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Patricia Ward Kelly met Gene Kelly in 1985 when she was writing for a tv particular on the Smithsonian Museum which he occurred to be internet hosting.
“I did not know who Gene Kelly was when I first met him. That always surprises people,” Patricia Ward Kelly instructed Fox News Digital from her residence workplace the place recollections overflow from their relationship. “In fact, some people think I’m making it up.”
Kelly was in her mid-20s at the time, and the inimitable star of classics like “Singin’ in the Rain,” “On the Town” and “An American in Paris,” was 47 years her senior.
“The age issue was not an issue for me,” she defined. “And the funny thing is, I never really even thought about it because he was so young at heart.”
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Gene Kelly was 47 years older than spouse Patricia Ward Kelly. (Ted Dayton/WWD/Penske Media/Silver Screen Collection)
She stated she didn’t assume about their age difference “until the tabloids started making such a big deal about it. And then I didn’t even add up the difference until they made a big deal.”
The age difference additionally didn’t matter to her mother and father. “My parents understood and didn’t see it as any problem. They knew I’d always kind of colored outside the lines a little bit. And so it seemed perfectly natural to them. There wasn’t anything strange about it.”
But as a self-described “nerdy Herman Melville scholar,” being “suddenly thrust into this spotlight and to have people around you passing judgment on you and your life” was a difficulty.
WATCH: Gene Kelly’s widow says their age difference was ‘not a difficulty’ as a result of he was ‘young at coronary heart’
“That was harder to take, if you go from anonymity to being the poster child at the checkout counter at the grocery store,” she stated. “But it is strange when people are following you, taking pictures and certainly nothing like what people are experiencing today, what these mega stars experience in terms of violations of privacy, but we were just on the edge of it.”
Gene Kelly and Patricia Ward Kelly have been married from 1990 till his demise in 1996. (Kypros/Getty Images)
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Kelly stated she didn’t go to many films rising up.
“I hear from so many people now saying, ‘Oh, my gosh, my mother would keep me home from school if a Gene Kelly movie was on’ or, they watched them with their parents or grandparents and that just wasn’t my upbringing,” she defined. “In a weird way, I think it was the best way to meet Gene because I came with no preconceived notions of him. Everybody else comes in there like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ And I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know what he represented. I didn’t know his films at all.”
WATCH: Gene Kelly considered Frank Sinatra as nearer than a brother and ‘revered’ Judy Garland, widow says
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She stated after they labored on the TV particular collectively, he requested her to assist him with his memoir. “I figured it would maybe be a couple of weeks, and we ended up getting married five years into that process.”
Gene Kelly doing his iconic dance in “Singin’ in the Rain.” (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
She added, “In a strange way, I’m very happy that the work came first, and the marriage came second, because I was really committed to getting Gene’s words on tape and then on paper, and making sure that I got a sense of this man that he felt had not been captured before.”
Kelly stated she fell in love with his “words,” explaining they each beloved etymology, the research of the origins of phrases.
“We started playing word games and quoting poetry back and forth and by the middle of the week I realized he spoke French, he spoke Italian, he read Latin, he spoke Yiddish, he wrote poetry,” she stated. “He had memorized an extraordinary amount of poetry, and he had a love of language. I mean, it wasn’t just that he had studied these things and absorbed them. It was that he was like a child. He delighted in them. He delighted in the sound of words and would often just say a word over and over, because he loved the way it sounded, and so I found it very charming.”
In non-public, the singing and dancing star was “very quiet,” she stated.
AUGUST 13: Entertainers Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra pose for a portrait carrying sailor fits in a nonetheless from the film ‘Anchors Aweigh’ which was launched on August 13, 1945. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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“People will ask me if he danced around the kitchen,” she stated, “but his idea of a great time was to sit in front of the fire at night and listen to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole on the stereo. To read a book, to just have a quiet, very quiet evening. And so that’s how we spent much of our time was just in, sitting next to each other on the couch, or sitting across from each other in front of the fire. And, and I think those are some of the most memorable evenings.”
When he was youthful, she stated Kelly’s residence was a “kind of salon” for the celebrities at that point. “So you might stop by, and Leonard Bernstein might be playing the piano, or Oscar Levant or Judy Garland might be singing, and some people in another room would be playing a version of charades.”
Most of Kelly’s closest associates weren’t stars, however she stated he “revered” Judy Garland.
“He really always credits her with his career and teaching him how to perform in front of a camera. Frank Sinatra was a dear friend. And really, as Gene said, they were closer than brothers. And Frank really showed that at the end of Gene’s life, when I was with him, I could see how clear that was and this kind of camaraderie that they had and, just really deep affection for one another.”
Gene Kelly with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand on the set of 1960’s “Let’s Make Love.” (Getty)
But she stated he was very non-public and relished not having to be “on.”
“He was ‘on’ any time we left the house. I mean, the tour buses went by constantly and so, even on a walk around our neighborhood, you were ‘on’ and being recorded,” Kelly remembered.
She stated the “hardest point we had with privacy” was the instances the star spent within the hospital within the final years of his life.
“Nurses were selling the stories out of the hospitals,” she stated. “And it was before all the HIPAA rules came into play. And, the people would listen in on the 911 calls and show up to take pictures at the hospital and people dressed as priests and tried to come into the room. And, and I found that the biggest violation of all, because at that point, when you should not have to spend your energy with these things and trying to protect somebody’s dignity and privacy, your attention is spent on that kind of chasing people down stairways and things like that.”
She added, “That was I think is a real violation and I don’t know how to stop it.”
She stated followers may be stunned by the “magnitude of his brain, the immensity of his brain. They somehow don’t imagine that he has this intellectual capacity. I think, perhaps it’s something that maybe plagues dancers, choreographers, that somehow that particular kind of genius is not like other.”
Gene Kelly dancing with Judy Garland in a scene from the movie “For Me and My Gal.” (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images)
Fans are a “little surprised that he is an intellectual, as he was, and that he was a true Renaissance man and so gifted in many areas. A lot of people are surprised that he directed and choreographed. They’ll ask me if he ever choreographed anything, and I’ll say, ‘Yes, just about everything you’re seeing.’”
She stated Kelly was additionally extraordinarily protecting of her throughout their relationship, describing a black tie occasion they attended early on when somebody referred to as her identify and took a photograph of her. She stated her mom later instructed her she seemed like a “deer in the headlights.”
“And I said, ‘Well, Mom, you know, you have no idea quite what this experience is like,’ but, it wasn’t anything I was prepared for. I tried to weather it as best as I could, I’m sure there are people who handle it much better, but Gene was good about it. He would – you’ll see him in the photographs – He held on to me with a tight, tight, grip. He held my hand, and I can see in the pictures now that, I’m sure, gave me a sense of strength at that time.”
Since his demise in 1996, Kelly stated she misses the “brightness of his mind.”
She continued, “I miss the joy of the delight in words and sitting. There’s nothing like sitting next to somebody, reading, and then you’ll kind of stop and talk briefly and then go back to reading. I mean, I don’t think there’s much that’s more romantic than that. I mean, maybe I’m odd, but I just that was just an amazing thing. And I think I also I miss his decency. I really miss his decency. I miss his integrity. He was fighting for things way ahead of the pack.”
She stated he was additionally the “epitome of romance.”
“He would wake me up in the middle of the night just to go out on the balcony to see the full moon,” she stated. “And I miss the little valentines he would leave sprinkled around the house for Valentine’s Day and the little, little, enamel boxes from England that he would give to me. And he’d take a red felt marker and put a heart on the inside of them. So that’s all gone. And I have them. I have the valentines, and I have the notes that he left for me and everything. That’s a pretty big hole to fill.”
Kelly stated she is doing “everything she can to preserve his legacy, including her one-woman show “Gene Kelly: the Legacy,” that illustrates his creative process and how he changed the “look of dance on movie.”
Gene Kelly dancing in 1950. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
She also does a live symphony tribute to Gene in which she interweaves stories about him with clips from his films that the orchestra accompanies.
During his life, Gene Kelly had a “campaign” to “break down the stigma of boys dancing, and it’s nonetheless prevalent right this moment,” she said, adding that she works with a group that tries to engage boys in dancing.
In 1958, Kelly put together a television special called “Dancing Is a Man’s Game” in which he would choreograph a dance based off of sports movements described by athletes like Mickey Mantle and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Kelly said her late husband’s movies are also used for children who have autism, dyslexia, and dyspraxia.
“A pal of mine has a child who has autism, and he is watched “Singin’ in the Rain” greater than 20 instances. It’s one thing that’s joyful,” she said.
His movies are also used to help trigger memories in Alzheimer’s sufferers.
WATCH: Gene Kelly’s widow says star was the ‘epitome of romance’
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“I converse in so much [of] care houses,” she explained. “His films usually are not violent. They carry again immediately, will set off them optimistic recollections, songs and issues. So, there is a fairly broad spectrum that I do not assume he definitely was not conscious how a lot his work can be used and in so many various, other ways.”
Kelly said her late husband’s movie “On the Town” with Sinatra – which celebrates its 75th anniversary later this year – “broke new floor, by being shot on location in New York City and utilizing town itself because the sort of refrain, [which] had not been finished earlier than.”
She added, “Gene’s by no means going to go away. I believe, you should have the seventy fifth anniversary of ‘On the Town,’ however there would be the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I believe he’ll simply maintain going.”
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