Patsy Kelly

Early life and early career

Kelly was born Bridget Sarah Veronica Rose Kelly in Brooklyn, New York City, to Irish immigrant parents John and Delia Kelly. Her father was a police officer who left Ballinrobe, County Mayo, Ireland around 1900 to escape persecution. He died in 1942. Her mother Delia died in 1930. She was the youngest of five children, only two of whom were born in America. She acquired the nickname "Patsy" by being the butt of her family's gentle teasing and becoming the "fall guy" for many of their shenanigans. "I was always spinning and tripping about the house, usually over chairs." She was originally inspired to become a firefighter decades before the field would open to the first FDNY woman in 1982, but her mother enrolled her in a dancing school to keep her off the streets of Manhattan.

Her New York entertainment debut came as a member of a vaudeville chorus at age 12. Learning how to tap dance at Jack Blue's School of Rhythm and Tap, she befriended future talent and fellow hoofer Ruby Keeler. She had had more than her share of scrapes when she was young. She fell from a fire escape when she was seven, was struck by an automobile when she was eight, and was involved in no less than five accidents in one week at the age of nine. At this point, her parents decided to send her to dancing school, where she broke her ankle at the end of her first week. She first attended St. Paul's Cathedral School, then Professional Children's School with Keeler.

In 1923, at age 13, she advanced from pupil to instructor, making $18 a week but coming home at nearly two or three in the morning. "So," Kelly once recalled, reminiscing about the years leading up to that, "Father Quinn, who knew about me and my tap, advised my mother to send me to dancing school. He thought perhaps that would get me interested in something besides baseball. It did. I liked the dancing, and in time, I began to teach in the school where I had just been studying."

She performed in Frank Fay's act, first in a song-and-dance routine and later as Fay's comic foil. Her brother John W. (Willie) originally tried out for the job, but ultimately, Kelly ended up landing the position at The Palace Theatre with Fay, while Willie went to work at the Waldorf Astoria, after being Fay's chauffeur for a while. "My brother didn't care. He thought it was sissy stuff, anyhow." In one routine, Kelly told Fay and the audience that she had been at the beauty parlor. Fay remarked, "And they didn't wait on you?" She remained with Fay for several seasons until Fay eventually dismissed her, either for refusing a proposal of marriage, not calling him by his surname, or refusing to travel to England.

Broadway

Kelly made her Broadway debut in 1927, performing in Harry Delmar's Revels with Bert Lahr and Winnie Lightner at the Shubert Theatre. In other Broadway activity, she performed in Three Cheers (1928) with Will Rogers and Dorothy Stone, Earl Carroll's Sketch Book (1929) with William Demarest and Faith Bacon, Earl Carroll's Vanities (1930) with Jack Benny and Jimmy Savo, The Wonder Bar (1931) with Al Jolson, and in the Howard Dietz-Arthur Schwartz musical revue Flying Colors (1932) with Clifton Webb, Imogene Coca, Buddy Ebsen, and Charles Butterworth. In her later years, she appeared in No, No, Nanette (1971) with Ruby Keeler and Jack Gilford, and Irene (1973) with Debbie Reynolds.

Film career

The early 1930s

Kelly made her screen debut in a Vitaphone short subject filmed in Brooklyn, The Grand Dame (1931), where she plays a rich gun moll. In 1933, reputedly after seeing her in Flying Colors, producer Hal Roach hired Kelly to team up with Thelma Todd in a series of short-subject comedies, and to replace her then-current co-star ZaSu Pitts after a contract dispute, beginning with Beauty and the Bus (1933). Pitts had demanded a salary hike of $8000 per script, so Roach terminated her services. Before making the move to Hollywood, Kelly intimated, "I'll be a flop in movies. Besides, I don't like 'em, and I never did believe there was a place called Hollywood. Somebody made it up!" She once confided to Motion Picture, "I tried it for a few days and thought it was the silliest fool business in the world. I had to get up about five in the morning and get a lantern to light my way to the studio. I'd get there and there'd be no audience, no applause. It was like talking to myself. Someone was always hollering, 'Quiet!' or 'Hush!' My voice was always too loud or not loud enough. You had to knock yourself out with a powder puff in this business. Make up every minute. I was always hanging out a window, off the edge of a cliff, or from the side of a car going 90 miles an hour. Or I was being knocked on the bean with a pot or a pan. First day I was yelling, 'Say, where are those doubles I've heard about?' After a few days of it, I packed my duds and took a train back east."

Kelly, therefore, was quite reluctant to make the transition to films at first, but Thelma Todd encouraged her to remain in Hollywood, so she did. Todd even drove to Pasadena to stop Kelly from returning on the train bound for New York. She also helped Kelly with her finances and tax trouble during the first few stages of her move out west. Already in debt, Todd suggested to her not to file for bankruptcy, that it would damage her credit rating. "Those were the happiest days I had in pictures," Patsy said in 1937, "I have made more money since, but the fun Thelma and I had making those silly two-reel comedies is something that comes only once in a lifetime. Thelma was better than any tonic and taught me a lot about comedy."

Shortly after filming wrapped on Beauty and the Bus, in August 1933, Kelly was injured as a passenger in a car driven by Gene Malin, the prominent drag performer. Malin apparently confused the gears and reversed off a pier into the water, after performing at the Ship Cafe, a club in Venice, Los Angeles. Malin was killed; Kelly and fellow passenger Jimmy Forlenza suffered serious injuries. She was told by the doctors that she had only 10 years left to live based on the amount of sandy water that got into her lungs, but actually survived for decades after the accident. Kelly once said, "I overheard a jury of grave-faced doctors nodding their heads over my supposedly unconscious body. They were giving me a maximum of 10 years to live. Maybe they're right. When I heard that scientific verdict, I was plenty scared. But I pulled myself together and said, 'Kelly, there's only one way to beat this rap: don't worry — and have fun out of the remaining years.'"

The late 1930s and early 1940s

In 1936, she told an interviewer: "Of course I was fortunate in having enjoyed a long and fairly successful stage career before going to Hollywood, but just the same, I had to start all over again, as there is as much difference between stage and screen acting technique as there is between day and night... The average small-town girl who comes to Movieland without previous stage or screen experience will find the road ahead rough and heartbreaking at times."

In 1937, she was sent to a sanitarium to go on a diet and she lost 50 pounds. Though the new, slimmer Kelly did not last too long, she was quite proud of her accomplishment. "Look! I can almost hide behind Gary Cooper sideways!"

By the end of the decade, she appeared as shopgirl Peggy O' Brien in Hal Roach's There Goes My Heart (1938), starring Fredric March and Virginia Bruce playing Alan Mowbray's love interest, and as Kitty in The Gorilla (1939) featuring a creepy Bela Lugosi and the always delightfully zany and offbeat Ritz Brothers, a performance she once cited as the favorite performance of her own. In the early 1940s, her proficient acting and comedic talents had her share the screen with big-named stars such as John Barrymore (in his final film role), Gary Cooper, Merle Oberon, Walter Brennan, John Wayne, Bert Lahr, Lupe Velez, Eddie Albert, Victor McLaglen, and even Phil Silvers and Ann Miller in their big-screen debut, Hit Parade of 1941. She also co-starred with her predecessor ZaSu Pitts in Roach's train comedy Broadway Limited (1941) around this period. Familiar faces that appear frequently in her films include Si Jenks, Douglas Fowley, Charlie Hall, Marion Davies, Don Barclay, and Arthur Housman.

In her films, one could find her often playing a sassy maid or an assistant, as she did in features such as Page Miss Glory, The Gorilla, Topper Returns, and Merrily We Live. Subsequently, these comic supporting roles were a harbinger of things to come for Kelly. She jested that she was often cast as a maid, "...because I had a maid's costume that fit. They didn't have to get me a new outfit. They lent it from one studio to another."

After appearing in a film or two for RKO, she then began starring in low-budget fare such as My Son, The Hero (1943) with Roscoe Karns and Maxie Rosenbloom, and Danger! Women at Work (1943), pictures released by Producers Releasing Corporation.

Later career

Kelly's film career had stalled in the 1940s after being blackballed by the studios for outing herself as a lesbian. She returned to New York City, where she worked in radio with personalities such as Barry Wood on NBC's The Palmolive Party (which was broadcast on Saturday nights at 10 pm), toured the U.S. and Canada to entertain the troops during World War II, and did summer stock theatre in shows such as My Sister Eileen and On the Town. She also worked as a personal assistant to Tallulah Bankhead and appeared with her on stage in Dear Charles (1955). She later moved into Bankhead's mansion Windows in Bedford Village, New York, acting as her domestic, or "guest resident".

In the 1950s, Kelly began acting on television and returned to occasional film roles. On TV, she appeared in guest roles on 26 Men, Kraft Television Theatre, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Wild Wild West, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as many unsold pilots. During the 1960s, she made memorable appearances as Mac the Nurse in The Naked Kiss (1964) and as Laura-Louise McBirney in the psychological horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968), directed by Roman Polanski, alongside veteran actors Sidney Blackmer, Ruth Gordon, Ralph Bellamy, and Maurice Evans.

In 1971, Kelly returned to Broadway in the revival of No, No, Nanette with fellow hoofers Ruby Keeler and Helen Gallagher. She scored a huge success as the wisecracking, tap-dancing maid, and won Broadway's 1971 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in the show. She matched that success the following year, when she starred in Irene with Debbie Reynolds, and was again nominated for a Tony.

In 1976, Kelly appeared as the housekeeper Mrs. Schmauss in the Walt Disney film Freaky Friday starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris. Her last role in a feature film was in another Disney comedy, The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), also co-starring Harris, along with Cloris Leachman, Edward Herrmann, and Karen Valentine. Kelly's final onscreen appearance was a guest spot in a two-part episode of The Love Boat in 1979.

She continued appearing in film and television roles until she suffered a stroke in January 1980 that limited her ability to speak.

Personal life

Kelly was gay, but her sexuality was unknown to the public. She told a biographer that she was a

"big dyke", but forbade him to publish that information until her career was over; it was published in 1994. She had obscurely hinted at her sexual orientation during the 1930s, when she revealed to Motion Picture that she had been sharing an apartment with actress Wilma Cox for several years with no intention of getting married, but she never publicly claimed to be a lesbian, which in those days would have resulted in great social and professional criticism. She later confirmed that she had an affair with Tallulah Bankhead when she worked as her personal assistant.

Reportedly, she was at one time temporarily engaged to a serviceman named Otto Malde in 1942, but the marriage never materialized. "It doesn't matter to me whether you are a private, sergeant, or lieutenant," she told the press, "but I guess we'll just have to wait."

In 1933, she survived a catastrophic car crash that killed Jean Malin, one of her closest friends.

In January 1980, Kelly, while in San Francisco, suffered a stroke that caused her to lose the ability to speak. She was admitted to Englewood Nursing Home in Englewood, New Jersey, on the advice of her old friend Ruby Keeler, where she underwent therapy.

Death

On September 24, 1981, Kelly died of cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. Her funeral was held on September 28 at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan. She is interred alongside her parents, John and Delia Kelly, in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard, right near Musso & Frank Grill.

Credits

Stage

Short subjects

Expensive Kisses (1930)

The Grand Dame (1931)

Beauty and the Bus (1933) teamed with Thelma Todd

Backs to Nature (1933) teamed with Thelma Todd

Air Fright (1933) teamed with Thelma Todd

Babes in the Goods (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Soup and Fish (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Roamin' Vandals (1934)

Maid in Hollywood (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

I'll Be Suing You (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Three Chumps Ahead (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

One-Horse Farmers (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Opened By Mistake (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Done In Oil (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Bum Voyage (1934) teamed with Thelma Todd

Treasure Blues (1935) teamed with Thelma Todd

Sing Sister Sing (1935) teamed with Thelma Todd

The Tin Man (1935) teamed with Thelma Todd

Recordings

"I'm Gonna Hang My Hat On The Tree That Grows in Brooklyn" (Shapiro/Pescal/Cherig) played by Al Goodman and His Orchestra.

Sung by Patsy Kelly and Barry Wood; V-Disc, Nov. 1944