Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Gene Kelly on his birthday 🎂
📷 Robert Capa, 1953
"You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams."

Gene Kelly & Liza Minnelli with, for some reason, Carl Sandburg.
Photo by John Swope

Gene Kelly by Gjon Mili, 1944
"He is not only glib-footed, but he has a feeling for comment and content that give his dancing personal distinction and raise it several notches as a dancing art."

Gene Kelly really put on a show for Life photographer Gjon Mili in his New York studio, & Mili provided his amazing strobe photography to capture it.

Gene Kelly by Gjon Mili, 1944
"He was more than a dancer; he was a game changer in how society viewed, understood and ultimately embraced dance."
- @giakourlas

Gene Kelly & Fred Astaire play it cool for Philippe Halsman's #Jump! series.
Part of the fun of these shots is to see earth-bound people in the air. This one shows the incredible strength & control of these great, athletic, dancers.

A birthday #pingpong tweet for Gene Kelly
@holdengraber 🏓 @jeromecharyn @lenoreriegel
"André Previn, once a member of Kelly’s elite circle of Hollywood intellectuals, stopped attending his parties because of the host’s 'desperate need to be the best'."
- Jeanine Basinger

Gene Kelly by Willy Rizzo, 1961
"In Kelly’s world dance is partly about transference of feeling from his dancing body to your stationary one. It’s a visceral experience; even though we’re not moving, we become animated too."
- @giakourlas

My favourite Gene Kelly dance scene is this one from Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, 1967.

No, I haven't forgotten *that* scene!

Here, for Gene Kelly's birthday, is *that* scene.

Wait...