Gene Kelly Quotations

When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.

I think dancing is a man's game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman.

I still find it almost impossible to relax for more than one day at a time.

At 14 I discovered girls. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship.

I wanted to do new things with dance, adapt it to the motion picture medium.

I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls.

I'd studied dance in Chicago every summer end taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

My mother had gotten a job as a receptionist at a dancing school and had the idea that we should open our own dancing school; we did, and it prospered.

There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.

I didn't want to be a dancer. I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally.

I arrived in Hollywood twenty pounds overweight and as strong as an ox.

Things danced on the screen do not look the way they do on the stage. On the stage, dancing is three-dimensional, but a motion picture is two-dimensional.

On the one hand there is definitely rage and anger for the drunken driver of the car mixed with overwhelming sadness for the survivors.

MGM didn't know what they had with Cyd, did they?

I don't understand the whole concept of doubles. They used to do that in the early sound films in Hollywood, but I thought we had gotten rid of that. Now not only do you have doubles, but as in Flashdance, you have triples, quadruples. From my point of view it is bad for the art.

In the 1930s there was this tendency in Hollywood to portray everyone as rich. Even if they were doing a poor man's dance, they were all so nicely clothed, gowned, coiffured. That's why I decided to wear white socks, loafers, T-shirts, and blue jeans. I had a sociopolitical context in front of me: I was a child of the Depression who danced in a way that would represent the common man.

When they do let them sustain on screen from head to toe, though, then you know they must think the person is a good dancer.

The future of dance will always be tied up with the public's acceptance of the star. If they accept the star, then they'll accept the dance.

America now has more and better dancers than they have ever had in the history of the country, but that won't account for the public wants to see.

For a ridiculous analogy, let's take Purple Rain. If you were to put Purple Rain and The Sound of Music on the desk of a producer, he or she would know that the majority of moviegoers would rather listen to Prince. Since they are in the business of making money, no one can blame them. But if it ever came to the decision of making a film like that I'd say, "No." They are very easy films to make, though. In Purple Rain there is nothing complex about the way that they dance. Or sing. It would be a bit boring for an adult to make that film. It just wouldn't test their métier.

I don't even want to discuss Flashdance. I'm no critic, but that's an interesting phenomenon, that picture.

If I played a tough kid on the street I couldn't go out there and get into fifth position. I had to dance like a tough kid on the street.

Like an athlete, [dance] is an everyday job. You have to stay in shape - unless you just want to loaf through a couple of hoofing routines. But that just didn't satisfy me.

I had been asked to open a nightclub in Atlantic City. They offered me a ridiculous amount of money. They literally overpaid me. So I did one show a night. Then they asked me back by popular demand. So I went back. Then I said, "To hell with this." I was only doing it for the money, and I was doing easy routines. It's just too much work to get up every day and practice.

In fact, I wasn't going to dance in Xanadu, but several journalists told me that Olivia Newton-John kept saying how sad she was that she wouldn't get the chance to dance with me. So I finally said, "All right, throw in a number." But I'm through with dancing.

The only time I feel pressured is when some woman's husband comes over and says, "Will you go ask my wife to dance? She's a great dancer and would just love to dance with you."Suddenly there's a crowd of people standing around us and they expect that they're about to see Fred and Ginger. Here the woman and I have just met, and these people think that it's showtime. That is the only time I think it is really embarrassing.

First of all, break-dancing has been done for years, though not all of it put together the way it is now. But, actually, the distinctions have been blurring since the 1950s.

Mentally, I write myself a little story. Of course, sometimes you have a song that says, "Do that." My best example is Singin' in the Rain. Arthur Freed had insisted that the song should be in the picture, but he was very anxious about it.

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

I didn't want to be a dancer... I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally.

I think Twyla [Tharp] has a lot to say. The great thing about Twyla is that she continues to explore.

I'd studied dance in Chicago every summer and taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

There's nothing revolutionary about Saturday Night Fever . You can see the same kind of movement at your local disco.

I miss the romance. I keep saying this over and over again, but dance follows music. And if the accent today is percussion and rhythm and loudness, then that is the way the dance numbers will be. But it is pretty hard on romance with seven guitars, three drums, and no melody instruments in the band.

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they've studied the tapes of the old films. We didn't have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.

I may be rancid butter, but I'm on your side of the bread.

There is a certain amount of pornography that exists throughout Purple Rain, but the appeal is obvious. You can really pick that picture apart and see where "A" fits into "B" and so on. It was very wisely done.

Come on with the rain / I’ve a smile on my face.

I arrived in Hollywood twenty pounds overweight and as strong as an ox. But if I put on a white tails and tux like Fred Astaire, I still looked like a truck driver.

She's one of those third year girls who gripe my liver... You know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture... They're officious and dull. They're always making profound observations they've overheard.

The finest all-around performer we ever had in America was Judy Garland. There was no limit to her talent. She was the quickest, brightest person I ever worked with.

In film, a dancer should always be shot from head to toe, because that way you can see the whole body and that is the art of dancing. Nowadays they shoot the nose. Left nostril. Right nostril. Hand. Foot. Bust. Derrière. The film prevents you from determining who is a good dancer and who is not.

I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov do Twyla Tharp's Sinatra Suite on PBS. I have no numbers to prove it, but I bet that kids who saw that loved it. I think you will see younger dancers, who certainly have the artistic sense and capabilities, start going back to romantic numbers.

I took it as it came and it happened to be very nice.

I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away - but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me.

The only thing is that ordinarily when I do dance with [women] they think I am suddenly going to throw them over a table or twist them all around. All I want to do is one-two, one-two-three - a simple fox trot. But they're shaking with anticipation at the thought that I'm about to whip them around and then toss them on the roof.

I never wanted to be a dancer. It's true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.

At the time the quickest way to establish yourself as an American was to throw a little bit of tap into your dance - even when it wasn't called for. But what also helped me was the fact that I was dancing in roles that I had played.

The way I look at a musical, you are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.

Any man who looks like a sissy while dancing is just a lousy dancer.

It fit into my scheme of things for many reasons. At the time it was true that male dancers were looked down upon, and it was true that a lot of the male dancers were effeminate. But what I was really trying to do was develop something that would be American.

I never played a rich man, I never played a prince. And to play a sailor or longshoreman you had to make your dance more eclectic and varied, but still keep it indigenous to your nationality, upbringing, and background.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

I didn't want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.

At 14, I discovered girls. At that time, dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover that you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams.

I love rhythmic dancing - I'm not derogating it at all. It's just that sometimes you want to whisper, "I adore you." And for that you need strings and woodwinds.

You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.

You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or running through a rainstorm, then I'll be very glad to be a song and dance man.