Career Highlights: The Bad Seed, Jesse James, Stanley and Livingstone
First Major Screen Credit: Submarine Patrol (1938)
Biography
The daughter of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, she first modeled while still a baby, then went on to play child roles onstage and in over 50 silent films of the '20s. She worked for a time on radio, then returned to films at 17, going on to play leads in both A- and B-movies over the next decade. With her film work drying up she returned to the stage and won a Tony Award and two Sarah Siddons Best Actress Awards. She appeared in only two more films, one of which was the screen version of The Bad Seed (film, 1956), the play for which she'd won her Tony Award; for her work in the film she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She continued a successful stage career through the '70s, and occasionally appeared in TV roles. From 1941-42 she was married to actor Edmond O'Brien. Her brother is actor Jack Kelly. ~ All Movie Guide
Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an American actress, who 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.
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kelly 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. She also starred on television, including the leading role in "The Lonely Hour" for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963. In 1957 Kelly was nominated for the Emmy Awards for Best Single Performance by an Actress for TV episode "The Pilot" in Studio One.
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.