Gene Nelson

DirectorActorProducer

Gene Nelson was an American dancer, actor, screenwriter, and director. Born Leander Eugene Berg in Astoria, Oregon, he moved to Seattle when he was a year old. He was inspired to become a dancer by watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers when he was a child. After serving in the Army during World War II during which he also performed in the musical This Is the Army, Nelson landed his first Broadway role in Lend an Ear, for which he received the Theatre World Award. He also appeared onstage in Follies, which garnered him a Tony Award nomination, and Good News. Nelson's longtime professional dance partner during the 1950s was actress JoAnn Dean Killingsworth. Gene Nelson co-starred with Doris Day in "Lullaby of Broadway" in 1951. He played Will Parker in the film Oklahoma! In 1959, he appeared in Northwest Passage as a young man trying to prove his innocence in a murder case. Nelson appeared on the March 17, 1960 episode of "You Bet Your Life", hosted by Groucho Marx. He and Groucho's daughter, Melinda, performed a dance number together. Nelson directed eight episodes of The Rifleman in the 1961-62 season, the original Star Trek, the first season of I Dream of Jeannie, Gunsmoke, The Silent Force, and The San Pedro Beach Bums. He directed the Elvis Presley films Kissin' Cousins, which screenplay he wrote, and Harum Scarum. For the Kissin' Cousins screenplay he received a WGA award nomination for best written musical. He later taught in the Theater Arts Department at San Francisco State University in the late 1980s. He starred as Buddy in the 1971 Broadway musical Follies, for which he received a 1972 Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor In A Musical. The production featured a score by Stephen Sondheim and was co-directed by Michael Bennett and Harold Prince. For contribution to the motion picture industry, in 1990, Nelson was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nelson's star is located at 7005 Hollywood Boulevard. Description above from the Wikipedia article Gene Nelson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

24-03-1920

Birthday

Aries

Zodiac Sign

Genres

Total Films

Eugene A. Nelson, Leander Eugene Berg

Also known as (male)

Astoria, Oregon, USA

Place of Birth

24-03-1920

Birthday

Aries

Zodiac Sign

Genres

Total Films

Gene Berg, Eugene A. Nelson, Leander Eugene Berg

Also Known As (male)

Astoria, Oregon, USA

Place of Birth

Popular works

Media

Creative career

actor

26 Works

producer

1 Works

director

12 Works

writer

1 Works

other

0 Works

S.O.B.

A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off.

5.9

Year:

1981

A Brand New Life

After 18 years of marriage, a middle-aged couple has to face the prospect of having their first child.

0.0

Year:

1973

Family Flight

A bitterly divided family is forced to cooperate when their holiday plane crash-lands in the California wilderness. Overcoming their differences, they concentrate on repairing the plane and attempt to build a makeshift runway which will help them escape the unforgiving terrain.

5.2

Year:

1972

Thunder Island

A hit man hijacks a boat — and the married couple aboard — in order to carry out a contract on a dictator in the Caribbean.

4.9

Year:

1963

The Purple Hills

When a bounty hunter kills an outlaw for the reward, he has to deal with both a man falsely claiming he made the kill, and the revengeful brother of the dead man.

5.0

Year:

1961

20,000 Eyes

An investment counselor turns jewel thief when the gangster he embezzled funds from demands to be paid back.

3.5

Year:

1961

Dial 999

A man tells his wife that the police are after him for having killed a bookie during an alcoholic binge, but that he is innocent and is being framed for the murder. The wife and her brother hide him and try to find out who the real killer was. The more they investigate, the more holes they begin to find in the husband's story.

4.6

Year:

1955

Timeslip

An atomic scientist is found floating in a river with a bullet in his back and a radioactive halo around his body. The radioactivity has put him seven-and-a-half seconds ahead of us in time. He teams up with a reporter to stop his evil double from destroying his experiments in artificial tungsten.

5.3

Year:

1955

Oklahoma!

In the Oklahoma territory at the turn of the twentieth century, two young cowboys vie with a violent ranch hand and a traveling peddler for the hearts of the women they love.

6.6

Year:

1955

So This Is Paris

Three sailors on leave head for Paris with one thing on their minds.

8.5

Year:

1954

Three Sailors and a Girl

A group of sailors invest in a musical revue.

6.0

Year:

1953

Crime Wave

Reformed parolee Steve Lacey is caught in the middle when a wounded former cellmate seeks him out for shelter. The other two former cellmates then attempt to force him into doing a bank job.

7.1

Year:

1953

She's Back on Broadway

When Catherine Terris's career in Hollywood hits the skids, she heads back to the site of her first great triumphs...Broadway! She takes the lead in a play which is being directed by Gordon Evans, the man who was both her Svengali and her lover. Evans is still bitter that she walked out on him to become the toast of Hollywood years earlier. Can Terris and Evans put aside their mutual animosity long enough to make a go of this production. The way things start off, it doesn't seem likely.

5.7

Year:

1953

She's Working Her Way Through College

Shapely burlesque dancer Hot Garters Gertie aka Angela Gardner meets her future drama professor. Her new landlady proves to be the professor's wife. Angela helps breath life into the annual school stage show...but someone has discovered her secret past.

5.1

Year:

1952

Starlift

To impress a movie star, a U.S. Air Force crewman pretends he is soon to see combat. When his lie gets out, chaos ensues.

5.6

Year:

1951

Painting The Clouds With Sunshine

The story of three gold-digging ladies searching for millionaires. A loose remake of Gold Diggers of 1933.

4.5

Year:

1951

Lullaby of Broadway

Pretty Melinda Howard has been abroad singing with a musical troupe. She decides to return home to surprise her mother whom she thinks is a successful Broadway star with a mansion in Manhattan. She doesn't know that her mother is actually a burnt-out cabaret singer with a love for whiskey. When she arrives at the mansion, she is taken in by the two servants who are friends of her mother's. The house actually belongs to Adolph Hubbell, a kind-hearted Broadway producer who also gets drawn into the charade. Hubbell takes a shine to Melinda and agrees to star her in his next show. Melinda also finds romance with a handsome hoofer who's also in the show. All is going well for Melinda except that she wants to see her mother who keeps putting off their reunion.

5.8

Year:

1951

The West Point Story

A Broadway director helps the West Point cadets put on a show, aided by two lovely ladies and assorted complications.

5.8

Year:

1950

Tea for Two

In this reworking of "No, No, Nanette," wealthy heiress Nanette Carter bets her uncle $25,000 that she can say "no" to everything for 48 hours. If she wins, she can invest the money in a Broadway show featuring songs written by her beau, and of course, in which she will star. Trouble is, she doesn't realize her uncle's been wiped out by the Stock Market crash.

6.0

Year:

1950

The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady

An Irish horsecar driver's daughter meets New York showman Tony Pastor and goes into vaudeville.

5.0

Year:

1950

The Walls of Jericho

In a small town in Kansas, a county attorney in an unhappy marriage falls in love with another woman.

5.7

Year:

1948

Apartment for Peggy

Professor Henry Barnes decides he's lived long enough and contemplates suicide. His attitude is changed by Peggy Taylor, a chipper young mother-to-be who charms him into renting out his attic as an apartment for her and her husband Jason, a former GI struggling to finish college.

7.8

Year:

1948

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now

A biopic of the career of Joe Howard (12 Feb.,1878 - 19 May, 1961), famous songwriter of the early 20th Century. Howard wrote the title song, Goodbye, My Lady Love; and Hello, My Baby among many others. Mark Stevens was dubbed by Buddy Clark, well known singer of the 30's and 40's

5.0

Year:

1947

This Is the Army

In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.

5.7

Year:

1943

Everything Happens at Night

Two reporters compete to discover a scientist living in hiding and win his daughter.

4.1

Year:

1939

Second Fiddle

Studio publicist discovers Minnesota skating teacher and takes her to Hollywood. She goes back to Minnesota but he follows her.

4.5

Year:

1939