Gene Kelly, originally christened Eugene Curran Kelly, was born on 23rd August 1912 in East Liberty, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Although he was an American, he was later granted Irish citizenship. His father was born in Peterborough, Canada; his grandfather was an immigrant from Derry. “Gene Kelly was proud of his Irish roots,” his wife Patricia Ward Kelly once remarked.
It’s seldom you meet someone who has travelled from Heathrow in London to New York and back again, in the space of just seven hours, but recently I discovered that a man and his wife in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath did exactly that – and they have the official certificates to prove it.
Even though Elvis never got to Ireland – the closest he came to it was a plane stopover in Scotland one year – I firmly believe that if he’d lived longer he’d have made a point of doing some concerts here.
