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. 1 You mentioned over the weekend that you thought that by the 1950s Gene Kelly had become a bigger box office star than Fred Astaire; so as you are well aware of my fascination for stats and as Bruce had already done all of the hard work I thought it would be fun to check out the matter.

    2 Fortunately Bruce has given us all but 2 of their worldwide grosses in the 50s and I applied to Bruce’s domestic grosses for those two movies the average classic era ratio of 65% domestic/35% foreign and was therefore able to arrive at a reasonable global comparison of the 1950s Astaire/Kelly inflation adjusted box office performances.

    3 There is not much in it regarding total worldwide grosses for each of the pair, Gene’s movies generating around $1.9 billion and Fred’s amassing about $1.7 billion. However ignoring cameos Fred had just 9 releases in the decade whereas Gene starred in 13 and Fred’ films averaged out at $190 million worldwide and Gene’s average was $133 million.

    4. However the 1950s saw the decline of the Hollywood musical as we have just recently discussed in our exchanges and Wikipedia is a good source for determining which movies were profitable and which were flops; and Bruce also helpfully lists a string of Kelly flops in the trivia column of his Gene Kelly table.

    5 The end result of the Wikipedia/Cogerson information would seem to be that only 5 out of Fred’s 9 films were profitable and just 3 out of Gene’s made money with the total worldwide grosses of these profitable films being $1.0 billion for Fred’s 5 and $0.830 billion for Gene’s 3. The message would therefore seem to be that neither Fred nor Gene were in the same ball park as the ’new kids on the block’ such as Hudson, Mumbles, Lancaster, Curtis and Douglas and even Gene’s old co-star Sinatra all of whom were in their prime and churning out successions of hits in that decade.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the info and clarification Bob, much appreciated.

      Looking at Bruce’s Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly pages – of the two Kelly had the biggest musical of the 1950s, An American in Paris which grossed $358m worldwide gross adjusted, Astaire’s biggest of the 50s was Three Little Words which grossed $227m worldwide adjusted.

      Kelly’s 2nd biggest of the 50s was, Singin’ in the Rain with $290m. Astaire’s 2nd biggest was, Let’s Dance with $195m.

      Kelly’s 3rd biggest musical of the 1950s, not counting Deep in My Heart which starred Jose Ferrer, was Summer Stock with $184m, Astaire’s third biggest that decade was Daddy Long Legs with $187m.

      So looking at their top 3 musicals of the 1950s, Kelly was well ahead with no.1 and 2, while Astaire just pips Kelly on no.3.

      In all decades Fred Astaire has the biggest grossing musical – Blue Skies with $548m worldwide adjusted, that film also starred Bing Crosby which no doubt helped the box office.

      Kelly’s biggest grossing musical is- Anchors Aweigh with $529m worldwide adjusted, that film starred Frank Sinatra who was one of the main draws for that picture.

      Kelly’s biggest grossing ‘top billed’ musical is An American in Paris.- $358m

      Astaire’s biggest grossing ‘top billed’ musical is Top Hat – $320m

      There you go, comparisons, billings and grosses, all in one post, pure nirvana for all you stats crazy guys. 😉

      Reply

      1. 1 Lots of good New Year grosses quoted in your last post Steve but we’ll need to watch or Bruce will be getting jealous that you and I are going to emerge as a formidable stats team!

        2 However Wikipedia gives profit and loss figures for many films and in Gene Kelly’s case they provide such figures for 27 of the 40 films that Bruce lists but the 27 include all but two of his major hits so they are a good guide to his overall profitability at MGM. The Wikipedia figures adjusted for inflation suggest that 12 of the films made overall net profits of $170 million and the other 15 of them made overall net losses of $110 million – ie MGM made an overall net profit of 60 million in today’s dollars on 27 of Gene’s movies.

        3 Only about half of Fred’s films have profit and loss figures quoted in Wikipedia so there is little point in trying to make overall career comparisons between the respective profitability of him and Gene but Wikipedia does give profit/loss figures for the 10 Astaire/Rogers films and they show that in today’s dollars 8 made total net profits of $95 million and 2 made a net loss of just one million dollars – ie RKO’s overall net profit on the 10 Astaire/Rogers films was $94 million in adjusted dollars

        4 Getting back to our original subject Debbie Reynolds was of course one of the few actresses to star with both Fred and Gene and according to press reports over here today she claimed that whilst Astaire was very kind to her Kelly tried to stop her getting the Singing in the Rain part. Esther Williams also complained in her autobiography about Gene being unnecessarily unpleasant to her when they made “Take Me out to the Ballgame” together. So all in all if the reports are accurate it would seem that Astaire was the much nicer guy for an actress to work with.

        Reply

        1. Gene was a bit of a perfectionist and control freak. I wrote about Singin’ in the Rain at hubpages, Debbie Reynolds would run off the set crying, Donald O’Connor was scared of making a mistake in case he was yelled at.

          Okay Astaire was the nicer guy but bottom line it was Kelly who starred in the ‘Greatest musical of all time’ not Fred.

          Three of Kelly’s films turn up on the AFI top 25

          http://www.afi.com/100years/musicals.aspx

          Reply

          1. ASTAIRE/KELLY
            1 Didn’t realise that you were a big Kelly fan. So here’s a couple for you – who ended higher up on AFI’s Legends list and who had the higher overall Cogerson gross? And here’s a second – would you rather be in the greatest musical or all time or be considered the best dancer of all time AND be a nice person who was kind to people?

            LEGENDS THEY AIN’T BY STEVE LENSMAN
            2 I really did take you seriously about the book because I didn’t know the background to the prank and frankly I think you have the knowledge and the writing skills to produce a movie book. OK so the bad news is that you got one over on me but the good news is that I have saved the £8 that I was prepared to shell out for the purchase. Now I just have to convince my daughter that there is a bright side to it as she logged in to your post on Bruce’s site and she also took your statement as genuine and spent about 2 hours trying to track down the the means of purchasing it.
            I will certainly have to keep my eye on you on April Fool’s day!

          2. Sorry I wasted you and your daughter’s time tracking down my non-existent book Bob, I thought you’d got used to my sense of humour by now.

            If it’s any consolation I wish I had your breadth of knowledge on classic Hollywood movies, my expertise lies mainly with sci-fi and horror. If you say Fred Astaire is better than Gene Kelly who am I to argue? 🙂

            For the record nearly all my favorite musicals seem to star Gene Kelly, it may be just a coincidence. There are two Fred Astaire musicals I’ve watched many times – Easter Parade and The Band Wagon.

          3. Hey Steve….wait a minute…what are you saying?….I have already ordered 5 copies of “Legends They Are Not” by Steve Lensman….. Amazon e-mailed said they would be here by Friday the 6th. I was hoping I would get you to sign one of my copies…..the rest are birthday presents for the Cogerson clan….sounds like I need to contact my credit card company and dispute that purchase…..lol.

      2. I see you did this comment when I was in zombie mode after our return trip from Alabama. Man ….I am having a hard time typing…..as my eyes are tearing up…Steve Lensman is using our adjusted box office numbers to make his point. I guess we can shut down the site now….as it will only be going downhill from here….lol.

        Kelly vs Astaire will always be a question….that will have answers based on how you personally feel about them. Not stats…..but a comparison…..Cyd Charise’s husband could tell who she had been dancing with based on how she was when she got home….if she had danced with Astaire….she was still fresh and ready to go…..if she danced with Kelly…she was tired, hurting and sporting bruises….not saying which style was better….but it is safe to say that Kelly’s dancing was more physical than Astaire’s……I probably got that from you…somewhere over the last 5 years.

        As for the stats…..looks like Kelly has Astaire slightly beat….but by the time Kelly came along…Astaire was thinking about retirement…..in other words…..Astaire was losing in head to head matchups….but his peak years were well behind him….I think statistically…Kelly had the better numbers…..but Astaire maintained his slightly worse numbers for a much longer time.

        Your comment was indeed epic…..sorry I missed it the first time…..I will be adding even more comments to the new comment page.

        Reply

    2. Hey Bob….these might be my favorite comments….the ones where you use the stats on UMR.com to prove your points…glad Wiki and UMR are so helpful…..makes all of our work seem worth it. I agree with your conclusions…..neither Kelly or Astaire separated themselves in your examples. Good comment.

      Reply

      1. Very diplomatic Bruce. Were you not impressed with my award-winning post on Astaire v Kelly using your own fact filled pages? Is Steve invisible in these debates? Bob is almost impossible to beat at this game, he can turn any arguement around in his favor. I see John is still embroiled in the ‘billing wars’ with Bob, good luck with that.

        Hey that’s a good title for my next imaginary book – “Hollywood’s Billing Wars” Bob can write the preface, and John the Afterword. 🙂

        Reply

  2. 1 Your video’s opening quote is ironic in view of Bruce’s Possibly Interesting Fact No 8 and a comment Fred Astaire is supposed to have made. Fred and Gene have long been regarded as Hollywood’s two greatest male dancers but they were noted for having contrasting styles with as Bruce indicates Gene considered to be the more rigidly technical and “strenuous” of the two and Fred regarded as the more casual and free flowing. A starlet who supported both of them in dance routines was rehearsing a scene with Fred when he noticed that she was more “animated” than he preferred his partners to be so he told her to stop and then said “I see you’ve been filming with the Irishman!”

    2 OTHER COMMENTS (1) fine marks from the start with 6.3 being your lowest (2) surprised that so low in your chart was The Three Musketeers one of my Kelly favourites with Gene’s dancing athleticism showing itself to versatile effect in the swordplay scenes and also disappointed that Deanna’s Xmas Holiday not higher (3) I notice you’ve included the ensemble movies Words and Music and Ziegfeld Follies which I tend to disregard as I feel that they are not true star vehicles for any one performer. However Bruce likes them (4) lots of fine posters in this one and special ‘awards’ to those for Singin in the Rain, Cover Girl, Brigadoon and Ziegfeld Follies; and I loved the stills from Singin in Rain , On the Town, Anchors Aweigh and An American in Paris (5) Great that you gave 5th spot to It’s Always Fair Weather which in general I never thought got its deserved recognition and I see that you and Bruce have an identical Top 5 albeit in a slightly different order. 9/10

    Reply

    1. Thanks Bob, always happy to have a veteran film buff such as yourself review my videos. The problem with creating lists is that there will always be disagreements with the rankings, every time I see a top 20 or 30 at various sites such as Collider or Hollywood Reporter I know I will disagree with most if not all of it. Recently THR had a top 30 on Ron Howards films, all the ones I didn’t like were at the top.

      Funny you should mention Words and Music, John at IMDB compalined it was too far down the list on my Janet Leigh video, I didn’t even know she was in that until a few days ago. They may not be star vehicles but they do sometimes contain famous musical numbers by these dancing and singing greats. They are part of the whole show and should be included IMO. In many cases these films only get watched because a favorite performer has a musical number in it.

      Another case in point is The List of Adrian Messenger, a few days ago someone complained on youtube that I shouldn’t have included that film in the Burt Lancaster video because he only really appeared in the last few seconds of the film. True. An old lady was used for his ‘disguised’ role elsewhere in the film. But the famous guest stars are part of the ‘gimmick’ of the movie and their faces are on the poster too, that’s why I included it. I think Bruce did too.

      I think we talked about The Three Musketeers before on the Lana Turner video, Gene Kelly is the best thing about the movie, his acrobatics help liven up a dull movie, any other director might have turned it into a swashbuckling classic, Michael Curtiz for example. The film comes to a dead stop every time Van Heflin’s dour Athos opens his mouth.

      It’s Always Fair Weather is a big favorite of mine and I’m glad it had a good score. I usually watch Singin’ in the Rain along with The Band Wagon during Xmas, usually Boxing Day.

      Reply

    2. Good video breakdown…of one of Steve’s excellent videos on an all-time great. Glad our Top 5 is the same…..then again Steve can’t be wrong all the time!…lol.

      Reply

  3. BRUCE

    1 You and other readers exchanging comments about Gene Kelly is yet another of those coincidences that you and I have discussed recently because I’ve just sent you a post about Ladd and Cruise; and in her autobiography Esther Williams claimed that Gene was nasty to her during the shooting of their Sinatra co-starrer Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949), and she gave as the reason her view that he resented her being taller than him !

    2 CORRECTION The Railway Man was 2013 and not 2015 – apologies.

    BOB

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Yep yesterday was Gene Kelly’s birthday….I always share my page on the Faceboook pages of the stars….it is one of the reasons Facebook is one of my biggest view getters. Sounds like Kelly made a habit out of treating his co-stars roughly…Esther Williams in Take Me Out to the Ballgame…..and Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ In The Rain. Maybe it was his height….we will never know.
      2. Hey….we all make mistakes…lol.

      Reply

    1. Thank you Robin….I figured for his birthday I should share my tribute page to him….Happy Birthday Mr. Kelly.

      Reply

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