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 Krupa the second from 1946 to her death in 1955. He remarried in 1959 to Patty Bowler and they were divorced within ten years. In 1943, Krupa was arrested for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. He was charged with local and federal charges (contributing to delinquency of a minor) and was given a 90-day jail sentence for the first and convicted of the second. He served 84 days of the local sentence (time served for a crime for which he was not guilty). He was exonerated/acquitted of all charges when it was proven that he was framed, as the prosecution's key