According to Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest, Rodgers, Hammerstein and Fields had hoped to engage Yul Brynner as director. Brynner, who had gained fame in the team's 1951 hit, "The King and I", was an accomplished director. However, he was busy starring in "The Sound and the Fury", and they could not negotiate his release from Twentieth-Century Fox. Instead, they hired actor and dancer Gene Kelly, who had never directed on stage before. Kelly felt that the work would not be one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's best, but "as long as I crammed the show brim-full of every joke and gimmick in the book, I could get it to work".