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 Norbert Kelly career both on stage and the screen. He attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 1939. Kelly performed with his older brother Gene as one of the "Kelly Brothers" in Vaudeville. In 1940 Fred replaced Gene in the Broadway production "The Time of Your Life" written by William Saroyan, in the role of "Harry the Hoofer" for which he would go on to win three Tony Awards for this role—one for acting, one for choreography and one for comedy. This was the first show to win both the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. After