Gene Kelly movies." "Anchors Aweigh" became one of the most successful films of 1945 and Kelly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In "Ziegfeld Follies" (1946)—which was produced in 1944 but not released until 1946—Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire, for whom he had the greatest admiration, in the famous "The Babbitt and the Bromide" challenge dance routine. After Kelly returned to Hollywood in 1946, MGM had nothing planned and used him in a routine, black-and-white movie: "Living in a Big Way". The film was considered so weak that the studio asked Kelly to design and insert a series of
Fred Astaire where the tape had deteriorated with kinescope footage. Astaire won the Emmy for Best Single Performance by an Actor, but the choice had a controversial backlash because many believed that his dancing in the special was not the type of "acting" for which the award was designed. At one point Astaire offered to return the award, but the Television Academy refused to consider it. Astaire played Julian Osborne, a non-dancing character, in the 1959 movie "On the Beach" and was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor award for his performance, losing to Stephen Boyd in "Ben-Hur". Astaire appeared