Gene Nelson

Why did he not become the huge dancing star that Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly became?  After all he had the smooth sophistication that Astaire had and the athleticism of Kelly.  And in my opinion he could sing better than either of them although I would not argue the point (and he was occasionally dubbed).  I have some thoughts on this and we'll get to them.

But let it be said, I loved Gene Nelson's dancing.  And since he choreographed most of his dances, that task deserves praise as well.  When given the chance he was a good dramatic actor and then a prolific director when the kinds of musicals he did dried up.

Born in Oregon the family moved to Seattle, Washington when he was one.  While his father held down a blue collar job, he had been a dancer in his youth along with being an ice skater and a gymnast.  Before his son was 10, his father taught him much about them and Nelson loved them all.

It was while watching Fred Astaire (whom Nelson came to idolize) the first time in Flying Down to Rio in 1933, the boy at 13 was determined to become a dancer.  His father took him seriously and enrolled him in dance classes which he did for a few years.

The family moved to Santa Monica, California and after graduation from Santa Monica High (my alma mater, too... oh Samohi, dear old Samohi, queen of the setting sun...), he got a job dancing in shows at prestige movie houses.  In those days the big theaters had a little variety show to entertain patrons in between showings of a big movie.

At the same time he performed in an ice show at the Ambassador Hotel, always a venue to attract the Hollywood brass.  He joined the Sonja Henie Ice Show and toured with it for three years.  20th Century Fox signed him to a contract in the late 30s and put him in the skating chorus of two Henie movies, Second Fiddle and Everything Happens at Night, both 1939.  

He went to New York and worked in a couple of shows, gaining a decent reputation as a dancer, choreographer and actor.  He met Miriam Franklin who gained her own reputation in the same fields.  They began dating and had great fun together.  They both loved being with someone who could talk shop and they loved choregraphing dance numbers together.  A couple of weeks after Pearl Harbor, they married.  June Allyson was maid of honor.  The new Mrs. Nelson knew her husband had an eye for the ladies but hoped the partnership would be a good one. She would be professionally known as Miriam Nelson.

Three months after marriage, Nelson joined the Signal Corps and he had hardly finished peeling potatoes when he was recruited to be in an Irving Berlin show called This Is the Army.  His gang of military merrymakers traveled all over the country with the show.  

In 1943, reunited, the Nelson moved to Los Angeles where he would do a bit in the Warner Bros. movie version of This Is the Army.  

Its live version then played in several European cities and the newlyweds did not see one another for over two years.  Nelson was furloughed in New York and soon he was on Broadway in Lend an Ear, assisted in the singing and dancing departments by his friends Marge and Gower Champion.

He'd made enough of a name for himself that in 1947 20th Century Fox put him under a three-year contract and under-utilized him.  He got a small role in the June Haver musical, I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now (1947), and uncredited bits in the Oscar-winning Gentlemen's Agreement (1947) and The Walls of Jericho and Apartment for Peggy, both 1948.

Miriam would begin a celebrated Hollywood career as a choreographer and occasionally a Miss Fixit.  Her musical genes would not let her down.  She was a coach to many a star in the dancing arena.

Nelson and Haver were both offered contracts at Warner Bros and were immediately reunited in The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950).  While it is a perfectly fine B-musical and Nelson had several dance numbers with Haver and also did some singing, it's something else that got my attention.  It is the first of five teamings with Gordon MacRae who became a personal friend.  He also became my favorite male movie singer.

I very much liked most of the movies Nelson made at Warners because over and over he worked with the same people... MacRae, Virginia Mayo and Doris Day and here and there were Dennis Morgan, Patrice Wymore, Steve Cochran,    Don DeFore, Phyllis Thaxter, S. Z. (Cuddles) Sakall, Eve Arden, Virginia Gibson, Dick Wesson and even Ronald Reagan.  Most of the films (and more not featuring Nelson) were cornball-- c'mon, everyone, let's put on a show-- but I just loved them.

The first of three films (in a row, no less) he made with Day is Tea for Two (1950).  MacRae was the male star.  In fact never was Nelson billed over MacRae.  The film's source material is No, No Nanette.  Nelson was choreographer and Miriam his assistant.  It's the first time Day danced in a film.  She and the Nelsons became life-long pals.  While he was in several numbers in the film, his best dance number is Oh Me, Oh My.

From left... Nelson, Mayo, Cagney, Day, MacRae

The West Point Story (1950) was the first of four pairings of Nelson and Mayo.  Day and MacRae were also in the cast while James Cagney was the star.  It had so much corn I always brought along butter and salt and pepper but to see the four younger ones in a film together pleased me no end.  My high point was seeing the five of them sing and dance among a large company for The Military Polka. 

Nelson gets Day all to himself in Lullaby of Broadway (1951).  He had won the Golden Globe for best new star and for my money this pairing made the film a big success.  I thought Day was a good dancer... not a natural one but she took instruction well and the Nelsons worked lovingly with her.  Day and Nelson were a hit singing and dancing to Somebody Loves Me and the title tune and Nelson was sensational with Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.

Around this time he teamed with JoAnn Dean Killingsworth for ice shows and dancing gigs which they would continue for years.  They first worked together in the Henie ice spectaculars.  He certainly felt he needed to work more than he did in movies so he grabbed Killingsworth as his partner.

Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951) is as dreadful as its title.  The three-girls-looking-for-rich-husbands plot is so tired and done so much better in other films.  However, it is semi-worth seeing if only for two musical numbers.  He and Mayo doing Birth of the Blues where he plays a trumpet while dancing and ogling her sexy charms is exceptional.  And Tiptoe Through the Tulips is also good fun.  

Starlift (1951) featured all five stars from The West Point Story and many other WB contractees.  It was one of those all-star extravaganzas that all studios occasionally made, usually to support a war effort.  I don't count this one as a film Nelson and his frequent costars made together because most have no common scenes.

She's Working Her Way Through College (1952), a musical remake of The Male Animal, found critics falling all over themselves for Nelson's dancing, particularly the gymnasium number.  Mayo was also in top form as a stripper who goes to college and helps the school put on a big show.  Both she and Nelson were a little long in the tooth but we fans didn't care.

She's Back on Broadway (1953) was an odd flick for Nelson and also his last partnership with Mayo.  It was odd because although he was the top-billed male, Steve Cochran actually has the larger part.  Both actors were Mayo's real-life best male friends.  Nelson's big number is I May Be Wrong.

Nelson and Phyllis Kirk

Director Andre DeToth had a knack for choosing actors for the types of roles they usually didn't play.  He chose Nelson for the film noir Crime Wave (1953) and the dancing man acquitted himself quite well.  Co-starring Sterling Hayden, Phyllis Kirk and a young Charles Bronson, Nelson plays an ex-con, now living a straight life, whose home is invaded by thugs he knew in prison who have escaped.  It is a fine piece of work by all.  I wonder why Nelson didn't pursue more roles like this one.  

The Nelsons had been living the good life.  They shared a son, they opened up their home to friends and colleagues and they were often photographed on the town, usually with the MacRaes or the Champions.  But Miriam had started to get that feeling that something wasn't right.  She just sat on it but kept her eyes and ears and hunches tuned up.

He had one more film to do for Warners, Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), but it held little promise so he wasn't looking forward to it with its inane title and well-worn story.  Since one of the other sailors was MacRae, Nelson hoped they'd have some giggles that might lift him out of his doldrums.

What he was not prepared for was that he and the girl of the title, Jane Powell, would fall in love.  Both apparently unhappily married, neither was prepared for how they were regarded in Hollywood (MGM, Powell's home studio wouldn't let Nelson on the lot), their loss of friends, their rapid divorces.  Powell said she knew how Ingrid Bergman felt in the late forties.

With Jane Powell

The two appeared everywhere, each was front side when the other was giving a live performance, and photos popped up all the time.  But as they began discussing wedding plans, Nelson told Powell he needed to go off and think about it.  He wasn't sure.  She was flabbergasted.  Not only did they not marry, they didn't even see one another again for many years when they did manage to become friends.

Nelson did lose a lot of his friends.  Miriam was probably more well-liked than he was and most sided with her.  He seemed more down in the dumps and his drinking increased.  After one last hurrah, his career as a performer largely came to an end.  And there was that horrible accident.  Miriam didn't think Nelson was ever the same after they divorced and that he regretted his decision despite two more marriages and divorces.

Nelson scurried over to Universal to sing and dance with Tony Curtis (!) in more sailor silliness, So This Is Paris.  A forgettable musical score and filming entirely on the studio backlot didn't help it at the box office.  Nelson's fans were pleased that his athletic dancing got the best notices.

That last hurrah, by the way, was the greatest screen triumph Gene Nelson would ever know... the part of the lovesick, high-stepping lasso cowboy Will Parker in Oklahoma (1955).  I found so many reasons to love this Rodgers & Hammerstein movie and Nelson's high-stepping dancing is one of them.  He will always be rightly remembered fondly for his athleticism at the train station in the Kansas City number.

With Gloria Grahame as Ado Annie

What should have been an all-around great experience for Nelson (his final appearance with MacRae) in a huge film was instead very disappointing.  Most of that is due to Gloria Grahame who was notoriously difficult to work with.  She was suffering bad publicity from her well-publicized personal life, her constant fussing with her looks and her shattered nerves over having to sing.  The results were arguments with coworkers, lateness and even refusing to do some scenes.  Since most of them were with Nelson, he suffered more than the others.

I will never understand how an actor who is looking for that big break and then gets it never makes another decent movie.  How in the hell does that happen and why?  Whatever the reason film offers dried up and he did what all movie actors do when that happens, he told his agent to throw his name in the arena for TV work.

Then in 1957 he was filming in Tennessee and a horse he was riding, stumbled, knocking Nelson off.  The horse fell on him, fracturing his pelvis.  It was a substantial injury.  His days of dancing on ships and up and down bannisters and over Volkswagens had come to an end.  Even offers for straight dramatic roles were not forthcoming.

It's not surprising that a director of dance would turn to directing period.  As a director of both movie and TV projects, he worked far more than he did as a movie performer and steadily for 20 years.  The TV work was mostly series stuff, a low ebb in directing.  When one comes to do an episode of a series that's been on for awhile with regular characters who know what to do, what's to direct, really?  He liked to say he'd done eight Riflemans, 24 Mod Squads and 32 Donna Reeds.  While not exactly accurate, you get the point.

Frankly, his movies weren't much better.  His most acclaim is likely the Hank Williams bio, Your Cheatin' Heart, but there was also Hootenanny Hoot and two Elvis flicks, Kissin' Cousins and Harum Scarum.  It paid the bills but it's certainly not what he had envisioned for himself.

Then the sun came out, gloriously, one last time.  He got the plum role of Buddy in the Stephen Sondheim-James Goldman production of Follies (1971).  I always thought it was a bit over-rated but it was popular due, I say, to its cast which included Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins, Yvonne De Carlo and John McMartin.  The New York Times praised Nelson's 30s-style, acrobatic dance solo and he was nominated for a Tony.  

His final film was in a small role in the Julie Andrews-William Holden-starrer, S.O.B. (1981) and his last TV role was in the series where all the old actors went...  to Cabot Cove and Murder She Wrote (1987).  In the late 80s he taught in the theater arts department of San Francisco University.

The old hoofer hadn't been feeling himself for a while when he died of cancer at age 76 in Calabassas, California.  I remember hearing a comment from Virginia Mayo who said her great dance partner and incredible friend had died and she was feeling great sadness.

So why didn't Nelson achieve the great fame that Kelly and Astaire did?  Like those two greats, Nelson seemed to be able to do anything they could do.  He never met an object he couldn't dance with or over or under.  He was wonderfully acrobatic.  He was smooth as silk dancing with Mayo or Day or several others.  He often choreographed his own material... for awhile with a talented choreographer-wife.

He seemed to have been more popular with coworkers than either of the other two.  Astaire was kind to dancing partners and others but he was rigid about his dancing and what he wanted a routine to look like.  Kelly was a monster of a task-master whom many bristled about working with.

Some would say Nelson made B musicals while the other two made the big ones.  Some would say he just didn't have the opportunity.  So far so true.  But why is that?  Let's get real.  Opportunity for making big films and for making the loudest roar was at MGM.  Certainly not at Warner Bros.  Or take a page from Dan Dailey at Fox or Donald O'Connor at Universal or even Paramount.

I begrudge Astaire and Kelly nothing.  They more than deserve their lofty positions.  I always just kinda wish there'd been a little room up there for Gene Nelson.

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