Fred Kelly, four years Gene’s junior, was a celebrated dance instructor and choreographer who actually had quite a stellar career at both, who during the 1940s and 50s was one of the most sought after dance teachers in Europe and, back in America, had a rather enviable career choreographing and directing musical variety acts for such hit TV series as The Steve Allen Show, among others.
His iconic brother Gene might have had the same path except for a different twist of fate. It turns out Gene was quite the prodigy who had no intention of pursuing a dance career. He graduated from high school in Pittsburgh at 16, graduated with honors from University of Pittsburg where he had started as a journalism major and ended as an economics major. Then he went to law school!
But then his parents fell on hard times and, while still in school, was forced to take on the added task of supporting them, which he did by taking over the family business, a dance studio, with assistance from brother Fred. They’d both only been dancing since Gene was 15 and only took it up, as he said, because he thought it’d be "a good way to get girls." He needed a gimmick for growing the business so made it different by inventing his own dance routines for his students, and entering and winning choreography contests doing the same, all just to make extra money. He was soon in such huge demand that he gave up law school. It wasn’t long before he was on Broadway, dancing in and choreographing shows for New York bigwig Robert Alton. Next stop: Hollywood.
What is not clear is why Fred did not follow Gene’s success in movies, though he was very successful as a Broadway choreographer and even more successful as a dance instructor to the rich and famous. And evidently MGM thought they were both destined for stardom because, in 1932, they produced a short documentary called, "The Kelly Brothers," demonstrating their phenomenal dance skills and ingenious choreography. Gene went on to become enormously famous and a household name. Fred became quite famous too, but in a totally sphere mostly unknown to the rest of the world.
Fred was the one that the aristocrats of Europe called on to teach their children proper ballroom dancing, a skill considered essential for well-bred nobility. In 1950, General Eisenhower recommended Fred to Buckingham Palace as the official dance instructor for the royal family. So huge was Fred’s reputation in Europe that he was considered a bigger star there than his movie star brother.
How huge? Here’s an amusing anecdote. When "An American in Paris" premiered in London in 1951, the 25 year old Princess Elizabeth, soon to be queen, eagerly sought out Gene Kelly only to ask him, "Mr. Kelly, is it true? Are you really the brother of Fred Kelly?"
So when I saw the film, "Deep In My Heart" on TCM Monday night, and discovered in the listing that it was the only film in which the brothers Kelly appeared together, I was stunned. I never knew Gene Kelly had a brother. Then I was even more stunned. Not only did he have a younger brother named Fred, but Fred was just as talented. And just as famous in a different world. The film itself was a biography of the legendary composer Sig Romberg, who was all the rage on Broadway during the 1910s and 20s, basically a one-man musical factory for the Shubert Organization. It was a so-so film but fabulous musical numbers and Jose Ferrer, as Romberg, sang and danced his way through the whole. It seems Ferrer, in addition to being a marvelous dramatic actor, was also quite the song and dance man. In this film, he shared the stage with virtually everybody who was anybody in musical film and theater, over 30 cameo appearances from likes of Howard Keel and Ann Miller and everyone in between. Including the Brothers Kelly doing their now famous number "I Love To Go Swimmin’ With Wimmen," in their first and only appearance together in a film.
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