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A lot of people seem to agree. In the past half a dozen years, switching hats like a bargain-basement shopper, he created a jazzy ballet for the Paris Opera, directed, produced or starred in six movies. On TV, he waltzed with Julie Andrews ("He made me feel as if I really could dance"), mugged with Danny Kaye, hosted the Hollywood Palace, narrated documentaries on silent movies and baseball, and starred in four one-hour specials and his own series, Going My Way. This year he was awarded an Emmy for the best children's program, Jack and the Beanstalk, in which he danced with animated characters, a technique he helped pioneer in Anchors Aweigh in 1945. Between times, he emceed the 1965 Arts Festival at the White House and toured West Africa as a cultural ambassador for the State Department.
Feeding Grimaces. Kelly deplores the common U.S. image of the dancer as a mincing she-man. When he first began dancing in nightclubs in the Pittsburgh area, ringside drunks would snigger "Hello, honey." One night he slugged one of the loudmouths and hotfooted it to Manhattan. He prepped as a Broadway chorus boy, "feeding grimaces to Mary Martin" in 1937, three years later won the lead in Pal Joey and a one-way ticket to Hollywood.
He arrived at the time when the leggy, cotton-candy spectacles of Choreographer Busby Berkeley were giving way to the cool sophistication epitomized by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But Kelly discovered that he couldn't dance in white tie and tails. "I needed more room. I had to roll up my sleeves." Thus he developed a stereotype of the cinema dancer that endured for more than a decade: an ordinary chap in sports shirt, ballooning slacks and white socks (to draw attention to his feet). His style was virile, breezy, and charged with a lusty bravura, whether he was splashing through a Technicolor rainstorm, kicking up his heels beneath the Eiffel Tower, or skittering across Manhattan stoops in his Navy whites. Though his singing voice sounded like someone gargling pebbles, he projected an easy grace and wit that made him the most sought-after song-and-dance man in Hollywood.
Today, Kelly is committed to directing The American Male, an irreverent look at the species by European women, and Tom Swift, a satirical treatment of derring-do in the early 1900s. Last week he began flexing his joints for a dancing stint on the Jackie Gleason Show. No barbell and wheat-germ addict, he simply runs around the block every morning, gradually increasing the laps until he feels the urge to go soft-shoeing all over the neighborhood.