The Gene Krupa Story The audience rewards Krupa with a standing ovation. The film ends as Ethel tries to sneak off, sure Gene will return to his old ways. He catches up with her, and asks where she is going, "without me"? The closing credits come down on a shot of them walking away together, into the night. In real life, the two were first married from 1934 to 1942; they remarried in 1946 and were together until Ethel's death in 1955. Krupa himself played the drums on the soundtrack for the film, and for the sequences in which Mineo, as Gene, plays the
The Gene Krupa Story for money. During rehearsals for some of his initial club performances, Krupa meets a girl named Ethel (Susan Kohner), who is immediately struck by his drumming. At a swim party, the two have a long conversation about many things. Ethel confides that, after graduation, she wants to go to New York City to study and write music. The two begin to fall in love. When he gets home, Gene finds that his father has died. Feeling obligated, he goes to study for the priesthood, but at the seminary he feels lost and unable to devote his whole self. He imagines