What "truth?" Ernest Lehman's truth? How does that even come close to the objective facts of the matter? Because it's also true that although Lehman was a great screenwriter, he only directed one film in his career: "Portnoy's Complaint," not exactly a classic. So Kelly, who had co-directed/directed many more films (and particularly musicals) by the time "Dolly" was filming, could actually claim greater experience. To my mind, that justifies him refusing to re-shoot any part of the parade scene. Streisand was out of line in whining to the producer, and Lehman was out of line in pulling rank to do the re-shoot on his own and then shoving it in Kelly's face. If I were Kelly, I wouldn't admit Lehman's shot was better—I'd tell Lehman to finish the damn movie himself and to drop dead as well.
And this notion of "Streisand wasn't really the tyrant"—come on. When Walter Matthau talked about "Dolly," he made it very clear he found her to be the really hateful person on set; I even read one interview in which he said he thought Kelly wasn't tough enough on her. In fact, I can't think of a movie she's made that someone HASN'T come forth afterward and said she was difficult—even Jeff Bridges, who seems to get along with everybody, had problems on "The Mirror Has Two Faces." (And I also can't think of a movie she's directed that wouldn't have turned out better in someone elses hands.)
It's not exactly news that Kelly was a demanding—and sometimes ferociously temperamental—person to work (and often play) with. But if you read his biographies or any other sources dealing with "behind the scenes" accounts of his behavior, it's also pretty clear that he himself knew he could be impossible. In one backstage account of "Singin in the Rain," Donald O'Connor tells a story of Kelly reaming him out unfairly over a dance number—he said that Kelly came to him later and apologized, that he had been really more upset with Debbie Reynold's screwups and that he only yelled at O'Connor because he needed to blow off steam and was afraid criticizing Reynolds on set would crush her. O'Connor said, "Okay, but if you do it again I'll kick you in the balls." Even his eldest daughter Kerry admits to his reputation, and I've heard her dispute interviewers who try to soften it.
But there's one thing she always says that I think is the last word: Whatever difficulties people had in working with him, in retrospect no one regrets having worked on a Gene Kelly movie. And I have to say I never heard Kelly badmouth anyone, even people like Stanley Donen or Debbie Reynolds, who were critical of him (in Donen's case, downright bitter) during his lifetime. He always lauded them both and talked about how lucky he was to work with them. In the last analysis, no one should care about this BS, anyway. I prefer to think of the Gene Kelly who was obviously a great father, who remained friends with the wife who divorced him (and publicly, adamantly stood up for her and others when she was threatened by the HUAC blacklist), who took care of Judy Garland when she was fragile and who helped introduce white movie audiences to the Nicholas Brothers even though the studio suits tried to talk him out of it.
My last point: I don't care much for people who say nasty things about colleagues after they're dead. It seems kinda cowardly and low-class to me. In addition to Ernest Lehman, we've got Arthur Laurents, who moaned and complained about Kelly (and pretty much everyone else) in his memoir from 2002. I myself had a conversation recently with Shirley MacLaine who called him "the dancing fascist," but I know she's aware that many consider her the "past lives looney." It just strikes me as low-rent and self-serving to speak ill of the dead. So with the celebrity interviews I do, I prefer not to go there.
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