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 the box office and among critics. Astaire continued to act in the 1970s, appearing on television as the father of Robert Wagner's character, Alexander Mundy, in "It Takes a Thief" and in such films as "The Towering Inferno" (1974), in which he danced with Jennifer Jones and for which he received his only Academy Award nomination, in the category of Best Supporting Actor. He voiced the mailman narrator in the 1970s animated television specials "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" and "The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town". Astaire also appeared in the first two "That's Entertainment!" documentaries, in the