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
Gene Williams (musician) Gene Williams (musician) Eugene "Gene" Williams was an American jazz vocalist and bandleader. Williams began his career in 1942 as a member of the Duke Ambassadors under Sammy Fletcher, then worked in Johnny Long's orchestra while serving in the United States Army. After the war he sang with Vincent Lopez and worked with Les Elgart, George Paxton, and Bobby Sherwood; he also sang on the recording "Sorta Kinda" made by the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in 1947. He founded his own band, Gene Williams and the Junior Thornhill Band, in New York City in 1949; he later simplified the name to