- Born
- Died
- Coached by her show-business mother, a former actress, brunette Nancy Kelly started her career as a one-year-old model for James Montgomery Flagg. While receiving her education at the Bentley School for Girls she also trained as an actress. From 1926, at age 5, the precociously talented Nancy became one of the most prolific of Hollywood child actresses with performances opposite established stars like Gloria Swanson and Jean Hersholt.
In 1929, she appeared on Broadway in a revival of "Macbeth". As an adult actress she displayed a greater flair for drama than comedy. Nancy gave a strong performance as an aviatrix in Tail Spin (1939), co-starring with Alice Faye. She was also a leading lady to Tyrone Power in the A-grade western Jesse James (1939). She had a pleasing supporting role in the lavish musical Show Business (1944) and the lead in an intelligent low-budget horror movie, Woman Who Came Back (1945), in which she portrayed a woman who believed herself to be the reincarnation of a witch burned at the stake 300 years earlier.
In between films, Nancy alternated work in radio ("The March of Time", 1932-37) and the stage, where she garnered good reviews for "Susan and God" (1937, as "Blossom"), Clifford Odets' "The Big Knife" (1949), and "Season in the Sun" (1950). Her best remembered performance, however, was as the mother of a murderous child in Maxwell Anderson's play "The Bad Seed". Nancy appeared in both the theatrical (Broadway, 1954-55) and the subsequent film version (The Bad Seed (1956)). Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune wrote of her Tony Award-winning stage performance: "Though Miss Kelly has done attractive work on Broadway before, she has never really prepared us for the brilliance of the present portrait" (New York Times, January 14 1995). She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her film role, but ultimately lost out to Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia (1956). Following "The Bad Seed", Nancy appeared almost exclusively on the small screen. She died from complications of diabetes in 1995, aged 73.
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis
- SpousesWarren Marcus Caro(November 25, 1955 - September 16, 1968) (divorced, 1 child)Fred Jackman Jr.(February 14, 1946 - January 13, 1950) (divorced)Edmond O'Brien(February 19, 1941 - February 2, 1942) (divorced)
- ChildrenKelly Lurie Caro
- ParentsJohn Augustus Kelly Sr.
- RelativesJack Kelly(Sibling)Carol Kelly(Sibling)William Clement Kelly(Sibling)
- Won Broadway's 1955 Tony Award as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "The Bad Seed," a role she reprised in her Oscar-nominated performance in the film version, The Bad Seed (1956).
- Daughter, Kelly Lurie Caro, was born 11 weeks prematurely on January 21, 1957, weighing only 2 lb. 1.5 oz. Her father was Warren Caro, a Theatre Guild executive, Kelly's third husband. Kelly and Caro divorced in 1968. Caro died on New Years Day 1995, one day before Nancy Kelly died at age 73.
- Film Daily, Page 7, June 5, 1929 reports: "Little Nancy Kelly...has worked in 23 pics during the past two years; Nancy must be the most photographed child in America due to commercial posing."
- Daughter of John Augustus Kelly and his wife, actress Nan Kelly. Older sister of actors Jack Kelly and Carol Kelly, and non-actor William Clement Kelly. Ex-sister-in-law of Liam O'Brien and May Wynn.
- In addition to The Bad Seed (1956), other highlights of her film career included playing opposite Edmond O'Brien and Robert Preston in Parachute Battalion (1941); starring opposite Joel McCrea in He Married His Wife (1940); and appearing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone (1939). Later, she acted exclusively on television.
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