Betty Bartley

Betty Bartley Nannariello, known professionally as Betty Bartley, was an American stage, film, and television actress born on November 12, 1922, and died on September 10, 2013, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her Broadway career spanned from 1939 to 1955, and her work extended across early sound films, live television, and regional theater productions.

Bartley's mother, Elenor Marie McGraw (1892–1956), was the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth McGraw of Seneca, New York. Elenor first married Hugh Bartley and resided in Belle Harbor, Queens, before marrying Charles Devaney in 1933. Bartley began performing at a young age, making an early screen appearance in the 1929 talkie The Laughing Lady.

Her Broadway career commenced in 1939 with the musical revue Streets of Paris, in which she also appeared in 1940. In 1941, she performed as a dancer in an Ed Wynn Broadway production, identified in verified records as Boys and Girls Together. Her subsequent Broadway credits included The Time of Your Life, On the Twentieth Century, and Cyrano de Bergerac. In 1951, she appeared in the Broadway play Twentieth Century. Also in 1941, illustrator McClelland Barclay selected Bartley as the Ideal Streamlined Ziegfeld Girl.

Beyond Broadway, Bartley performed in regional and touring productions. She starred in Three Men on a Horse at the Westchester Playhouse in 1946, was part of the traveling production of Twin Beds in 1954, and in 1959 appeared in Bert Lahr's stage production of DuBarry Was a Lady. Her television work prior to 1951 included appearances on Studio One, Man Against Crime, and Sure As Fate. Throughout her career, she worked alongside Maurice Chevalier, Fredric March, Ed Wynn, Nancy Carroll, and Abbott and Costello.

Bartley married MGM stage and story editor Howard Hoyt in 1946, and they had a son, William B. Hoyt. Her second marriage, to director Walter Futter, took place in 1955. The couple had a child who survived only eight hours. Their marriage ended in 1956, divorce proceedings began in 1957, and Futter died in 1958 while the couple remained separated. In 1959, Bartley was reported to lead a firm producing cinemascope lenses. That same year she married advertising executive Edgar Krass, and in June 1960 they had a son. Their sons are Edgar B. Krass and Richard B. Krass. By 1985, Bartley had married John Nannariello, who died in 1993.