{
download_links:[
{
label:'MODS Bibliographic Record',
link: 'mods.xml',
meta: 'XML'
},
{
label:'METS Object Description',
link: 'mets.xml',
meta: 'XML'
}
]
}
Fred Kelly [biography]
Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Place of Death: Tucson, Arizona
Fred Kelly, tap dancer, choreographer, and teacher, was born the youngest of five children; among them was his brother Gene Kelly, with whom he collaborated and choreographed. His father, the Canadian-born Irishman James Patrick Kelly, was a sales executive with Columbia Phonograph Company; his mother, Harriet (Curran) Kelly, was a dancer who, as a hobby, performed with a Pittsburgh stock theater company. At his mother's insistence, all of the children took music and dance lessons. Fred studied piano and drums because he liked rhythm. While the others showed some resistance to lessons and performing, Fred took to them immediately; this baby of the family proved to be a natural at tap dancing and was considered by his parents to be the most likely to have a professional dance career. Fred, brothers Gene and James, and sisters Harriet, Joan (called "J") and Louise began appearing as the Five Dancing Kellys, patterning themselves after the popular vaudeville act, The Seven Little Foys; in 1921 they actually filled in for the Foys at numerous charity events around Pittsburgh when the Foys were stuck in Ohio during a snowstorm.
Around 1921, the family began a little act named The Five Kellys, working benefit shows, hospitals shows and church shows around the city. They sang the song "K-E-L-L-…" with young Fred belting (sometimes a-tunally) the "Y" part of the tune, much to the delight of the audience. By age eight, Fred was earning as much as $50 a month as a performer, which was quite an income in 1924. It was younger brother Fred who taught older brother Gene to tap dance in order to earn extra money for college, and also so Gene could impress the girls. From grades seven through twelve in Pittsburgh, Fred starred in a show for children at the Warner theaters in Pittsburgh. He also emceed, danced and did magic in the shows which became known as Kelly's Kiddy Kabaret. Dick Powell, as a young man out of college, joined the company as a vocalist and bandleader. He had Fred give him dance lessons after the shows, and Fred's mother helped him use his hands more effectively while performing. Fred also spent part of every summer performing on the Goldenrod Showboat, which played Mississippi and Ohio River ports from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. In these shows, which were emceed by Fred's booking agent Eddie Miller, Fred did rube comedy for other acts. He also played a jig in Pop Brownlee's Hicksville Follies hillbilly band, and danced.
Mrs. Kelly was working as receptionist in a Pittsburgh dance studio when the owner skipped town in 1927, leaving a pile of unpaid bills. She decided to keep the school going; she paid the bills and renamed it the Kelly School of Dance. When another Kelly Dance Studio was objected to because of the redundancy in name, mother Kelly renamed it the Gene Kelly School of Dance. The school would grow and move through five locations in Pittsburgh, with two branches in Johnstown. By 1928, The Gene Kelly Studio of Dance was up and going. Gene, who was a senior in high school, set up the idea of eight graded basic routines; Louise wrote them all down; and Fred's job was to take any of the students who missed a lesson and teach them the new material. Soon the family became involved in the business with the children giving lessons, the mother managing the business, and father handling the books (as the Depression had put the father out of work).
In 1929, Gene went off to Penn State College, but after Freshman year transferred to the University of Pittsburgh so he could help out with the dance school. He graduated from college in 1933 and Fred entered the following year. Meanwhile, the dance school was becoming one of the most successful in the United States, but Gene struck out for New York in 1937; unsuccessful, he tried again the following year and won a part in Leave It To Me, starring Sophie Tucker. Gene then returned to Pittsburgh to direct Pitt's annual Cap and Gown Show in 1939, in which Fred was the star dancer.
After graduation, Fred joined Gene in New York. At the Theater Guild's summer stock theater in Westport, Connecticut, Gene directed and Fred choreographed Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs, the vehicle Rodgers and Hammerstein three years later turned into Oklahoma! Gene won a dancing and acting part in the Theater Guild's production of William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize winning The Time of Your Life. When Gene won a starring role in the Broadway production Pal Joey, he recommended Fred to replace him in The Time of Your Life. With the permission from the play's author William Saroyan, Fred increased his character's dance numbers from five to eleven. He and Dorothy Maguire played together for the show's entire national run. When the Donaldson Awards were instituted in 1940, Fred got one for his acting (presented by Helen Hayes), one for comedy (from Charlie Chaplin), and one for dance (from Antoinette Perry).
In 1941 Fred was drafted into the armed forces, assigned to the Medical Corps, and sent to Camp Stewart in Georgia, where he and other corpsmen wrote and performed in a show called The General's Daughter. This Is the Army (1942) opened with a cast of 300, the largest ever in a Broadway show, with Fred performing in the number "Mandy," a minstrel number. By the time it closed in Honolulu on October 22, 1945, the show had raised almost fifteen million dollars for the Army Relief Emergency Fund to aid spouses and parents of servicemen. After the service, Fred was hired by CBS to direct a show being adapted from radio, Casey, Crime Photographer. He was also hired by NBC to direct the Lanny Ross Show, a pioneering musical variety program, and the Kyser Kollege of Musical Knowledge. He also choreographed for NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour; and later directed a thousand hours of The Steve Allen Show. He also choreographed and directed three years of Ice Capades, as wells as shows at the Latin Quarter, and for the Four Aces, Four Lads, Four Diamonds, DeCastro Sisters, Honey Dreamers, and many Latin acts. He staged numbers at the World's Fair of 1948 in the Dominican Republic. When staging dances at the Latin Quarter, he was asked by a competitor, the Havana Madrid Club, to stage a show with the flamenco dancer Jose Greco; at the same club, he booked Afro-Cuban dancer Tommy Gomez, with Prez Prado as bandleader and Gomez and Maryann Drake as dancers. He prepared a mambo number for them that opened on June 29, 1948 (under the pseudonym choreographer credit of Frederico Calais-- Gaelic for Kelly). He subsequently staged a show with Tito Puente as bandleader, in which he put together a number based on the Lindy, except that the dance moved sideways; they threw in a call from the orchestra: "cha cha cha!" The show opened on August 2, 1948 and has been credited by the Smithsonian for introducing these dances to popular audiences. Fred was the last producer of stage shows at the Roxy Theater in New York's Times Square, where he gave Hines, Hines and Dad (brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines) their first break.
Over the years, Fred collaborated with brother Gene on three movies: Thousands Cheer (1943); Cover Girl (1944), in which he worked with Gene in the famous "alter ego" number; and Deep in My Heart (1956), in which the brothers dance together for the first time on film in "I Love to Go Swimmin' With Wimmen." As Kelly biographer Andrew McGowan bemoaned about Gene and Fred Kelly, "Fred's significant achievements were less known and occasionally attributed to Gene."
[Sources: Rusty Frank, Tap!: the greatest tap dance stars and their stories 1900-1955 (1990); Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]