Most Hollywood musical comedies are too schmaltzy for my tastes, so until recently I didn’t even know who Gene Nelson was. But many of these movie musical comedy performers from the 40s and 50s were wonderfully skilled and talented, and a great example is Gene Nelson, a highly athletic dancer and, later on, a highly successful TV and film director. Nelson was an engaging and charismatic performer, but what I especially like when I think of him in terms of physical comedy is the way he incorporated our physical world into so much of his choreography—furniture, props, pianos, walls, stairs —pretty much everything that surrounds him, whether nailed down or not. It was all an excuse for improbable dancing, leaping, bouncing, and swinging.
Originally, this post was supposed to feature a single video and take me less than an hour to put together, but instead I had a hard time narrowing it down to only these six clips. And that’s just to get you started! He did A LOT, and between 1950 and 1953 was in ten movies! So yeah, there’s more on YouTube, including one with Ronald Reagan (before he was president).
The first clip is his brilliant stair dance from Tea for Two (1950), starring Doris Day and Gordon MacRae. (No, I haven’t seen the movie.)
Nelson’s father was a ballroom dancer, a roller skater, and an acrobat.
When he was twelve and living in Santa Monica, Nelson saw Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio and got hooked on dance.
During high school, he enrolled in the Marco School of Dance in Hollywood, where Judy Garland, Anne Miller, and Rita Hayworth had studied.
He also got hooked on skating and got so good that he was hired for the Sonia Henie Hollywood Ice Revue. He was the first person to ever do 13 Arabian cartwheels on ice.
In World War II he joined the army and was in an all-soldier revue show when Irving Berlin was in the audience. (You can’t make this stuff up.) This led to Berlin casting him in his show This is the Army, touring for over two years and appearing in the film as well.
Movie acting gigs led to him almost being cast for the lead in Easter Parade, but Fred Astaire came out of retirement and the rest is history.
But the movie roles gradually got bigger and bigger, leading up to Tea for Two.
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| S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall |
• The actor S.Z. (“Cuddles”) Sakall, who you see in the Tea for Two clip, may be familiar to you as the waiter in Casablanca (1942); see a clip of that here. Sakall and Nelson were part of Warner Bros. “repertory” company and also appeared together in Lullaby of Broadway and The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady. The Hungarian actor was well-known in Europe and in his younger days had written a lot of comedy, including music hall sketches. He fled Hitler and made a career in Hollywood, often playing befuddled or eccentric types. IMDB has a good bio of him.
• Nelson got the full bio treatment just a couple of years ago from Scott O’Brien in his book Gene Nelson— Lights! Camera! Dance! (No, I haven’t read it.) Coincidentally, O’Brien was a student at San Francisco State University in the 60s, I turned down a full-time teaching job there in 1987, and a year or two later Gene Nelson joined their faculty.
• Since I posted this, my friend Hank Smith added a comment which I am copying here so more people see it:
I got to meet Miriam Nelson, Gene Nelson’s wife, a number of years ago when she was honored by a tap organization. I often did presentations for whoever they honored, and did one on her, using clips of her that she provided because she was a dancer, actress and choreographer. She was very nice. This is an example of her dancing.
