Kevin Lally on Film

I was hired by Film Journal in August 1983, and my first couple of years there are filled with indelible memories. Attending the premiere of Brian De Palma’s Scarface at Manhattan’s Cinema I and spotting Eddie Murphy chatting with Lucille Ball just a few rows behind me. Going to the premiere of Footloose at the Trans-Lux on Lexington Avenue and seeing the film’s young star, Kevin Bacon, pacing nervously outside the theatre. Very briefly meeting James Stewart at a reception at Barbetta restaurant for the re-release of his Hitchcock films. (My associate editor Wendy Weinstein finagled a seat at Stewart’s table—Wendy was always so savvy.)

But the biggest thrill of all was the meet-and-greet press event in January 1985 for MGM’s clip-fest That’s Dancing! Groups of half-a-dozen journalists were seated at intimate, round tables, and the organizers would escort MGM’s great dancing stars to each table for ten-minute sessions. Ah, the eighties: As Hollywood struggled to keep up with the times, you could still have encounters with icons of the movies’ Golden Age. Here are some excerpts from those sessions.

Gene Kelly—

On the rigors of dancing: “If you’re serious about dancing, you have to go at it every day like a prizefighter—you have to train. You start going downhill in your mid-twenties, and as you begin to learn your art your instrument is rotting away. I see Isaac Stern, who’s a good friend, getting better with that fiddle every day. We dancers are a bit jealous.”

On the studio system: “We had a repertory group at MGM, and great composers, arrangers and musicians were all within reach. You could plan a musical better and make it more cheaply. There were many faults the contract studios had, but that wasn’t one of them.”

On musicals making a comeback: “I hope now that more of a lyrical feeling and romantic mood is coming back into popular music—I’m beginning to hear it. As that creeps in, there will be more amplitude for kids to make musical films. I think you need romance in musicals, you need songs and dances that say, ‘I love you.’”

Leslie Caron—

On the MGM style: “There was a whole psychology of acting at MGM. Acting was pleasant, amiable; you had to always be in a certain mood, smile, show both your eyes. It was infuriating—you couldn’t show your faults. You had to play everything nice and rosy; everything was tinted in pink.

“One thing has been lost, though. That’s the fact that we were all under contract. There was a solidarity between actors, you felt that at the end of the day they all went and had a drink together. On Saturday nights we used to meet at Gene’s. The door was open (that was pre-Manson) and anybody could go in and have a drink or dance, lounge around and talk. We were buddies; even if you played against one another in a scene, there’s something that comes through about the real relationship.”

Cyd Charisse—

On dancing at MGM: “You’d start at nine in the morning and go all day dancing. It’s difficult, Sometimes you’d get it on the first take, sometimes you do 20 takes and go back and use the first one. They would do them until they were as close to perfection as they could get.”