Greg Jenner on Gene Kelly
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Public historian Greg Jenner has always loved Gene Kelly.
"So much better than he had any right to be."
Born in Pittsburgh in 1912, Gene Kelly was a broad-shouldered Irish American whose first love was ice hockey. But according to his biographer, Ruth Leon, he revolutionised movie-making by making the camera dance.
Kelly's great films are Singin in the Rain, On The Town and An American in Paris - with extracts and archive of Gene speaking, this is a joyful celebration of the great age of Hollywood musicals.
Presented by Matthew Parris.
Producer Miles Warde
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2018.
Transcript
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| 0:39.0 | Today's great life will be forever associated with a piece of Hollywood magic and a song I'm not going to play yet. |
| 0:48.0 | Instead, you're going to hear a clip of Our Subject talking here in 1968 about his early life. |
| 0:55.0 | My mother sent me to dancing school when I was about seven years old, |
| 0:59.0 | but my older brother who sent along with me, he and I fought it successfully and after a year my mother |
| 1:06.0 | let us quit. Then in high school about my senior year I began to get the urge because I found that the girls like fellows who could dance. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do... Gene Kelly, born |
| 1:26.3 | born 1912, died 1996. |
| 1:30.3 | Actor, dancer, singer, director, choreographer, star. |
| 1:37.0 | I'm singing in the rain, you're singing in the rain. What a glorious feel and I'm happy again. |
| 1:50.0 | What a scene that was and what a song. |
| 1:53.0 | Apparently Kelly filmed it with a terrible cold, |
... |
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