Nancy Kelly

Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an American actress who worked across film, theater, television, and radio over a career spanning several decades. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, into a theatrical family of Irish descent, she was the daughter of silent film actress Nan Kelly, who both coached her and managed her career. Her younger brother was actor Jack Kelly, best known for playing Bart Maverick alongside James Garner, Roger Moore, and Robert Colbert in the ABC television series Maverick from 1957 to 1962. Kelly was educated at Bentley School for Girls, Immaculate Conception Academy, and Saint Lawrence Academy.

Kelly began performing as a child model and actress, accumulating credits in 52 East Coast films before the age of 17. By the time she was nine, Film Daily had noted that she had appeared in so many advertisements she was referred to as "the most photographed child in America." Her radio work was equally extensive during her adolescent years. She played Dorothy Gale in the 1933–34 NBC Radio Network production of The Wizard of Oz and served as the first ingenue on CBS Radio's The March of Time, where her vocal range allowed her to portray both male and female roles, including a portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Returning to the screen in the late 1930s while still a teenager, Kelly established herself as a leading lady across more than two dozen films between 1938 and 1946. Her credits from this period include John Ford's Submarine Patrol (1938) with Preston Foster, Frontier Marshal (1939) with Randolph Scott, Jesse James (1939) in which she played opposite Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, and Stanley and Livingstone (1939) with Spencer Tracy. She also appeared in He Married His Wife (1940) with Joel McCrea, Parachute Battalion (1941) alongside Robert Preston, Edmond O'Brien, Harry Carey, and Buddy Ebsen, and Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943) with Johnny Weissmuller.

Kelly transitioned to the stage in the late 1940s, appearing in the 1949 Broadway production of Clifford Odets's The Big Knife. Her Broadway career, which extended from 1931 to 1970, included credits such as Box, Giants, Sons of Giants, the comedy A Mighty Man Is He, the play The Rivalry, and the drama The Genius and the Goddess. Her most celebrated stage role came in The Bad Seed, in which she played the distraught mother, earning her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1955. She reprised the role in the 1956 film adaptation, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress — her final film appearance. Her stage work in Chicago also earned her two Sarah Siddons Awards.

In television, Kelly worked regularly through 1963, with notable appearances including the "The Storm" episode of Thriller in 1961 and "The Lonely Hours" episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963. In 1957 she received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Single Performance by an Actress at the 9th Primetime Emmy Awards for her work in the Studio One episode "The Pilot." She later took over the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for several months, and made a handful of additional television appearances in the mid-1970s. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Kelly received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd., inducted on February 8, 1960.

Kelly was married three times. Her first marriage, to actor Edmond O'Brien, lasted from 1941 to 1942. She was subsequently married to Fred Jackman, Jr., son of silent Hollywood cameraman and director Fred Jackman, from 1946 to 1950. Her third marriage, to theater director Warren Caro, lasted from 1955 to 1968; the two had a daughter, Kelly Caro, born in 1957. Kelly died on January 2, 1995, at her home in Bel Air, California, from complications of diabetes at the age of 73, one day after her former husband Warren Caro. She was survived by a daughter and three granddaughters and was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.