HOLLYWOOD HONORS MAN WHO ‘DANCED JOY’

Some Hollywood nights deliver the promise. On those nights Hollywood again becomes America’s ultimate hometown. Thursday’s American Film Institute tribute to Gene Kelly--he was given the Life Achievement Award--was one of those nights. Imagine Cary Grant, hand at his chin, listening raptly as Leslie Caron recalled spending her first Saturday night in America, at the Beverly Hills house of Gene Kelly. Just 18, barely understanding English, Caron was beginning her career with Kelly in “An American in Paris.”

“All the hoofers from the MGM lot would come to Gene’s for the Saturday jam sessions,” remembered Caron, to the black-tie crowd in the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom. “I shall never forget Gene doing his Irish best behind the bar, while Lena Horne--and then it was Judy Garland--sang, and Andre Previn played piano. Oscar Levant taught me how to smoke, nervously, and Stanley Donen slept.

“But what I really learned, from Gene, was generosity. Also I learned how to dance jazz, and how to be in movies. You see, Gene had snuck me in to be screen-tested only because he’d seen me dance in Paris. Then when I got here, he was so patient. Sometimes he would point in a direction and say to me, ‘Honey, the camera is over there. Look toward it. I want your mother to recognize you.’ That’s called generosity.”

The Kelly generosity was returned in kind. Thursday’s crowd spanned generations of Kelly dancing partners, from the spiky-haired Olivia Newton-John (“Xanadu,” 1980) to the timeless Cyd Charisse (“Brigadoon,” 1954). When someone asked young Tim Kelly, the dancer’s son, if he wanted to mingle before dinner, the offspring could manage only a grin. It was a long mingle.

The guests included a major cross section of the community-at-large: from power (MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, 20th Century Fox Chairman Barry Diller) to powerhouse dancers (Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines) to punk (the reclusive Sean Penn, in a completely inappropriate black-leather jacket). From politicos (former U.S. Atty. Gen. William French Smith) to legends (Cary Grant and Fred Astaire at one table, George Burns, James Stewart) to stars (Steve Martin, Sissy Spacek, Marsha Mason).

The turnout had to do with affection; it wasn’t about doing business, or working the room. When the dessert proved to be topped by chocolate umbrellas (inspired by “Singin’ in the Rain”), the response was big smiles, even from people who rarely smile. When a quintet from 1952’s “Singin’ in the Rain”--Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Cyd Charisse, writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green--began singing to Kelly, it was the opposite of hoke.

“It’s because a dancer can’t lie,” said the evening’s host Shirley MacLaine, sensibly. “Even if he’s a movie star, a dancer can’t lie. The body tells the truth. It’s impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth.” But if it were possible, Kelly would have done it. What the well-assembled film clips made clear--and what the Kelly career demonstrates--is more than range. It is what writers (and frequent Kelly collaborators) Comden and Green called his “exuberant mental shorthand.”

Example: The alter-ego dance from “Cover Girl” (1944) offered three-dimensional art in a two-dimensional medium, showing a man in love and simultaneously in conflict. Partnering with Vera-Ellen in “On the Town” (1950), the result was an almost palpable eroticism. When Vera-Ellen wrapped her legs around Kelly, the crowd gasped for air.

“One night I invented a dance step,” recalled Gregory Hines, “and then a few weeks later, I turned on TV and saw ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’ Suddenly I saw Gene doing the step I’d made up!”

That Kelly choreographed, directed, danced, conceived and even reinvented movie musicals is already history. That he tackled serious parts too was overlooked in AFI’s long evening. (His Noel Airman in “Marjorie Morningstar” (1958) still causes girlhood crushes.) That he never intended to be a dancer, ever, is another story. He intended to be a lawyer, and studied economics at Penn State. When Kelly took the dais, he told all: “It’s all true,” he confessed. “It’s true I didn’t want to be a dancer. What I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then at 14 I discovered girls, and began to study--dancing-- diligently. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. Of course,” Kelly added, with his big Irish grin, “the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a hell of a shortstop.”

The gain was ours.