Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I just bought the new bio and have to be honest: I'm disappointed, especially with the author and his technique. Although he claims he talked to many people, especially Kelly's longtime secretary (which is one good point), the author uses very few direct quotes from sources, and many of those have been previously published. Often he is vague, and makes a few claims I find completely unbelievable. And he uses a technique I find irritating- extensively ''recreating'' the subject's thoughts, or private incidents. Now, he doesn't know what Gene Kelly's thoughts were, unless he had access to a journal or diary or his autobiographical notes--which clearly he did not, because he does not cite such notes as a source. And if by chance he did, quote THOSE, don't use fiction. This is a trend in biographies, but not one that, to me, creates a believable insight into the person concerned.I don't expect to see Gene Kelly portrayed as someone without flaws, but I do expect an honest, balanced, well-researched portrait. Colleagues and friends interviewed for the 1974 biography by Clive Hirschorn, a work Yudkoff quotes frequently if selectively, were honest about his perfectionism and high standards, his competitiveness and Irish temper, and his demanding rehearsal techniques. But this author, it seems, tries to give the man flaws he didn't possess. For example, it portrays him as a kind of absentee father, vowing to spend more time with his kids and never quite managing, but his eldest daughter spoke to Hirschorn of his dedication and concern as a father even at the height of his career, and said of him, ''He wanted so desperately to be an excellent father-and he was.'' Another example: Yudkoff tells a story that one night, LB Mayer asked Kelly to dance with Vivien Leigh, which he did, but that she was so drunk that Kelly asked her if they could sit out the rest of the dance. Kelly told this story differently to his biographer; for example, that Leigh asked him to dance, not the other way round. Yudkoff quotes only part of Kelly's story, without explaining that he tells the story very differently from Kelly, portraying his rude treatment of her as fairly intentional, while Kelly used the story to illustrate his awkwardness at big social functions. Nor does Yudkoff cite a source for his version. Since this incident is used to illustrate Gene Kelly's character (with some fictional recreation of his thoughts), the discrepancy is disturbing. This new bio makes a few revelations, but in the absence of direct quotes from sources, it's hard to know what is reliable. There is no real in-depth insight into his relationships or artistry. Anyway, it makes me hope his autobiography will still be published. There is definitely a place for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste if time; waste of money
Review: I should start by saying I didn't read the whole book. That's because I found it insulting that we were to believe this was a true biography. I resented the author passing off what he thought Gene Kelly must have been thinking during the AFI awards, I disliked the author painting Gene Kelly as mean-spirited and shallow. It was maddening to have the beginning of every chapter fractured with this conjecture. I considered this a total waste of money. Although I freely share my books with others, this book has been consigned to the role of doorstop.
Rating:
Summary: Waste if time; waste of money
Review: I should start by saying I didn't read the whole book. That's because I found it insulting that we were to believe this was a true biography. I resented the author passing off what he thought Gene Kelly must have been thinking during the AFI awards, I disliked the author painting Gene Kelly as mean-spirited and shallow. It was maddening to have the beginning of every chapter fractured with this conjecture. I considered this a total waste of money. Although I freely share my books with others, this book has been consigned to the role of doorstop.
Rating: 
Summary: Learned About Gene Kelly
Review: I'm glad I read this book. I've admired Gene Kelly's dancing and his movies, and I learned enough from this book to really enhance my appreciation the next time I watch his work. I enjoyed the glimpses provided by this book of Broadway, Hollywood, and politics of his time. It was fun to get to know some of the famous characters Kelly encountered, and imagine what the evenings might have been like at Gene and Betsy Kelly's open houses. That having been said, the book clearly could have been more. In most of the text, I felt like I was observing Kelly from a distance, seeing interesting pieces of him that begged for more elaboration, more insight. I had a hard time trusting the device the author used to get us closer to him, Gene's internal dialog while at the awards show, because it seemed to go beyond what the author could have known about him, based on the rest of the text. And the writing itself could have used closer editing: I found unclear sentences, erratic paragraph transitions, and the same Gene Kelly quote repeated in the space of about ten pages. Not having read anything else substantial about Gene Kelly, I would recommend this book as a good way to learn a lot about him.
Rating:
Summary: Another "Dutch"?
Review: I'm going to second (third, fourth, etc.) the comments about the technique used in this book. To pretend to know what Gene Kelly was thinking during the AFI awards night is misleading at best. There was quite an uproar with the Reagan biography "Dutch" because its author inserted himself in the book and fictionalized conversations, etc. I kept thinking about that as I read this book. It's true, as some others have stated, that Yudkoff probably based these "thoughts" on things Kelly said in other interviews or contexts. That doesn't excuse the his attempts to claim these were Kelly's actual thoughts, reactions, and emotions. I truly think this is an unforgivable technique. Another customer reviewer mentioned the style used in a Masters/Ph.D thesis (and was happy it *wasn't* used here). My thought is that anyone writing such a thesis would never have been allowed to create thoughts and conversations to illustrate his/her points/assumptions about his/her subject. Why was Yudkoff allowed to do so by his editor(s)? I also have to agree with others who believe that more time should have been given to the latter part of Kelly's life. Or, alternatively, the author should have dropped the last few pages and stated from the outset that the book deals only with a specific period of Kelly's life. If Kelly could somehow read this book, I wonder what his reaction would be to having the last forty years or so of his life dismissed as being so unimportant and bereft of significance that they warranted a mere thirty pages. The lack of direct quotes from the author's own interviews, and especially the lack of quotes from people closest to Kelly, makes me wonder what support Yudkoff had for this book, and, more importantly, WHY he got that reaction from them. On the plus side, I learned things about Kelly that I never knew, including that I've missed a lot of his movies. The information about his childhood and dance background certainly makes me appreciate him even more. But I think that I'll look for Hirschhorn's biography to read what I hope is a more objective work.
Rating:
Summary: THE BOOK WHO COULDN'T DANCE
Review: I'm up to page 185, and fully intend to finish the whole book, but I thought I'd look it up here at Amazon.com to see if I could learn anything about the author's credentials -- the paperback offers none -- and, also, see how other readers had felt about the book. For me, it started strong with the Pittsburgh material and New York days, the formative years of Kelly's life with which I was so unfamiliar. But the deeper I've gotten into the book, the more I've discovered such careless mistakes (see the other Reader Reviews) that I can't help but worry about the veracity in the earlier passages as well. (Incidentally, one whopper which no one else has mentioned is that Yudkoff completely reverses the production sequence of THE PIRATE and EASTER PARADE, which in turn leads to many misstatements of fact.) I was willing to tolerate the infamous AFI interior monlogues -- at least, unlike Reagan's biographer, Yudkoff didn't attempt to pass himself off as one of Kelly's dancing partners -- but by this point in the book I'm finding myself very annoyed with all the sloppy mistakes. And now, thanks to the Reader Reviews, I see that Yudkoff is going to leave me in the lurch after 1952, which is frankly infuriating. And, yes, disappointing. POSTSCRIPT: I kept on reading, and it got even worse. Yudkoff's description of the title number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, incredibly, is erroneous in its description. It's one thing for Yudkoff to fudge the descriptions of the dances in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, an obscure -- though not IMPOSSIBLE to view -- Kelly movie, but to blow the facts on his most famous number in his most famous film...!
Rating:
Summary: Nothing New on Kelly Here
Review: The author tries, but fails, to adequately tell Gene Kelly's life story. There are so few materials on the life and career of Kelly that this book was eagerly anticipated by his fans. Unfortnately, this one doesn't make the grade. In his "novel" approach, the author attempts to crawl inside Kelly's mind as he sits watching the American Film Institute Awards in the 1980s. He thinks Kelly's thoughts and presents them to readers, as though he inhabits a secret corner of the choreographer/dancer's mind and is literally giving us "the inside scoop" on how Kelly felt about his life, career, and relationships. He also invites himself into closed door sessions (where he couldn't possibly have known what was being said between Kelly and Mayer, Kelly and Betsy Blair, Kelly and Jeanne Coyne, Kelly and Donen, etc.). The result is half novel/half biography, all failure. When the author finally does climb out of Kelly's mind back into the reality of the dancer's life, he doesn't get all of his facts straight. In one instance he reports that Vera Ellen saluted Kelly at the American Film Institute Awards. If so, she did it from the netherworld. Ellen had been dead for several years by the time of the AFI awards. For some odd reason writers have a hard time writing about Kelly and doing it well. Perhaps it is because Kelly's life is devoid of serious scandel; there is nothing scurrilous on which to hang juicy rumors. Let's hope, then, that Kelly's widow, Pat Ward, will soon release the biography that Kelly, himself, was working on the last few years of his life. Then we'll REALLY know what Kelly was thinking, and not have to rely upon second-hand Kelly-think.
Rating:
Summary: POSTSCRIPT
Review: This is a postscript to my review titled "The Book Who Couldn't Dance." For me, the last straw comes on Page 218, when Yudkoff botches his description of the "Singin' in the Rain" number. It's one thing for Yudkoff to botch the numbers in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, which after all is a fairly obscure film -- though NOT impossible to view -- but to botch the most famous Kelly number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the most famous Kelly film of all time?! Well, how can you trust ANYTHING in the book after that?
Rating:
Summary: POSTSCRIPT
Review: This is a postscript to my review titled "The Book Who Couldn't Dance." For me, the last straw comes on Page 218, when Yudkoff botches his description of the "Singin' in the Rain" number. It's one thing for Yudkoff to botch the numbers in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, which after all is a fairly obscure film -- though NOT impossible to view -- but to botch the most famous Kelly number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the most famous Kelly film of all time?! Well, how can you trust ANYTHING in the book after that?
Rating:
Summary: POSTSCRIPT
Review: This is a postscript to my review titled "The Book Who Couldn't Dance." For me, the last straw comes on Page 218, when Yudkoff botches his description of the "Singin' in the Rain" number. It's one thing for Yudkoff to botch the numbers in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, which after all is a fairly obscure film -- though NOT impossible to view -- but to botch the most famous Kelly number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the most famous Kelly film of all time?! Well, how can you trust ANYTHING in the book after that?
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