Michael Kidd, who has died aged 92, was one of the geniuses of the American movie musical, turning dance routines into works of art. He invented the defining moments in a score of movies and always said he was strongly influenced by Charlie Chaplin.
Kidd was a ballet dancer turned studio executive who had a CV that earned him the kind of respect that is rare among colleagues for whom jealousy goes with the job. He was a dynamic, inventive choreographer who made a huge mark in both movies and live theatre, winning five Tony awards and an honorary Academy award in 1996.
He dreamed up the sequences in the 1954 film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and was responsible for Guys and Dolls in 1950, helping the Broadway musical reach maturity. And when Gene Kelly danced through the street with a dustbin lid tied to his feet in the 1955 film It's Always Fair Weather, the man who usually planned his own routines did it to Kidd's order.
Kidd was born Milton Greenwald in Brooklyn, the son of Jewish refugees from tsarist persecution. The idea of dance was foreign to both his family and the atmosphere in which they lived. Indeed, in accordance with those circumstances, young Milton signed up as an engineering student at City College, New York, an educational institution whose undergraduates came from backgrounds just like his own. He was clearly unhappy with his decision - although intricate engineering constructions would frequently feature in his choreography.
He would say: "It was too impersonal, so I drifted into dance." Actually, he took that "drifting" very seriously. He made his debut working with a small company at the age of 18. But soon afterwards he joined the American Ballet and the Ballet Caravan. In 1942, Milton Greenwald became Michael Kidd. He had an elder brother, Phil Greenwald, who was a booking agent for the Concord hotel in the "borscht belt" of the Catskill mountains and as a result Milton had always been called "The Kid". Under that name he was a soloist for the American Ballet Theatre from 1942 to 1947. He loved the idea of a distinctly American form of dance and appeared as Billy the Kid, and later as Bluebird, in ballets based on the stories of those characters. He was spotted by two of the legendary figures in the American dance scene, Agnes De Mille and Jerome Robbins and worked for both of them - at the same time working out new choreography for the company and his own ideas. They were notions that would become world-famous in later years.
He began the process in 1947, when he did the choreography for the groundbreaking musical Finian's Rainbow. Four years later, came the first of a number of very big shows: Guys and Dolls, which he would later take to the screen as he did with the 1953 original version of Cole Porter's Can-Can, with Li'l Abner in 1956 and, three years later, Destry Rides Again, which was based on the black-and-white film that had starred Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The shows won him the Tony awards.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood saw him as a potentially hot property. His first film was the movie version of Charley's Aunt, Where's Charley?, which starred Ray Bolger. In 1953, he did something extremely rare - he directed the dancing of Fred Astaire in the movie The Band Wagon. In 1954 came the brilliance of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. He went back to Broadway in the 1960s and 70s and directed the show The Rothschilds in 1970. He was also in charge of the choreography of the films Star! (1968) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). Other shows he directed included Hold It! (1948); Love Life (1948); Arms and the Girl (1950); Subways Are for Sleeping (1961); Here's Love (1963); Ben Franklin in Paris (1964); Skyscraper (1965); Cyrano (1973) and a 1974 revival of the legendary Good News.
Kidd was not always successful. An attempt at putting on a stage version of the Audrey Hepburn hit Breakfast at Tiffany's failed and closed during previews in 1966. Kidd directed the Danny Kaye movie Merry Andrew in 1958, as well as two TV sitcoms, All in the Family, based on Till Death Do Us Part, and Laverne and Shirley. It's Always Fair Weather stood out as one of the most important pictures in his career. It was the first film in which he starred himself, a movie about three Army buddies, the others being Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey, who, having left the service in 1945, vow to meet again 10 years later - only to discover how little they had in common. "It could have been better," he once told me, "if Kelly hadn't thought one of my routines was just too good. I think he thought it put me in too good a light."
He also starred in the 1975 film Smile, a cutting satire on the beauty queen industry. One of his last films as a choreographer was Woody Allen's attempt at reprising the Hollywood musical, Everybody Says I Love You. In 1996 he was awarded a special Oscar "in recognition of his services to the art of dance in the art of the screen".
Kidd was not beyond complaining about the way dance routines had to be constructed. "Generally, the music does not exist before a dance, and the choreography is done with the pianist sitting at the piano. The pianist will lay out something appropriate and by the time the dance is finished, a musical score is also finished by a dance arranger who hands a complete sketch to the orchestrator and then it is recorded. The music has to be changed constantly every day, as the dance changes and progresses every day."
Describing the differences between working for Astaire and Kelly he once said: "Astaire is like the embodiment of a thought and the whole dance is like a conversation - he even thinks in dance steps." Whereas in Kelly's films the hoofer aspired "to the grandeur of ballet".
His first marriage to the dancer Mary Heater in 1945 ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife Shelah, two daughters from his first marriage and a son and daughter from his second.
· Michael Kidd, choreographer, dancer and actor, born August 12 1915; died December 23 2007