Eugene Curran Kelly

Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912–February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and director whose athletic, character-driven film musicals during the 1940s and 1950s helped pull screen dance away from formal ballroom and tap traditions toward a cinema-specific vocabulary. He won an honorary Academy Award in 1952 for choreography.

Born in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, the third of five children of Canadian-born phonograph salesman James Patrick Joseph Kelly and Harriet Curran, he started dance classes at eight at his mother's insistence. He earned an economics degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1933, ran the family-owned Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance, and moved to New York in 1938.

His Broadway lead in Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey (1940) brought a Selznick contract; David O. Selznick sold it to MGM, where Kelly debuted opposite Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942). Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945) with the cartoon Jerry Mouse, and On the Town (1949), which he co-directed with Stanley Donen, expanded what musicals could do on location.

The Donen-Kelly partnership produced Singin' in the Rain (1952) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955); his solo direction included Hello, Dolly! (1969). Television work, the Cannes-screened Invitation to the Dance (1956), and a 1985 American Film Institute Life Achievement Award rounded out his later years. He died in Beverly Hills at 83.

The name Eugene comes from the Greek Eugenios, meaning "well-born" or "noble," while his stage name Gene is the standard English short form. He used Gene on every film credit and Eugene Curran on legal documents.