What Gene Kelly's On-Set Behavior Was Really Like

While making 1952's "Singin' in the Rain," costar Debbie Reynolds recalled that Gene Kelly often was a difficult taskmaker. The then-19-year-old played the girlfriend of Kelly's character and spent many hours with him on the set. According to her 2013 book "Unsinkable: A Memoir," quoted in Showbiz CheatSheet, Reynolds tried to show she could keep up with her more experienced costars — Kelly, a trained ballet dancer, and Donald O'Conner, an actor known for his ability to sing and dance well. "Gene definitely hadn't wanted me as his costar," she wrote in the book. "But Louis B. Mayer [cofounder of MGM] himself had chosen me to play Kathy Selden, and there was nothing Gene could do about it, even though he was MGM's biggest star at the time."

Their kissing scenes also proved problematic and Reynolds remembered their first kiss as a traumatic experience: "The camera closed in. Gene took me tightly in his arms ... and shoved his tongue down my throat. 'Eeew! What was that?,' I screeched, breaking free of his grasp and spitting. I ran around frantic, yelling for some Coca-Cola to cleanse my mouth. It was the early 1950s, and I was an innocent kid who had never been French-kissed. It felt like an assault. I was stunned that this 39-year-old man would do this to me." Reynolds and Kelly eventually re-filmed the big kiss. She encountered other problems during the filming as well.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCDkG9pcGtfrLWiwIygnKedXaCyrbjYrGSopl2osrV5wZ6fmq6ZpL9uw8CsZKudkaG5unnLoqKeZw%3D%3D