Fred and Gene, beyond celluloid: rehearsal and real life

Rehearsing the "Babbitt and the Bromide" number from MGM's "Ziegfeld Follies", released in 1946. (Astaire and his sister Adele had originally performed the George and Ira Gershwin song in the Gershwin's "Funny Face" of 1927-28.) The two greatest of film dancers would perform together again thirty years later, in "That's Entertainment, Part II" but, though both were under contract at MGM during the late Forties and early Fifties, this was their only pairing while each was still at the peak of his career.

(I'm sorry that I couldn't find a better version of this, and that my skill with Photoshop - and I'm
really rather adept - is not equal to the easing out of that big crease right across Astaire's nose!)

***

It was no secret that Fred Astaire wore a toupée, and only a little less so that Gene Kelly had a little "assistance" in that department, as well. But both gentlemen were very rarely photographed without their follicular camouflage, and until I recently came across these few casual images, I'd never seen them in their unimproved state. As I, myself, am in a recessional mode, I really do find these photographs most comforting.

With another Kelly. Grace, to be specific.

Gene Kelly, photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life Magazine, 1949

Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, publicity for "For Me and My Gal", 1942

Judy Garland at twenty, in her seventeenth film, in that brief period when the "geniuses" of Hollywood make-up finally got her eyebrows right: soft and fairly natural, correctly placed. Her brows had been continually and unflatteringly mismanaged since her debut in pictures at the age of thirteen. And they would soon be altered again, given a higher, unnatural placement in an effort to "glamorize" her; they never recovered.

Gene Kelly at thirty, in his first film, before they got his hairpiece worked out. It's fairly fluffy here, of a slightly lighter color, and with a bit of a widow's peak. Subtly different from the very tidy, nearly black, close-to-the-head style with which we're so familiar.