1953 and released stateside one year later. Based on a popular play by Hugh Hastings, the story concentrates on a group of British and American naval personnel, stationed on a Scottish Read More

Deep in My Heart

Actors: José Ferrer, Helen Traubel, Merle Oberon, Walter Pidgeon, Doe Avedon

Synopsis: Deep in My Heart is the MGM-ified biography of composer Sigmund Romberg, here played by José Ferrer. Evidently the scripters didn't feel that the life of Romberg (as set down by author Elliott Arnold, whose book was used as the film's basis) had enough drama to fill out two hours and ten minutes. Read More

Singin' in the Rain

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell

Synopsis: Hollywood, 1927: the silent-film romantic team of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is the toast of Tinseltown. While Lockwood and Lamont personify smoldering passions onscreen, in real life the down-to-earth Lockwood can't stand the egotistical, brainless Lina. He prefers the Read More

The Devil Makes Three

Actors: Gene Kelly, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Richard Rober, Richard Egan, Claus Clausen

Synopsis: Gene Kelly tackles a rare non-singing or dancing role in this post-war drama. Kelly plays Capt. Jeff Eliot, whose life was saved during World War II when a German family rescued him after his plane was shot down over Munich. In 1948, Eliot travels to Germany to thank the Lehrt Family for their Read More

Love Is Better Than Ever

Actors: Larry Parks, Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Hutchinson, Elinor Donahue, Tom Tully, Ann Doran

Synopsis: Though completed in 1950, Love Is Better Than Ever was held back from release until 1952, due in great part to the "political undesirability" of star Larry Parks, whose career was effectively ruined after he humbled himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Parks plays Broadway Read More

An American in Paris

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, Nina Foch

Synopsis: Gene Kelly does his patented Pal Joey bit as Jerry Mulligan, an opportunistic American painter living in Paris' "starving artists" colony. He is discovered by wealthy Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who becomes Jerry's patroness in more ways than one. Meanwhile, Jerry plays hookey on this setup by Read More

The Black Hand

Actors: Gene Kelly, J. Carrol Naish, Teresa Celli, Marc Lawrence, Frank Puglia

Synopsis: Gene Kelly as an Italian-American attorney? Once you get past this, the rest of Black Hand ought to go down easy. This expose of organized crime is set in New York's "Little Italy" the late 19th century. The various Italian immigrant merchants find themselves at the mercy of the Black Hand, a Read More

It's a Big Country

Actors: Ethel Barrymore, Gary Cooper, Van Johnson, Gene Kelly, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios' best directors, screenwriters and actors; it is narrated by Louis Calhern. Stories are framed by the lecture of a university professor. In one tale a Boston Read More

Summer Stock

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria de Haven, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: Summer Stock represented Judy Garland's swan song at MGM. Garland plays the owner of a New England farm which entrepreneur Gene Kelly hopes to convert into a summer theatre. Gloria DeHaven, a member of Kelly's troupe, also happens to be Garland's sister. Aware that the farm is having financial Read More

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Crew: Choreography, Screen Story

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Betty Garrett, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: So baseball pictures never make money, eh? Try telling that to MGM, which raked in a box office gross of $4 million on their 1949 baseball musical Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Set in 1906, the film concerns the adventures and misadventures of The Wolves, a champion ball club. The team's success Read More

On the Town

Crew: Choreography, Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin

Synopsis: Three sailors on a 24-hour pass -- Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) -- decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett Read More

The Pirate

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Lester Allen, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Jerry Bergen, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, Jean Dean, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: When Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne appeared in S. N. Behrmann's The Pirate on Broadway, there were no musical numbers whatsoever. But with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in the leading roles of the 1948 filmization of The Pirate, the MGM production staff would have been drawn and quartered had there Read More

The Three Musketeers

Actors: Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) Read More

Words and Music

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Perry Como, Judy Garland, June Allyson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: The life stories of Broadway tunesmiths Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are prettified for the screen in MGM's Words and Music. Billed fourth, the colorless Tom Drake plays Rodgers, but never mind that: the film belongs to Mickey Rooney, as the dynamic, self-destructive Lorenz Hart. Read More

Living in a Big Way

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Gene Kelly, Marie McDonald, Charles Winninger, Phyllis Thaxter, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Despite MGM's insistence that star Gene Kelly, just returning from military service in 1947, appear exclusively in big-budget Technicolor musicals, maverick director Gregory La Cava showcased Kelly in the modest black and white tunefest Living in a Big Way. Kelly is cast as an ex-GI who discovers Read More

Ziegfeld Follies

Actors: Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue Read More

Submarine Warfare

Synopsis: In this documentary film, Submarine Warfare, host Gene Kelly guides the viewer through life on board a World War II fighting submarine. Serving the country underwater offered unique challenges, both personal and mechanical, and the expertise of these men in their "sardine cans" was an important Read More

Anchors Aweigh

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell

Synopsis: This mammoth musical is at base the story of two sailors on leave in Hollywood. Brash Joseph Brady (Gene Kelly) has promised his shy pal Clarence Doolittle (Frank Sinatra) that he will introduce Clarence to all the glamorous movie starlets whom he allegedly knows so well. Actually, the only Read More

Christmas Holiday

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly, Dean Harens, Gale Sondergaard, Gladys George, Richard Whorf

Synopsis: Don't be fooled by the title. Christmas Holiday is a far, far cry from It's a Wonderful Life. Told in flashback, the story begins as Jackie (Deanna Durbin), marries Southern aristocrat Robert Monette (Gene Kelly). Unfortunately, Robert has inherited his family's streak of violence and instability Read More

Cover Girl

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Otto Kruger, Jinx Falkenburg, Eve Arden

Synopsis: Tha