Bridget Sarah Veronica Rose Kelly (1910-81) started out in show business as Frank Fay’s stooge in vaudeville before quickly moving on to Broadway shows, in which she performed alongside many of the top comedians of the day.
Kelly’s earliest confirmed film appearance is the lead role in The Grand Dame (1931), a Vitaphone short shot in New York. Nineteen-thirty-three was an important year: she had an important supporting role in MGM’s musical Going Hollywood, playing Marion Davies’s best friend; and Hal Roach chose her to replace ZaSu Pitts as Thelma Todd’s partner in a series of comedy shorts. Pitts had played her usual scatty self, while Kelly was the ultimate wisecracking dame.
Throughout the 1930s, Kelly appeared as smart-mouthed support in comedies and musicals, including Every Night at Eight (1935) and Pigskin Parade (1936), and she was the female lead in the creepy comedy The Gorilla (1939), with Bela Lugosi and the Ritz Brothers.
It is believed that Kelly’s career declined in the 1940s because of her insistence on living her life as an out lesbian. Returning to New York, she entertained the troops during the war, and performed on radio and in summer stock. She also worked as personal assistant to Tallulah Bankhead.
Supporting work in films opened up to her again in the 1960s, and she also worked extensively on television. She made a successful return to Broadway in 1971 in a revival of No, No, Nanette, followed by another revival, Irene, in 1973.
Patsy Kelly made one other musical at MGM, starring in Nobody’s Baby.
