Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

The 1952 classic “Singin’ in the Rain,” starring East Liberty native Gene Kelly, gets a home video upgrade with the April 26 70th anniversary re-release of the film in 4K Ultra HD ($33.99) that includes the film on Blu-ray and a code to acquire the film digitally.

Although this new release doesn’t have new features — it includes previously-released commentary by star Debbie Reynolds, among others — Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, said a lot of time, money and effort went into the film’s restoration.

“Taking it back to this original negative and really building it frame-by-frame gives you a very different experience,” she said. “I have to give Warner Brothers a lot of credit because this is not an inexpensive effort. And it’s not a quick effort. They brought in the most experienced and qualified technicians in the world to do this. … People watching it will have no idea what went into this. And maybe that’s a good thing.”

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which will release the new Blu-ray, said the new 4K master of the film was created by aligning the three positive separation masters made from the original Technicolor negatives, resulting in a “significant leap forward from previous video iterations.”

As for the timing, Kelly chalks it up to a love of anniversaries and the ability to market a product around an anniversary.

“Anniversaries serve as an impetus for something to happen,” she said. “I’ve been through 40, 50, 60 and now 70, and each time there’s a new development.”

Patricia met Gene Kelly in 1985 when he was the host/narrator for a television special and she was a researcher/writer on the project. They married in 1990. Gene Kelly died in 1996 and Patricia Kelly has worked to preserve the legacy of his artistic work in the decades since. She is writing her husband’s biography, a project she began working on before his death.

“I just need to have a big manacle put on my leg and attach it to my desk chair,” she said. “It’s time to finish it. I just need to find the time to finish it.”

Patricia Kelly performed her one-woman show, “Gene Kelly: The Legacy: An Evening with Patricia Ward Kelly,” in Pittsburgh in 2014. And she’ll return to Pittsburgh next month for the annual Gene Kelly Awards, honoring local high school performers and productions.

“I’m so excited to be back because I did it virtually last year, and it’s just not the same,” Kelly said. “These young people are so dedicated, and they work so hard. … It’s the highlight of my year.”

Kelly said she learns from the teenagers who participate in the awards, some of whom stay in touch with her years after they graduate from high school.

“They get married and they have children and they go on to other jobs, and they stay in touch with me,” Kelly said. “Gene and I weren’t able to have children of our own, but I have thousands of them out there. And it’s a real privilege that these young people choose to continue to share their lives with me.”

Kelly, who lives in Los Angeles, served as creative consultant for the Scottish Ballet’s re-imagining of the ballet Gene Kelly created for the Paris Opera in 1960. Titled “Starstruck,” the one-hour piece premiered in Scotland in 2021 — a filmed version of the performance can be viewed on classic arts streaming service Marquee TV — and is scheduled to travel to the U.S. in 2023-24. Patricia Kelly isn’t sure if it will make a stop in Pittsburgh.

“That will be Scottish Ballet setting the schedule, but I would love it if it came there,” Kelly said. “I am so happy with the way it turned out. It really shows the breadth of Gene’s choreography. … I think it would be spectacular in Pittsburgh, so I’ll call Scottish Ballet and put in a vote for that.”

While Pittsburghers tried to galvanize an effort for a Gene Kelly statue in his hometown, Patricia Kelly approved a statue situated in London’s Leicester Square in 2020 with no plans for a duplicate in Pittsburgh.

“I hope that everybody around the world will go visit it, including people from Pittsburgh,” she said. “Pittsburgh has the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, they have the Gene Kelly square, they have the Kelly Awards, they have the star (plaque) at (his alma mater) Pitt, so, yes, he has a lot of recognition there in Pittsburgh.”

Patricia Kelly remains adamant that she wants no biopics about Kelly to be made, in keeping with his wishes.

“He had seen too many of his friends demolished in biopics,” Kelly said. “He was very explicit on that one.”

Does that include a project announced earlier this year that would star Chris Evans (“Captain America”) as Gene Kelly? (In the proposed film, a 12-year-old boy who works on the MGM lot in 1952 creates an imagined friendship with Gene Kelly.)

“I guess you’d have to ask Chris Evans how he feels about that since he decided to cast himself as Gene Kelly in a movie that doesn’t have a name or a studio or anything yet,” Kelly said. “I’m just gonna hold firm on what Gene asked for, and I think I squawked pretty loudly on that one.”

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