Nancy Kelly

Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an Academy Award-nominated American actress, born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kelly was a major movie leading lady in the 1930s, making 36 movies between 1926 and 1977, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James (1939), which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone later that same year. Nancy was a child star, who had made so many movies by the time she was nine years old, that Film Daily called her "the most photographed child in America due to commercial posing." She also played Dorothy Gale in a 1933 to 1934 radio show based on the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and was the older sister of actor Jack Kelly, star of the 1957 television series Maverick. As an adult actress, she was a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre as well as a Tony Award winner for her performance in The Bad Seed, which she followed up by starring in the film version in 1956 and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Nancy Kelly has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd.

Sister of Jack Kelly

She was the older sister of actor Jack Kelly, who played "Bart Maverick" alongside James Garner and Roger Moore in the television series Maverick (1957-1962). Nancy Kelly and Jack Kelly strongly resembled each other in their facial structures but never acted together in a film. Nancy Kelly's acting career was much more successful than her younger brother's, whose career gradually faded out after Maverick. On her passing in 1995 from complications of diabetes, Nancy Kelly was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

• The Untamed Lady (1926) with Gloria Swanson
• Mismates (1926) with Warner Baxter
• The Great Gatsby (1926) with Warner Baxter and William Powell
• Girl on the Barge (1929) with Jean Hersholt
• Glorifying the American Girl (1929; uncredited) with Mary Eaton
• Convention Girl (1935) with Shemp Howard
• Submarine Patrol (1938; directed by John Ford) with Preston Foster and George Bancroft
• Jesse James (1939) with Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, and Randolph Scott
• Tail Spin (1939) with Alice Faye, Constance Bennett, Charles Farrell, and Jane Wyman
• Frontier Marshal (1939) with Randolph Scott as Wyatt Earp
• Stanley and Livingstone (1939) with Spencer Tracy and Walter Brennan
• He Married His Wife (1940) with Joel McCrea
• Sailor's Lady (1940) with Joan Davis and Dana Andrews
• Private Affairs (1940) with Hugh Herbert and Robert Cummings
• One Night in the Tropics (1940) with Allan Jones and Abbott & Costello
• Scotland Yard (1941) with Edmund Gwenn
• A Very Young Lady (1941) with Jane Withers
• Parachute Battalion (1941) with Robert Preston, Edmond O'Brien, Harry Carey, and Buddy Ebsen
• Fly-by-Night (1942; directed by Robert Siodmak) with Richard Carlson
• To the Shores of Tripoli (1942) with John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, and Randolph Scott
• Friendly Enemies (1942) with Charles Ruggles
• Tornado (1943) with Chester Morris
• Women in Bondage (1943) with Gail Patrick
• Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943) with Johnny Weismuller
• Gambler's Choice (1944) with Chester Morris
• Show Business (1944) with Eddie Cantor and George Murphy
• Double Exposure (1944) with Chester Morris
• Betrayal from the East (1945) with Lee Tracy
• Song of the Sarong (1945) with William Gargan
• The Woman Who Came Back (1945) with John Loder and Otto Kruger
• Follow That Woman (1945) with William Gargan and Regis Toomey
• Murder in the Music Hall (1946) with Vera Ralston
• Crowded Paradise (1956) with Hume Cronyn
• The Bad Seed (1956) with Patricia McCormack

External links

• Nancy Kelly at the Internet Movie Database
• Nancy Kelly memorial at Find A Grave