Gene Kelly Movies

Want to know the best Gene Kelly movies?  How about the worst Gene Kelly movies?  Curious about Gene Kelly’s box office grosses or which Gene Kelly movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Gene Kelly movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.

Gene Kelly (1912-1996) was an American dancer, singer, actor, director, producer, and choreographer.  Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire are considered to be the two greatest dancers to ever appear in movies.  Kelly acted in movies from 1942’s For Me and My Gal to 1980’s Xanadu.  Highlights of his career would be On The Town, Anchors Aweigh and the classic Singin’ In The Rain.

According to IMDB Gene Kelly had 47 acting credits and 13 directing credits during his distinguished career.  This page will only look at his movies that were released in theaters.  All television credits, movie shorts, documentaries and cameos were not included in the rankings.  That leaves 40 movies to rank. Most of the movies are acting roles, but there are 5 movies that Gene Kelly only directed. In the table below Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks 40 of his movies in 7 different sortable columns.

Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in 1945's Anchors Aweigh....Gene Kelly's biggest box office hit of his career.
Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in 1945’s Anchors Aweigh….Gene Kelly’s biggest box office hit of his career.

Gene Kelly Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Gene Kelly Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Gene Kelly movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Gene Kelly movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Gene Kelly movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Gene Kelly movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Gene Kelly movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Gene Kelly movie won.
  • Sort Gene Kelly movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.

Gene Kelly in 1952's Singin' in the Rain...Kelly's top rated movie according to critics and audiences.
Gene Kelly in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain…Kelly’s top rated movie according to critics and audiences.

Gene Kelly Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses 

Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly in 1944's Cover Girl.
Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly in 1944’s Cover Girl.

Possibly Interesting Facts About Gene Kelly

1.  Gene Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1912.

2.  Gene Kelly’s path to stardom:  After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh he and his family started running a dance studio.  The success of the Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance started to attract attention to Kelly and his dancing skills.  From Pittsburgh, Kelly went to New York City.  While appearing on Broadway, Kelly was noticed and signed to a film contract by David O. Selznick.  Talk about being a roll….Selznick also signed Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman to contracts around this time as well….not a bad trifecta.  Selznick eventually signed his contract over to MGM and Gene Kelly headed to Hollywood at the end of 1941.

3.  Gene Kelly’s first movie role was in 1942’s For Me and My Gal.  His co-star was Judy Garland.  They would appear together in two more movies (The Pirate and Summer Stock).  Kelly was also supposed to play opposite Garland in Easter Parade but an injury (a broken leg makes dancing somewhat difficult) forced him out of the role.  Fittingly Fred Astaire stepped into his role.

4.  Gene Kelly received his only Best Actor Oscar® nomination for 1945’s Anchors Aweigh.  He did receive two Golden Globe® nominations in his career.  One was for Best Actor in 1951’s An American In Paris and the other was Best Director for 1969’s Hello Dolly. 

5.  Gene Kelly did receive an Honorary Oscar® in 1952…..”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 “.

6.  Gene Kelly was married three times.  His first marriage was to actress Betsy Blair from 1941 to 1957.  They had one child, Kerry Kelly.  His second marriage was to dance choreographer Jeanne Coyne from 1960 until her death in 1973.  They had two children, Bridget and Tim.  His final marriage was to author Patricia Ward from 1990 until his death in 1996.

7.  Some things we found interesting about his classic movie Singin’ In The Rain.  Kelly had a 103 degree fever when he filmed his most famous scene….dancing and singing in the rain.  His quote about working with Debbie Reynolds on the movie….”I wasn’t nice to Debbie. It’s a wonder she still speaks to me.”  Once after Kelly insulted Reynolds for not being able to dance, Fred Astaire, who was hanging around the studio, found her crying under a piano and helped her with her dancing.

8.  Cyd Charisse worked numerous times with both dancing legends Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.  Charisse’s husband, Tony Martin, said he could tell who she had been dancing with that day on an MGM set. If she came home covered with bruises on her, it was the very physically-demanding Gene Kelly, if not it was the smooth and agile Fred Astaire.

9.  The half-moon shaped scar on his left cheek was caused by a bicycle accident he had as a young boy.

10.  Check out Gene Kelly‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

One Gene Kelly movie did not make the rankings.  1958’s Something For The Girls is listed on almost all of his movie lists.  We were unable to find any information on this movie.  No reviews, no audience voting, no box office. no nothing….so if anybody has any information on this mystery movie please let us know.

I highly recommend checking out this GeneKelly site.  This is a truly impressive GeneKelly website.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to my movie pages on the Screen Legend

2.   Cary Grant

Steve Lensman’s Gene Kelly You Tube Video

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

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71 thoughts on “Gene Kelly Movies”

  1. Hi, Bruce.

    In looking at your classic actors list, I saw Mr. Kelly listed and I recently saw his movie Invitation to the Dance for the first time on TCM. Kelly is my favourite male dancer, closely followed by Astaire.

    Singin’ in the Rain is my favourite Kelly film followed by On The Town, Brigadoon, An American in Paris, and Inherit the Wind as an actor.

    My favourite of his directorial films where he was not an actor is The Cheyanne Social Club.

    I have seen all of his top 5 films, (I did not care for Thousands Cheer), all of his top 10 films, and overall 26 films of his.

    The lowest scoring film I have seen is 33 Invitation to the Dance. One film I wished I had never seen was Black Hand, not at all a film I wanted to see Gene Kelly be in. Very depressing.

    Flora Breen Robison

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora….I think this Gene Kelly page was one of the first classic pages I wrote after leaving HubPages. I know this was one of the pages Steve and I were curious about your tally count. So Steve’s total was 15…..mine was 7……and yours is 26. So we have 22 and you have 26….once again your classic movie watching puts us to shame.

      Of your favorites….I have seen and enjoyed Singin’ In The Rain, On The Town and An American in Paris. I have yet too see Brigadoon or Inherit the Wind. For some reason Inherit the Wind has escaped me….which I find strange because it seems that I have been aware of that movie my entire life. Black Hand is near the bottom of my rankings…..so it is good to know my ranking system worked when looking at that movie.

      The Cheyenne Social Club is a fun movie……seems that James Stewart and Henry Fonda were having fun while making that one…..and that always seems to come across in movies. Very glad to see you finding some of classic movie pages. I appreciate you taking the time to read and comment on them.

      Reply

    2. Hey Flora….I was looking at my index….and I think all of these performers were after HubPages and thus missing a Flora tally….if you are interested.
      Actors
      1. Montgomery Clift
      2. James Dean
      3. John Garfield
      4. Bob Hope
      5. Dean Martin
      6. Anthony Perkins
      7. Tyrone Power
      8. Elvis Presley
      9. Burt Reynolds
      10. Frank Sinatra
      Actresses
      1. Olivia de Havilland
      2. Irene Dunne
      3. Susan Hayward
      4. Shirley MacLaine…Shirley actually attached my page to her facebook page.
      5. Norma Shearer
      I actually thought it was going to be more pages. You already found my Gene Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Edward G. Robinson pages.

      Reply

      1. Great news about Ms. Maclaine. 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Sinatra’s birth, so I will be sure to look him up next. Then his friend Shirley MacLaine. I am familiar with all of these names and will try to go back and forth between males and females and/or frequent Sinatra costars/non-costars.

        Cheers

        Flora

        Reply

        1. Hey Flora…..that sounds like a good plan. My next classic performer is going to be Lee Marvin……so hopefully I will keep you busy with classic performers. Frank would be a good one to start with…..he, MacLaine and Dean Martin made lots of movies together. Once again…..I am very happy to see your movie thoughts again….they were missed. During the last couple of years I was able to secure the ledgers for RKO, Warner Brothers, and MGM….so I have been lots of box office information from the 1930s, 1940s and the 1950s.

          Reply

  3. He took on several projects that were clearly beneath him so that he could be around for his kids. He had good offers to work elsewhere, but was unwilling to be an absentee father.

    Reply

  4. Interesting. It reinforces some long-held theories about the popularity of the film musical being at its highest during wartime (the 40s musicals rank highest at the box office) and the disdain for musicals shown by the Academy (apart from AAIP there’s only a sprinkling of nominations spread liberally over the rest of the films in Gene’s canon). ‘Young Girls of Rochefort’ fares better than one would expect, while the opposite can be said for ‘The Pirate’.

    Reply

    1. @Marc…I think the fact that the Academy pretty much ignored Singin’ In The Rain backs up your thoughts as well.

      Reply

  5. I agree with Mark on the interesting. The movies he made in Europe were the lowest. Except my favorite of all, Viva Knievel. Watching Gene and Red Buttons collect all that money for 2 hours of work. Gene said he only did it for his kids.

    Reply

      1. The films Gene made in Europe was to spend the MGM funds that could not be brought back to the states, under the corporate tax codes at that time. Steve is right that Gene took the Kneivel roll because his kids ” thought it would be cool” !
        Would like to discuss the # 1 interesting facts as they are misleading regarding family history. Also # 9 is something that no one in our family has ever heard about regarding my grand father?

        Reply

        1. @Michael….thanks for the information on the MGM funds. Sorry #1 is misleading I will fix the misleading stuff right away. I was trying to cover many many years in a short little sentence or two. As for #9…..I wrote this a few months ago….trying to find my notes on where I found that piece of information. But I stand corrected….and will find another piece of interesting information. Thanks for letting me know….it is greatly appreciated.

          Reply

        2. @Michael Kelly…..let’s see….I deleted #9….the Al Jolson tidbit is listed on IMDb.com under Gene Kelly trivia. I replaced it with Gene Kelly’s place on AFI’s Top 100 stars of all-time. I also tweaked #1….and merged it with #2 hopefully it is not as misleading. Once again thanks for the input…it is greatly appreciated.

          Reply

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