Mostlydaydreaming

@beckybloomwood Can you believe I found it (the original) after we went thru all that trouble to translate the French translations? We were pretty close. Of course it’s just as precious🥰, but in his actual words.

Gene Kelly & The art of “Schmeikling”

I realized how much Gene cared about the picture. How much he wanted every detail of it to be good.

Since then I’ve often watched Gene do something we called “schmeikling.”

“Schmeikling” is handling people - tactfully, flatteringly, diplomatically, kiddingly - any way - so long as you get what you want.

Gene is a past master of the art of schmeikling. What takes the curse off his practice of this fine art is that what he wants is always good for the work, good for the picture and not merely what’s good for him personally.

“Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from Words and Music (1948)

“Until I did Slaughter, I had done only light taps and other frothy kinds of dancing in pictures. Nevertheless, Gene asked MGM to get me for the number.”

“At first I wasn’t sure whether I should take it. I knew I could do the steps, but I was going to have to portray a girl who was a floozy. It shocked me a little, I’ll admit.”

Vera Ellen grinned, “But Gene, the old master, when I told him of my doubts, sent me down to see Marie Bryant, a colored dancing teacher who lives in the heart of the negro section, on Central Avenue.”

“Marie Bryant shook her head. ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘you can’t wear that dress if you’re going to do the kinda dance Mr Gene Kelly told me to teach you. I can’t see your body in such an outfit. I gotta see it to know what you’re saying with your body as you move around.’”

“I worked hard all that day. But when we finished she said, ‘You’re dancing fine honey, but what are you thinking about?’ I told her I was just thinking about the steps. She said that was no good. ‘If you don’t think about men and sex while you’re dancing, your body won’t say anything about those things to the folks watching you.’”

She learned to think sex while doing the dance.

There was a complication when she started rehearsing with Gene Kelly. He taught her to dance like a man, instead of a dainty little ballet girl, to dance with more power and strength. So while dancing like a woman thinking of love, she also had to dance like a man.

“I’m getting better parts all the time now…But I’ll never have a dance I loved more than ‘Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,’ I’ll never stop being grateful to Gene Kelly for giving me my chance at doing it with him.

“They play the music of Slaughter over the air even now. If I hear it while driving, I have to stop the car, pull over on the side of the road - and listen to it, hearing that music makes me shiver and quake, I get goose-flesh at the memory, though we rehearsed it for six weeks, it lasted exactly seven minutes on the screen, the greatest seven minutes of my professional life.”

The Kid with Two Feet

Dorothy Kilgallen interviews Gene Kelly over dinner after coming home from the Navy in 1946

“That Old Black Magic”

Gene Kelly isn’t the flashy type. He’s not a brash extrovert. You can’t picture Gene Kelly trying to outdo the Joneses. He simply isn’t impressed by superficial things. If he likes you, he likes you. Maybe you have eighty million dollars, but the chances are you have closer to eighty cents. Gene sees the person, not possessions.

“Look,” he says, “I was a mature grown man before I ever came out here in the first place. I think that perhaps if you come out here when you are very young, and if you hadn’t been anyplace and didn’t know any other part of the world, then maybe some things might throw you. But I’ve been around. I’m not a kid ogling the sights. A swimming pool can’t turn my head. Neither can a blonde. Because you see, I’ve seen swimming pools and blondes before.

Gene Kelly talking on Fred Astaire

“Fred is a real inspiration to me,” says Gene. “He always was, and he always will be. He’s a wonderful guy. I am personally so crazy about Fred and his work, that he can do no wrong. Furthermore, what a lot of people don’t know is that Fred doesn’t have to dance to be a success. He is the best light comedian in the business. No one can touch him.”

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)☔️