Gene Kelly, ready for love: Making of "It's Always Fair Weather" (Outtakes)

Gene Kelly & Cyd Charisse in "Love Is Nothing but a Racket" dance number and "Behind the Scenes" from "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955) directed by Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” ― C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves" (1960)

"Gene Kelly gets one of his very best solos. With roller-skates strapped to his feet, Kelly's Ted realizes that he is loved, and he is in love, and for that reason, he can stop hating himself. The revelation leads him to sing the infectious Comden and Green/Andre Previn tune "I Like Myself" and dance blissfully. Kelly taps in the skates as if it were the natural thing to do, then he immediately glides for a few feet in one single long take, just to prove that these aren't trick skates, and that there aren't any camera tricks either. It's just grace and athleticism, pure and simple, and it's exactly the type of moment that one watches musicals for. Coming at a time when the genre was on the cusp of extinction, and from a formerly embittered character like Ted, the number feels like a twofold miracle.

A new DVD release from Warner Brothers restores the theatrical aspect ratio and also provides fans with some extras. Included is a featurette (albeit one mainly stitched together from archival interviews), deleted numbers, and a segment from MGM Parade in which MGM star (and future California Senator) George Murphy offers us this gem: "Well I suppose all the children in the neighborhood will be trying to learn to do a tap-dance on roller-skates. Mom and Dad, don't you be too quick to stop them because it's good fun and it's good exercise, and I never heard of a juvenile delinquent on roller-skates, did you?" Source: www.brightlifghtsfilm.com

Ted Riley (Gene Kelly) eventually sees an escape from depression via the love of Jackie Leighton (Cyd Charisse), a pushy intellectual female type feared by our 50s culture. Ted respects Jackie enough to want to reform for her. The plot comes to a head with an effective early use of the clever "live TV" gag of tricking a criminal (crooked boxing promoter J. C. Flippen) into blabbing his crimes on the air. If one wants to psychoanalyze the film even further, it's curious to note that the malaise affecting our three ex-warriors is only banished through more good-vs.-evil violence, in a televised brawl with the gangster thugs.

The musical numbers contain some great highlights. Although Cyd Charisse doesn't dance with Gene -- an omission to be regretted after their 'Monumental' pairing in Singin' in the Rain -- her "Baby, You Knock Me Out" with a gymnasium full of boxers is a terrific number designed along 50s graphic lines -- flat perspective, like a mural. Although dancers get involved for the really difficult stuff, Kelly rehearsed a bunch of broken-nosed and cauliflower-ear types to participate in the heavy dance work, led by the diminutive Lou Lubin (Irving August in 'The Seventh Victim') as Lefty Louie, a gym trainer.

All of the dances in "It's Always Fair Weather" are demanding, but Kelly saves the toughest for himself. When Ted Riley foils the gangsters and rediscovers that, "I Like Myself," he does an entire routine on roller skates... tapping, dancing and gliding on MGM's exterior New York set. It all looks too easy -- we can imagine that even Kelly must have taken a nasty fall or two.

Angie and Doug are returning to their wives while Ted has found Jackie, with a reprise of their "The Time has Come for Parting" song. Their new "military victory" has made them feel good about themselves again. But this time when they part, there are no plans for a future reunion -- it's as if they know that they just aren't natural friends anymore. "Comedy" writers Comden and Green really put some thought into this story.

The featurette 'Going Out on a High Note' is surprisingly critical of the film, indicating how it's always suffered by comparison with earlier 'classics' and its status marking the end of the road for the MGM musical tradition. Clip extras include two B&W MGM TV show clips with Charisse and Kelly, daily clips from "The Binge" (the trash can dance), an audio outtake from an unused number, and deleted scenes from two numbers, including Michael Kidd's elaborate "Jack and the Space Giants" number.

Gene Kelly (Photographed by Gjon Mili) in "Cover Girl" (1944) - "Alter Ego" Dance Number

“I haven’t a worry, I haven’t a care, I feel like a feather that’s floating on air, fit as a fiddle and ready for love!” ('Fit As A Fiddle' - "Singing In The Rain")

“You keep going as long as you find happiness in helping people realise their dreams.” -Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly receiving the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985: "I am pleased to be here tonight and very proud. I hope I can be humble, but I’m working on that. In truth I never wanted to be a dancer. My whole ambition was to play short-stop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, I did discover girls, and that the girls liked the fellas who were good dancers… the only way you could get your arm round a girl was to ask her to dance…"

“You need a lot of talent around you. There are no auteurs in musical movies… I’d like to say a quick word about the people that the public never see, not only the photographers, art directors, costume designers, but the Minnellis, the Donens, the Freeds, the Pasternaks, the Comdens and Greens, the Haneys, Coynes, Bakers, Romeros, Edens, Chaplins. All these people who knocked themselves out so that we could look good. The men who arranged the music… no-one knows their names, they don’t get enough credit. The other thing these people did, they made us strive to do better. Now perhaps I’m making this sound like hard work, well it was, but we had fun, we had the best of times. And I think it was because we all thought we were trying to create some kind of magic and joy. And you know, that’s what you do up there.”

“You dance love, you dance joy and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or by running through a rainstorm, then I’ll be very glad to be a song and dance man, and I won’t worry that the Pittsburgh Pirates lost one hell of a short-stop.”