Gene Kelly ("Love is here to stay") video, Invitation to the dance

A clip from "Invitation to the Dance" (1956) directed by Gene Kelly - Street Dance with Tamara Toumanova (The Streetwalker)

Street Dance videoclip: Pierrot/The Marine (Gene Kelly) is hopelessly in love with Columbine/The Loved (Claire Sombert), but she’s happily involved with Scaramouche (Igor Youskevitch). Eventually Pierrot kills himself by walking halfway across a tightrope and falling off.

Gene Kelly embracing Diana Adams in "Invitation to the Dance" (1956)

A hat-check girl (Diana Adams) goes home to find her soldier boyfriend (Gene Kelly) unexpectedly returned; he finds out that she’s cheated on him, takes her bracelet, does a sexy dance with a hooker, and gives her the bracelet. Why she would cheat on Gene Kelly with a pseudo-Frank Sinatra (Irving Davies) is never explained.

When he was a young aspiring dancer in New York City, Gene Kelly used to sit up late with his then-girlfriend, a dark-eyed Jewess named Helene Marlowe, expounding his theories of the relationship between music and dance. He wanted to perform to the kind of music that made regular people get to their feet—music that made people want to dance and had a beat. At the time, he was talking about Porter and Gershwin and Kern. Kelly starts using that kind of music halfway through "Invitation to the Dance".


Gene Kelly video featuring stills with his co-stars, friends and family. Jazz soundtrack "Soukha" by Baptiste Trotignon