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to tackle Broadway; two days after reaching New York he had a featured role in "Leave It To Me," which was followed by three hit plays including "Pal Joey." He came to Hollywood devoid of the supposed essentials of handsome looks and personal glamour; his subordinate role in "For Me And My Gal" created such an instant sensation he was rushed into top roles in two top M-G-M pictures and then was handed the starring part opposite Kathryn Grayson in "Private Miss Jones."
Not bad for a young man who just has skimmed by his thirtieth birthday! Yet Gene, in all honesty, professes to view the achievements as ordinary and himself as less.
"I'm just Joe Average," he said. "I've got a wife, a kid, a car and a house. There's a million guys like me."
BLOODY noses and blacked eyes were Gene's earliest memories of life in his home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The same dancing which brought him fame was responsible. Done up in prim little Eton collars, with his hair slicked and his ears scrubbed pink, he was sent to dancing school once a week by his mother. She believed in little boys' learning the niceties of life.
"The route to school was lined with kids whose mothers held less aesthetic views," Gene said. "Invariably the divergent schools of thought clashed and I had to do battle on each of six corners to prove I was no sissy."
On one occasion Gene and his brother (who came under the same maternal dictum) were jumped by a gang of seven kids. That called for quick strategy since they were so badly outnumbered.
"G'wan!" Gene disdainfully answered the challenge. "We're going to a party with cake and strawberry ice cream and everything!"
"Oh yeah?" said the gang, preparing to let fly. "Prove it!"
"Okay," said Gene. "Follow us and see. Maybe we can hook you some of the eats." The gang fell in line. Keeping up a patter about the delights in store, Gene led the beguiled enemy to the door of the dancing school and safety.
"The Irish have a way of meeting things," Gene observed.
In other respects his childhood was that of the average American boy. His father, James Patrick Kelly, was a salesman and earned sufficient to guarantee his family of three sons and two daughters the usual comforts and a modicum of luxury. He shared a room on the third floor of the big red brick home with his younger brother Fred and it was cluttered with the usual paraphernalia and trophies of adolescents— pennants, stolen No Parking signs, cigar box hoards of junk and white mice in a shoebox. He had the usual succession of mumps and measles and the one outstanding accident which always throws the family into a panic. It left a slightly curving scar at the left of his mouth (Continued on page 94)
Has anybody here seen Kelly? Sure and everyone has — and did a double take pronto. That's no blarney; neither is this all about Gene story
BY KAY PROCTOR
MAY, 1943
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