Eugene Curran Kelly was an American actor, singer, dancer, producer, and choreographer. A major star of Hollywood’s golden era, he is best remembered for movies such as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “An American in Paris”. He was born on the 23rd of August, 1912, and passed away in 1996.
How rich was Gene Kelly? As of early 2017, sources estimate his net worth at $10 million, earned largely from his career in the entertainment industry, which began in the 1930s.
Gene Kelly Net Worth $10 million
Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to James Kelly and his wife, Harriet Curran. Enrolled by his mother in dance classes, he began dancing at an early age and, despite initial resistance, proved to be a natural talent. Alongside his brother Fred, he performed in night clubs after the financial crash of 1929 to financially support his family, after being forced to drop out of his journalism course at Pennsylvania State College.
Kelly returned to college in 1931, to study economics at the University of Pittsburgh. However, in 1937 he decided to focus fully on dance, and moved to New York where he managed to get his first work on Broadway within a year, dancing in the musical “Leave It to Me!” After a number of stage successes, Hollywood came calling, and Kelly made the move west in 1941.
Kelly’s first movie appearance was in 1942’s “For Me and my Gal”, starring Judy Garland, and from then on his career went from strength to strength throughout the decade. In 1945, he starred alongside Frank Sinatra in “Anchors Away”, a prestigious MGM musical for which he was given increased creative freedom as a choreographer. In the movie, Kelly danced opposite an animated Jerry (of “Tom and Jerry”), an iconic sequence that would go down as a significant landmark in popular culture.
Kelly would pair again with Sinatra for 1949’s “Take Me out to the Ballgame”, and for a third time in “On the Town”, one of the most important musicals of that decade. 1951 and 1952 brought perhaps his most celebrated films of all, “An American in Paris” and “Singin’ in the Rain”. Johnny Green, MGM’s head of music, described Kelly as a “hard taskmaster”. He was reportedly displeased by the casting of a then-19-year-old Debbie Reynolds, and was hugely critical of her on-set, often driving her to tears in his quest for absolute perfection. However, he once described himself deferentially as a carthorse in comparison to his friend (and supposed rival) Fred Astaire.
The rest of the 1950s saw a slow decline in the Hollywood musical, and thus Kelly’s career, as the medium was forced to compete with the growing dominance of television. During the 1960s, he moved over largely into producing and directing film. His last work was in 1994, when he choreographed for the animated film “Cats Don’t Dance”.
Kelly died on the morning of the 2nd of February 1996, after a series of strokes that had left him in very poor health. No funeral was held. Over the course of his career, he was frequently honoured. In 1946, he was nominated for an Academy Award (“Best Actor” for his performance in “Anchors Aweigh”), and in 1952, received an honorary Oscar in appreciation of “his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film”. In 1981, he won the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, and was listed by the American Film Institute as the 15th Greatest Male Star of All Time.
In his personal life, Kelly was married three times, firstly to Betsy Blair (1941-57) with whom he had a son. In 1960 he married Jeanne Coyne, and they had a son and a daughter, but she died in 1973. Through his last wife, Patricia Ward who he married in 1990, he was granted Irish citizenship. He was a staunch Democrat, and in his spare time, enjoyed various sporting activities.
