71 Quotes by Gene Kelly

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.