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 to find work in the brewing trade and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he landed a job with the Storz Brewing Company. Astaire's mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her children's talents, after Astaire's sister, Adele Astaire, revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer very early on in her childhood. Johanna planned a "brother and sister act," which was common in vaudeville at the time for her two children. Although Fred refused dance lessons at first, he easily mimicked his older sister's steps and took up piano, accordion, and clarinet. When their father suddenly lost his