The ladies at the studio swooned and so did the public who found his robust, barrel-chested, smiling, 6'4" handsomeness and that deep voice a sure cure for the blues. He starred in four of the studio's biggest musical hits and was loaned to Warners to costar with Hollywood's most popular female star in another monster hit. It seemed he could do no wrong. It seemed.
Born in Illinois in 1919 as Harry (some say Harold) Leek, he claimed it was an unhappy, if not miserable, childhood. There was devastating poverty and the harshness of his parents to deal with, and he claimed he didn't deal with it very well. His coal miner father was a nasty drunk who regularly beat his two sons. The father's suicide when Keel was 11 provoked more relief than sorrow. The mother, although not a drinker, was harsh, repressed, unloving and a devout Methodist. She disapproved of any sort of entertainment around the house.
After the father's death, Keel, his mother and older brother moved to California. He admitted that he was mean and rebellious and had a fierce temper. Being tall and loud, he scared the hell out of people. One person he didn't scare was his landlord who heard him singing around the house. (Mama must have been at work.) She told him that he should pursue singing and at least takes lessons.
One day a friend took Keel to the Hollywood Bowl to hear opera star Lawrence Tibbett and the young man was electrified. He signed up for voice lessons. He soon had a job as a singing busboy. He knew then that singing would have to be his life's work. It didn't even occur to him that it wouldn't happen, so great was his confidence at this early point. He began nabbing singing jobs all over Los Angeles. I'm not surprised. That was quite a voice. I always thought, however, that his greatest appeal was in duets.
He began to imagine his name in lights on The Great White Way so it was inevitable he would hit New York. It wasn't that long a stay. He briefly understudied John Raitt in Carousel and later had the same duties for Oklahoma. Oscar Hammerstein witnessed his performance in the latter and signed Keel on to play Curly in the London production.
On his off hours, he managed to make a B movie in England, but the great news came when someone from MGM knocked on his door and asked how he'd feel about signing on with the glamorous Hollywood studio. He could become their boy singer. Why, they even had a project in mind.
Annie Get Your Gun (1950) was a big, splashy, famous musical extravaganza from Irving Berlin that wowed Broadway for 1,147 performances with Ethel Merman in the lead role as legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Keel would play Oakley lover and fellow sharpshooter, Frank Butler and Judy Garland would star as Annie..
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| Battling with Betty Hutton on screen and off |
We know it didn't work out that way and by all accounts this was a troubled production. Despite making coworkers' lives agony, Garland was beloved by many. So when she was fired from the production for her ongoing lateness, absences and drug-related problems, Keel, Louis Calhern, Keenan Wynn and most of the large company were not happy.
The studio went outside its gates to replace Garland with Betty Hutton and the role ideally suited her. I can't recall whether Hutton was a hellion on the set or not (at her home studio, Paramount, she often was) but she claimed she was made to feel very unwelcomed at MGM. Her coworkers barely spoke to her and she claimed Keel was one of those. There may be no people like show people (from the film's big hit There's No Business Like Show Business) but it was certainly lost on Hutton. She said making Annie was the worst experience she ever had on a film set.
None of this is apparent while watching it and it does seem odd indeed that Keel would take part in such actions with it being his first Hollywood film. But over the years there would be comments made about his temperament on film sets. Nonetheless, a few of his leading ladies would work with him more than once so either they put up with his shenanigans or he didn't display them to everyone.
Another good musical isn't necessarily there waiting after the current one is completed, but Esther Williams and her swimming movies always needed a leading man who would hopefully not drown. Her movies often had musical interludes, especially if her swimming partner was a bona fide singer. She was tall and personally requested the tall Mr. Keel to join her for two in a row. Pagan Love Song (1950) and Texas Carnival (1951) were both enormous hits despite their cornball plots. Just saying the words pagan love song makes me laugh.
Show Boat had been done successfully in 1936 but by 1951 it was time for an update. MGM had two sopranos (Kathryn Grayson and Jane Powell) and would soon have a third (Ann Blyth) and Keel would work with all of them. This version would star Keel with Grayson, Ava Gardner, Marge and Gower Champion, Joe E. Brown and Agnes Moorehead.
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| With Grayson & Gardner at Show Boat premiere |
It is a wholesome look at life on the Mississippi with Grayson as the daughter of the ship's captain who falls in love with an irresponsible gambler who is brought on as an actor. Of all the gorgeous Jerome Kern songs, my favorite is Make Believe, sung by Keel and Grayson.
Since it was a huge success, MGM determined that their two well-matched stars would have another go at it in Lovely to Look At (1952). It concerns a Broadway producer (Keel) who inherits a Parisian fashion house. It was lovely to look at but fairly dreary to endure. Keel had no pizazz and Red Skelton looked bored. I know I was. Kern again... and featured are I Won't Dance, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and the title tune. The Champions (again) were the best.
With no musicals on the horizon, Keel was put into Desperate Search (1952), a drama with Jane Greer as a couple whose two kids are lost in the woods. Next up was his first western drama, Ride,Vaquero (1953), again with Gardner, this time as his bored wife who takes up with Robert Taylor. It is a formulaic oater but, of course, I liked it.
He was getting depressed at MGM. He felt they assigned him one good picture and then two poor ones. He complained that he was being underused. He loved singing and largely loved the musicals he did but he felt the studio wasn't grooming him as they should have. Part of the problem was despite his success in musicals, the genre was starting to fade. It's too bad Keel wasn't around in the 40's. Additionally, MGM's hierarchy was changing and not doing so well.
He got excited being loaned to Warner Bros to play opposite Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953). The two got along well but she (in her favorite of all her roles) simply overshadowed Keel and he actually had little screen time. He probably got a big head over getting the role in Calamity. After all, Warners was Gordon MacRae's playground. How come Gordy wasn't hired to play opposite Day for the umpteenth time? Whatever, Keel was popping his buttons. Like a number of people who get linked in a competitive way (Astaire and Kelly, Charisse and Caron, etc.), there was MacRae and Keel. The two were always checking on what was going on with the other.
I suspect Keel's inherited bitterness might have come into play, however, because not only did MacRae get the two movie versions of Oklahoma and Carousel, Keel never had the chance to appear in a Rodgers and Hammerstein movie, a feather in any movie singer's cap.
Kiss Me Kate (1953) may be his best role. There was singing, drama and even Shakespeare. Grayson was again his costar although she was signed first and wanted Laurence Olivier to costar (with a dubbed singing voice). Show Boat director George Sidney wanted to work with Keel and Grayson again and got his way.
The plot involved a stage production of Taming of the Shrew being updated to a musical and featuring a divorced and battling couple in the leads. Cole Porter's fabulous score, the voices of Keel and Grayson and the exciting dancing of Ann Miller, Bobby Van, Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall made it all good fun.
He balked at doing Rose Marie (1954), a remake of the Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy operetta, because he thought the mountie he was playing was an idiot. He and Ann Blyth were in fine voice but the movie didn't register as much as some of his other musicals. To get him to calm down, they threw him a musical that would be a huge hit, perhaps his biggest.
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| Jane Powell and Keel... one bride and one brother |
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) is all fussin', fightin' and feudin' and a whole lot of singin' and dancin'. Keel plays a backwoodsman who goes into town to shop for a wife and comes home with Jane Powell. Then his six brothers, all of whom live on the same property, decide they want wives. I'm not sure why I was never particularly drawn to this movie although I loved, loved, loved the barn dance. It may be the film for which Keel is best known and he's always claimed it was his favorite.
He was teamed for the third and final time with Esther Williams in Jupiter's Darling (1955), the first of her films to lose money, and probably as a result, the last swimming spectacular she would make.
Kismet (1955) also lost a great deal of money but I enjoyed the Arabian knights nonsense that again paired Keel with Ann Blyth, only this time as father and daughter. This glitzy fourth version featured the songs Stranger in Paradise, And This Is My Beloved and Baubles, Bangles and Beads. Keel's contract ended with this one.
In 1958 he was scheduled to play FDR in Sunrise at Campobello on Broadway but he got pneumonia and had to drop out. Ralph Bellamy famously played the part. Keel later did it on the road.
He went to Buena Vista (Disney) to do The Big Fisherman (1959) about the life of the apostle Peter but it didn't do much business.
In the early 60's he appeared mainly on television.
In the mid 60's, Paramount producer A. C. Lyles, a lover of movie stars, rounded up every actor of former glory and put them in a series of some of the most horrid westerns (bad writing, lackluster acting and atrocious, black and white production values) ever made. Keel did his part by starring in Waco, Red Tomahawk and Arizona Bushwhackers. He also made the John Wayne western The War Wagon (1967), embarrassing as an Indian.
When his movie career dried up, Keel did what all movie singers did... he took to the road. He did dinner theater, supper clubs, concerts, light opera and stage musicals all over America. He went to Europe for more. He had a great success with Powell in South Pacific and worked as often as he could with his good pal Grayson. He was popular enough to secure some Vegas gigs. He made records and wondered into television.
His second claim to fame (and gaining a whole new generation of fans) came when he in 1981 he signed on to play patriarch Clayton Farlow on TV's very popular nighttime soap, Dallas. He played Barbara Bel Geddes' second husband, replacing Jim Davis (a Keel lookalike) who had died. Keel stayed with the series until it ended in 1991.
In the middle of the series, he had open-heart surgery and was worried he'd lose his role but the producers worked around him. He returned to his usual robust health.
He continued to do concerts and remained very popular with those old enough to remember his MGM musicals. He was reportedly happily living with his third wife when he died at home in Palm Desert, California, in 2004 of colon cancer.
Keel likely would have said that the tragedy of his career was that he was never able to truly prove his mettle in dramatic movies. Personally, I thought he did prove it but the movies in which he did it were not outstanding. He did, however, leave a wonderful legacy of musical films. I can hear that big voice now.
And so can you. From Show Boat, here are Keel and Kathryn Grayson singing the enchanting Make Believe:
Next posting:
A good 50's film
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