Gene Kelly: Dancing Dreams and the Aesthetics of Postwar Masculinity

Vera-Ellen and Gene Kelly in "On The Town" (1949) directed by Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly

On a summer morning during World War II, it's 6 a.m. at the Brooklyn navy yard. Three sailors—Chip, Ozzie, and Gabey (Gene Kelly) begin their 24-hour shore leave, eager to explore "New York, New York".

Gabey falls in love with the picture of "Miss Turnstiles," who is actually Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen). The sailors race around New York attempting to find her in the brief period they have ("New York, New York"). The group have a number of adventures before their leave ends and they must return to their ship to head off to war, and an uncertain future ("Some Other Time").

"Sarasota Police are investigating a crash where a car hit the "Unconditional Surrender" Kiss Statue at the Sarasota Bayfront. It happened Thursday around noon on U.S 41.

"Unconditional Surrender" is a larger-than-life recreation of a famous photograph showing a sailor and a nurse kissing during during a V-J Day celebration in Times Square at the end of World War II. The sculpture is created by artist Seward Johnson". Source: www.mysuncoast.com

Gene Kelly and the Aesthetics of Postwar Masculinity: Gene Kelly’s desire to be seen as strong and brave rather than a “sissy” was part of a larger pathology to prove his manliness, a pathology that stemmed from his early childhood days in Pittsburgh and was subsequently reinforced by postwar American culture. By the end of the postwar era, however, his attitude had shifted markedly. Rather than deny that he was a sissy dancer as he had in 1946, he rejected the claim that male dancers were sissies at all.

On Sunday, 21 December 1958, he starred in “Dancing: A Man’s Game,” which he wrote and directed for Omnibus, NBC’s cultural and educational program for “eggheads.” The central premise of this show, for which Kelly received an Emmy nomination, was that dancing was manly. As proof of this manliness, Kelly enlisted top athletes of the day, including Mickey Mantle and Sugar Ray Robinson, to help him demonstrate the common bonds between athleticism and dance.

Kelly never lost his youthful sensitivity to verbal insults. He recalled an incident when he was 20, performing with his brother Fred in a club in Chicago in 1932: “One night a guy called me a fag, and I jumped off the stage and hit him. But I had to make a run for it, because the owner of the place and his brother took after me with a couple of baseball bats.”

-What qualities do you admire most in a woman?

-Gene Kelly: Sweetness and reticence, couple with brains.

-What qualities do you find most obnoxious in a woman?

-Gene Kelly: A general air of loudness. That is, women who try to talk loud, dress loud or try to monopolise the attentions of everyone in the room by their conduct. -Motion Picture magazine (October 1944)

-Do you think dignity is an important part of a women’s appeal?

-Gene Kelly: “I definitely do and I think most men will agree with me. A man wants to think a woman is a little better than he is – that’s why he appreciates her refinement of manner, dignity of bearing, quiet speech.” -PICTUREGOER magazine (October 1957)

Barbara Laage and Gene Kelly in "The Happy Road" (1957)

Gene Kelly’s “heterosexuality had to be asserted;” Jane Feuer reminds us, “it could not be assumed.” “…When a woman dances like a woman beautifully and gracefully, fine; the man can lift her up and he makes her look lighter and more beautiful,” Kelly insisted.

“The woman’s best advantage in the art of dancing is when she is up against a man and you see her dancing with a man, it is most interesting. Why? Because she looks more like a woman then, you see, more graceful, more beautiful, she is set off by the man.” According to this logic, dancing was the “province of the man”, a woman’s role was to help the man demonstrate his strength and agility. “I never did a musical to teach a lesson, just to bring joy,” he insisted in a 1980 interview with New York Post.

Kelly consistently evaded the question of who his favorite dancing partner was, sometimes cheekily responding it was Jerry the cartoon Mouse from "Anchors Aweigh" (1945), or even Fred Astaire in “The Babbitt and the Bromide” in Ziegfeld Follies (1946). In truth, Kelly claimed that “your favorite dancing partner happens to be the one you’re playing with, acting with, and dancing with at that particular time".

According to journalist John Cutts, “It is often said of Kelly that he ‘dances people’; but this really isn’t true, for he danced but one person: himself.” Like Peter Pan, the eternal boy who chased his shadow, Kelly played with his own even beyond the literal shadow dance of “Alter Ego.” And, much like Peter Pan, Gene Kelly was a figure who, at some level, refused to grow up.

His dances expressed joy, exhilaration, beauty, and vitality, encouraging spectators to be themselves even if that meant disregarding social expectations. This was his trademark, according to Rick Altman: “For Kelly dance is… a silly, clowning, childish activity, an expression of the eternal youth which seems even today to be fixed in Kelly’s smile. From film to film Kelly’s partners and his style may change, but his adolescent energy and ego never disappear.”

Gene Kelly fused middlebrow art and technology together to create a safe space where he could dance unfettered — he could be playful, boyish, asexual, and macho all at the same time.

Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Dorothy Dandridge, as much as their musicals, all stood as “in-between” figures, but their messages did not go unnoticed. They showed the way to finding release in a stifling postwar climate, and their small rebellions—whether artistic, gendered, or racial—served as uncensored examples of the kinds of private but very radical rebellions that were possible in the 1950s". -"Dancing Dreams: Performing American Identities in Postwar Hollywood Musicals, 1944-1958" by Pamela R. Lach (2007)