Nancy Kelly

Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an American actress who worked across film, theater, television, and radio throughout 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 in the ABC television series Maverick alongside James Garner, Roger Moore, and Robert Colbert from 1957 to 1962. Kelly received her education at Bentley School for Girls, Immaculate Conception Academy, and Saint Lawrence Academy.

Kelly began performing as a child, accumulating credits in 52 East Coast films by the age of 17 and establishing herself as a sought-after child model. By the time she was nine, Film Daily noted that she had appeared in so many advertisements that she had been called the most photographed child in America. Her Broadway career began in 1928, when she appeared in Macbeth. Radio work occupied much of her adolescent years as well. She portrayed Dorothy Gale in a 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 play both male and female roles. Among the characters she voiced was Eleanor Roosevelt.

Returning to film as a young adult in the late 1930s, Kelly became a leading lady in Hollywood, appearing in roughly two dozen pictures between 1938 and 1946. Her credits from that period include director 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 most celebrated stage achievement came with The Bad Seed, in which she played the distraught mother. The 1955 Broadway production earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, and she reprised the role in the 1956 film adaptation, receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film marked her final screen appearance in a feature role. Her stage work in Chicago also brought her two Sarah Siddons Awards.

In the early 1960s, Kelly was active in television, taking leading roles in the 1961 Thriller episode "The Storm" and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "The Lonely Hours." She had previously received a nomination at the 9th Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Single Performance by an Actress for her work in the Studio One episode "The Pilot" in 1957. She stepped away from television after 1963 to take over the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for several months, then returned to television for a small number of appearances in the mid-1970s.

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-era cameraman and director Fred Jackman, from 1946 to 1950. Her third marriage, to theater director Warren Caro, ran from 1955 to 1968, and the two had a daughter, Kelly Caro, born in 1957. For her contributions to film, Kelly received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard, where she was inducted on February 8, 1960. She 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.