Kelly, Nancy (1921–1995)

views updated

Kelly, Nancy (1921–1995)

American actress, best known for her role as the mother of a murderous little girl in The Bad Seed, which won her a Tony Award and an Academy Award nomination in 1956. Born on March 25, 1921, in Lowell, Massachusetts; died in Bel Air, California, on January 2, 1995; eldest of four children of John A. Kelly (a theater ticket broker) and Ann Mary (Walsh) Kelly (an artist's and commercial model); sister of actor Jack Kelly (1927–1992); attended the Immaculate Conception Academy, New York City; attended St. Lawrence Academy, Long Island; attended the Bentley School for Girls; married Edmond O'Brien (an actor), in 1941 (divorced 1942); married Fred Jackman, Jr. (a cinematographer, divorced); married Warren Caro (an executive director of the Theater Guild), on November 25, 1955.

Selected theater:

Broadway debut as Buteuse Maiden in Give Me Yesterday (Charles Hopkins Theater, March 1931); Blossom Trexel in Susan and God (Plymouth Theater, October 1937); toured as Evelyn Heath in Guest in the House (1942); Patricia Graham in Flare Path (Henry Miller Theater, December 1943); Marion Castle in The Big Knife (National Theater, February 1949); Emily Crane in Season in the Sun (Cort Theater, September 1950, and subsequent tour, 1951); Kate Scott in Twilight Walk (Fulton Theater, September 1951); toured as Georgie Elgin in The Country Girl (1953); Christine Penmark in The Bad Seed (46th Street Theater, December 1954, and subsequent tour, 1955–56); Katy Maartens in The Genius and the Goddess (Henry Miller's Theater, December 1957); Adele Douglas in The Rivalry (Bijou Theater, February 1959); Barbara Smith in A Mighty Man Is He (Cort Theater, January 1960); Jane McLeod in A Whiff of Melancholy (New Hope, Pennsylvania, August 1961); Myra Brisset in Giants, Sons of Giants (Alvin Theater, January 1962); Ellen Hurlbird in Step on a Crack (Royal Alexandra Theater, Toronto, September 1962); for some performances played Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Billy Rose Theater, July 1963. and tour 1963–64); The Long-Winded Lady in Quotation from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Billy Rose Theater, September 1968).

Selected films:

Untamed Lady (1926); Mismates (1926); The Girl on the Barge (1929); Convention Girl (1935); Submarine Patrol (1938); Jesse James (1939); Tail Spin (1939); Frontier Marshal (1939); Stanley and Livingstone (1939); He Married His Wife (1940); Sailor's Lady (1940); One Night in the Tropics (1940); Scotland Yard (1941); Parachute Battalion (1941); To the Shores of Tripoli (1942); Friendly Enemies (1942); Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943); Show Business (1944); Double Exposure (1944); Betrayal From the East (1945); Song of the Sarong (1945); Follow That Woman (1945); Murder in the Music Hall (1946); Crowded Paradise (1956); The Bad Seed (1956).

The daughter of a theater ticket agent, actress Nancy Kelly was born in 1921 in Lowell, Massachusetts, but grew up in New York City, where the family moved when she was a child. Her mother was a model for the artist James Montgomery Flagg, which may explain why Kelly became a child model, making her professional debut in a Flagg magazine illustration. At age five, she was named America's Most Healthy Child by a group of professional photographers. Modeling led to films, and by age eight Kelly was the veteran of 50 movies. She "retired" from film in 1929, after completing Girl on the Barge.

Back in New York, she made her Broadway debut in A.A. Milne's Give Me Yesterday (1931), a story about the imaginary lives of three children. Entering her teenage years, Kelly also began appearing on the radio, on such programs as "Forty-Five Minutes from Hollywood," "Cavalcade of America," "Gangbusters," and "The Shadow," among others.

Kelly caught the attention of the critics with her portrayal of the lonely adolescent Blossom in Rachel Crothers ' play Susan and God (1937), which starred Gertrude Lawrence . Brooks Atkinson called her performance one of "poignant simplicity and unstudied charm," while Joseph Wood Krutch thought she was probably the best thing in the play. Her success on Broadway prompted a call-back to Hollywood, and Kelly embarked on an intense period of movie-making beginning with Submarine Patrol (1938), and including Stanley and Livingstone (1939), Jesse James (1939), He Married His Wife (1940), A Very Young Lady (1941), and To the Shores of Tripoli (1942). Included in a 1942 "Stars of Tomorrow" poll, Kelly later reflected on that period of her life with a hint of regret. "I wish young actors wouldn't feel compelled to rush off to Hollywood as soon as they make good," she told a reporter for Pictorial Review in 1951. "They don't give themselves a chance to learn their trade honestly by scuttling the stage and scurrying West."

As her film career burgeoned, Kelly occasional returned to Broadway, notably as the wife of a disillusioned magazine writer in Wolcott Gibbs' comedy Season in the Sun (1950), which critic William Hawkins called "a sophisticated uproar." After a disappointing run in A.B. Shiffrin's Twilight Walk (1951), Kelly hit upon the most memorable role of her career, that of Christine Penmark, the tortured mother in Maxwell Anderson's unsettling drama The Bad Seed (1954), based on the William March novel. Walter Kerr's glowing review in the New York Herald Tribune was one of many the actress received. "Though Miss Kelly has done attractive work on Broadway before she has never really prepared us for the brilliance of the present portrait," he wrote (December 19, 1954). "The role is an almost unbearable, certainly an unrelieved, series of crises: the woman is simultaneously discovering that her daughter [Patty McCormack ] is a criminal and that it is she herself who has passed on the taint." Kelly won a Tony Award as Best Actress for her performance and recreated the role for the screen version, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Nancy Kelly was married three times; her first two marriages, to actor Edmond O'Brien and cinematographer Fred Jackman, Jr., ended in divorce, after which she wed Warren Caro, the executive director of the Theater Guild. She continued to play character roles on Broadway throughout the 1960s and made frequent television appearances on such shows as "Climax" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." In 1956, she won an Emmy for "The Pilot," an episode of "Studio One." The actress, who died at the age of 73, never took her career for granted, particularly the high points. "All of us should realize," she said, "that when we are successful we should thank our lucky stars."