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How Gene Kelly Made the Pilot for "Oklahoma!"
In the early 1930s, Gene Kelly's success with his dancing schools in Pittsburgh and Johnstown, Pennsylvania — along with Kelly's gregarious nature — led to acquaintances with dancers and dance directors in New York. Robert Alton, at that time a well-established dance director in Broadway productions, invited Kelly to contact him if he ever decided to try for work in New York.
After a brief and unsatisfactory attempt at Broadway in 1937, Gene Kelly tried again in August 1938 and this time went to see Alton, who was rehearsing for a new Cole Porter musical, "Leave It to Me". Alton put Kelly in the hands of Alton's agent, Johnny Darrow. Initially, this led only to a minor part in the musical — although strategically placed to appear next to Mary Martin in the archival photo of her debut hit, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".
Darrow next arranged for Alton to choreograph and Kelly to dance in "One for the Money", which opened February 4, 1939. The show was directed by John Murray Anderson. The Canadian Anderson had been working on Broadway since 1918 and was an influence on Alton, Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters and others who later directed Hollywood musicals. Gene Kelly intently watched the way Anderson seamlessly pulled together all the elements in staging a musical number with a desired mood and style. In Clive Hirshhorn's biography of Kelly, Gene credited Anderson as being the person with the single greatest influence on his work.
"One for the Money" was produced by Gertrude Macy and Stanley Gilkey. Independently of this, Macy and Gilkey were associated with Guthrie McClintic and Katherine Cornell, whom Kelly met when the show was on the road in Chicago in June 1939. The immediate practical benefit of this for Kelly was that Katherine Cornell referred him to her elocution teacher in New York, to get rid of his Pittsburgh accent.
The show closed in Chicago. Later that summer, Johnny Darrow arranged for Gene to be hired by John Haggott, the stage manager of the Theatre Guild, to choreograph three shows at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. Each of the shows was a trial run for possible later production by the Theatre Guild.
The second of the three was to be a musical adaptation of "Green Grow the Lilacs", the Lynn Riggs play that the Theatre Guild had produced in 1931. Gene Kelly was asked to create a musical using the title song plus traditional American folk songs such as "Blood on the Saddle" and "Git Along, Little Doggies". Gene directed the production and brought in his younger brother Fred to choreograph. The show was a success and was continued for a second week. Theresa Helburn, one of two administrative directors of the Theatre Guild, decided to proceed with the project. It took a few years to come together, but the Rodgers and Hammerstein II version opened at the St. James Theatre on March 31, 1943.
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