This article is more than 23 years oldObituaryFred Kelly
This article is more than 23 years oldGene's dancing brother, who gave the cha-cha-cha its zingThe dancer and choreographer Fred Kelly, who has died aged 83, taught the latest American dances to the Queen and her sister, when they were the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose during the war, and was credited with creating the cha-cha-cha in 1948. He devised the Latin dance for bandleader Tito Puente, based on the lindy, except that the dancers moved sideways and shouted "Cha-cha-cha".
Working for NBC, Kelly directed the first Steve Allen and Kay Kyser television shows, and choreographed the celebrated Ice Capades for three years. In the 1930s, he ran a dance studio in his home town of Pittsburgh, where many years later the young John Travolta studied. He also happened to be Gene Kelly's younger brother.
Fred was the youngest of five Kelly kids, of second-generation Irish parents. Like his two brothers and two sisters, he was encouraged by a stage-struck mother to take dancing lessons, and was soon considered the most talented of the children. He first performed professionally in vaudeville, as one of the Five Dancing Kellys. At the age of seven, he did an adagio dance with a six-year old girl on showboats, earning $50 a night.
During the depression, Fred teamed up with Gene to present a dance act punctuated with corny vaudeville jokes - rather similar to the Fit As A Fiddle number from Singin' In The Rain (1952), performed by Gene and Donald O'Connor. Fred and Gene were both excellent tap dancers, as well as proficient acrobats, and could do routines on roller skates; but they had to play rather cheap clubs. "They threw coins," Gene recalled. "I just had to grin and bear it. Fred, of course, took it all in his stride. He picked up the money, flashed a smile, and just went on dancing. But I was mortified, shocked and ashamed."
Nonetheless, the act paid for the brothers' college education, Fred obtaining a BA from the University of Pittsburgh. When their mother opened a dance school, both young men were the main teachers - until Gene left for New York and stardom. In 1939, when Gene, who had been playing Harry the Hoofer in William Saroyan's sentimental comedy, The Time of Your Life, on Broadway, decided not to tour with the show, he suggested that Fred take over. "Naturally, there were certain divergences of style, but basically the steps were the same and Fred picked them up without any trouble," Gene explained. "After all, he'd been a pro since he was five."
When America entered the second world war, Fred went straight from the play into the army, where he stayed for 4 years, during which time he appeared on Broadway in Irving Berlin's morale-boosting This Is The Army (1943). He married his childhood sweetheart, Dorothy Greenwalt, and, with their two children, settled in New Jersey to run a dance studio.
In 1954, Fred and Gene, wearing straw hats, striped shirts and shorts, danced together on film for the only time in I Love To Go Swimmin' With Wimmen, from the all-star Sigmund Romberg biopic, Deep In My Heart. The likeable and extrovert Fred seldom expressed any envy of his brother, though, when Deep In My Heart opened, he told a journalist, without irony, that he got higher billing than his brother. The credits read: "Fred and Gene Kelly."
Dorothy died in 1995, a year before Gene. Fred is survived by his son and daughter.
Fred Kelly, dancer and choreographer, born June 2 1916; died March 15 2000
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