User Reviews

I'm a HUGE Gene Kelly fan and had high hopes for this show. Sadly, I was disappointed.

While the high points of Kelly's career were hit (Singin' In The Rain, An American In Paris, On The Town, Anchors Aweigh), I was hoping to hear him talk about his lesser known movies like It's Always Fair Weather, Brigadoon and Cover Girl.

I did enjoy this interview with him and was hoping for more of Kelly talking and less footage of the movies. It was nice to see the knee slide in On The Town after he had talked about the trouble he had filming it. But, did we really need to see the entire Singin' In The Rain number? I would have loved to have heard him talk about the Moses Supposes number with Donald O'Connor in Singin' and also about The Babbit and The Bromide dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies. The dance on roller skates (from It's Always Fair Weather) was also missing.

I could go on and on, but I think I've made my point. This is a great show for people who are new to Kelly and his work. For his more knowledgeable fans this is an interview worth watching (I especially enjoyed hearing him talk about his early days before he went to Hollywood), but don't expect too much.

Evening with Gene Kelly, An (1977)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good interview with Gene Kelly takes a look at his entire career as the legend discusses various films as well as his early life and how he got involved with dancing. I'm not overly familiar with Kelly's work yet, outside of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, of course, but this documentary did exactly what it should do and that's get me excited to seek out more of Kelly's films. Kelly is extremely entertaining here as we get some great stories about the MGM factory, Sinatra and various movies including AN American IN Paris, ON THE TOWN and ANCHORS AWEIGH. Kelly gives many wonderful stories about the making of these film but the most interesting ones are his battling MGM over their cheapness of never wanting to film on location. Some of the best stuff deals with the making of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN where Kelly talks about the studio being worried how they'd pull off the title number as well as him hearing some people call the movie "camp". All in all this is a fun and entertaining interview that fans will certainly want to check out.