How Stanley Kubrick ruined Malcolm McDowell’s only meeting with Gene Kelly: “He cut me dead”
Stanley Kubrick’s reputation as a tough taskmaster and borderline tyrant preceded him to such an extent it created an inadvertent domino effect that ruined the one and only meeting Malcolm McDowell ever had with the legendary Gene Kelly.
The two did have the director in common, albeit for completely different reasons. McDowell landed the breakthrough role of his career and created an unsettling icon in A Clockwork Orange‘s Alex, which remains the defining part of his professional life more than half a century after the controversial literary adaptation made headlines worldwide for both positive and negative reasons.
Meanwhile, Kelly made his own contributions to Kubrick’s classic after ‘Singin’ In the Rain’ was used in one of the movie’s most disturbing scenes. Licencing the title track wasn’t the filmmaker’s intention from the beginning, but when McDowell improvised during a take, the auteur decided it made the perfect accompaniment to Alex’s harrowing actions.
Kelly didn’t write or compose the song, but he did turn it into an indelible slice of cinema history, and he felt he was due compensation for that. Kubrick would have gone through the usual channels to ensure that he wasn’t infringing on any copyrights when using ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ in A Clockwork Orange, but the legendary song-and-dance man was still fuming.
For McDowell, the chance to meet Kelly face-to-face was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the actor was understandably thrilled when the chance presented itself: “He had his back to me, and the guy tapped him on the shoulder, he turned, and the guy said, ‘Gene, I would like you to meet Malcolm McDowell.'”
Kelly stared blankly at McDowell and then disappeared, leaving the latter crestfallen. “Can you blame the guy?” he mused. “I took his wonderful moment and completely fucked with it.” As it turned out, it was nothing personal; Kelly was more pissed off at Kubrick than the guy who’d played the lead in A Clockwork Orange.
It was Kelly’s widow who eventually smoothed over the lingering tension following his death in 1996 when she explained to McDowell why he was so disinterested. “Gene wasn’t upset with you, Malcolm,” she clarified. “He was really upset with Stanley Kubrick because he hadn’t been paid’. And I went, ‘My god, there’s quite a gang of us who haven’t been paid.'”
Kubrick didn’t even have to be in the room to spoil McDowell’s only encounter with Kelly, which sums him up. He was a difficult person to understand and an even harder one to get to know on a personal level, and even when he was making enemies with somebody he’d never even worked with or met in person, the ripples reverberated much farther and wider than the four corners of the silver screen.
