‘Gene Kelly’ Retraces Steps of an Illustrious Career

It’ll take more than complaints about Gene Kelly’s perfectionism and deep competitive streak to make audiences dislike one of the most devastatingly appealing men ever to dance across movie and television screens.

Boasting interviews with an impressive array of writers, colleagues and family members, Robert Trachtenberg’s “Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer,” tonight on the PBS “American Masters” series, proves that Kelly wasn’t always easy to live or work with. But the 90-minute documentary also represents a vivid if arguably excessive tribute to his achievements as dancer, choreographer and director.

Kelly’s dance partners Cyd Charisse and Leslie Caron offer the sharpest takes on his working methods and dancing style, while ex-wife Betsy Blair and composer Andre Previn provide the deepest insights on his life off the dance floor. Home movies show Kelly’s dancing before his film debut--including rare glimpses of the 1940 Broadway musical “Pal Joey.”

The documentary hits its stride when covering Kelly’s work at MGM, with abundant clips reminding us of the impact he made and how he used his popularity to update and upgrade film-dance. However, his many projects after leaving MGM are largely kissed off, and some of the film’s historical factoids just aren’t true.

Contrary to what we’re told, Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” belongs not to the late 1930s but 1944, and George Balanchine’s original choreography for “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” was never considered censorable: Indeed, it was filmed by Warner Bros. in 1939, nine years before Kelly’s version.

Trachtenberg goes most off base when trying to exalt Kelly at the expense of Fred Astaire, who, it should be noted, danced in the rain, on skates, in a sailor suit, in a dream ballet and with an alter ego before Kelly re-imagined those effects. Certainly Kelly was “the most athletic, the most exciting, the most masculine, the most commercial dancer of his time,” in the words of choreographer Kenny Ortega--and maybe the most ambitious creatively. That ought to be tribute enough.

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“Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer” is scheduled tonight at 8 p.m. and on Sunday at 4 and 9:30 p.m. on KCET-TV.