Eugene Curran Kelly was born on August 23, 1912, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, James, was a phonograph salesman who once managed Al Jolson, and he had two brothers, James and Fred, and two sisters, Jay and Louise. Fred Kelly would also go on to become a dancer and actor. Their mother, Harriet, loved dance and enrolled him and James in classes when they were very young, but they both hated it and got into fights with neighborhood boys who called them sissies. Determined to learn to look after himself, the young Kelly worked hard at school sports such as baseball, ice hockey, and gymnastics, becoming an accomplished athlete. At the age of fifteen he returned to dance and devised routines which he performed with Fred in local talent contests. The money thus raised helped is family through the Great Depression and made it possible for him to go on to study economics at the University of Pittsburgh. He spent his undergraduate years working as a dance teacher and after graduating, he moved to New York City to work as a choreographer.
The Big Apple was not all that Kelly had hoped, and work initially proved hard to find. Eventually he found a role as a dancer in Cole Porter's Leave it to Me, but his big break came in 1939 with William Saroyan's The Time of your Life, which he both starred in and choreographed. A long-running success, this led to Kelly getting the part of sleazy nightclub owner Joey in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, which brought him to the attention of Hollywood.
Kelly's first film role came in the hit romantic musical For Me and My Gal, which also featured the first adult performance by Judy Garland, with whom he would continue to work throughout the 1940s. This marked the start of a screen acting career which was to span five decades and include such highlights as Anchors Aweigh, with Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson; The Three Musketeers, with Lana Turner and Angela Lansbury; Brigadoon, with Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse; and Les Girls, with Mitzi Gaynor and Kay Kendall. But the role for which he would always be remembered was that of Don Lockwood in Singin' in the Rain, which rewrote the rules for Hollywood musicals. Co-starring Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, it featured memorable dance sequences that Kelly directed. Making his start with choreography, he soon moved into directing whole films, including the smash hit Hello, Dolly! with Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau. He wrote two films and also worked as a producer in both film and television, changing the whole way that dance was approached within the film industry.
Kelly was married three times; first to the dancer and actress Betsy Blair, whom he met on the set of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe and with whom he had one child, Kerry; then to his dance assistant Jeannie Coyne, with whom he had two children, Timothy and Bridget; and, after her death, to the writer Patricia Ward. He died at the age of eighty-three after a series of strokes. His ashes were interred at Pierce Bros. Westwood Village Memorial Park in Hollywood.
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