Betsy Blair (Gene Kelly's first wife) died in London after a bout with cancer, aged 85, on March 13, 2009. She is survived by a daughter, three stepchildren and several grandchildren
Gene Kelly's 'teenage bride' Betsy Blair dies, aged 85
The American actress Betsy Blair, who rose from New Jersey chorus girl to
become the teenage bride of Gene Kelly, went on to star in one of the
classic Hollywood films of the 1950s, and later became a Londoner when she
married the film-maker Karel Reisz, has died in London after suffering from
cancer. She was 85.
Blair first met Kelly when she was only 15 and he was choreographing shows
for a New York nightclub, long before he became a Hollywood star with such
films as On the Town and Singing' in the Rain. In a 2001 Guardian interview
she recalled how she inadvertently turned up a day early for an audition and
spoke to a man moving tables and chairs. "I thought he was a busboy. I said,
'I'm here to see Mr Rose' and he asked me if I was a dancer. I said I was
and he told me the audition was the following day."
Blair started to leave when the 'busboy' asked her, "Are you a good dancer?"
Said Blair: "I turned round and said, 'Very'. The next day, I went to the
audition and it was Gene moving the tables and chairs around. He was the
choreographer." Needless to say, Blair got the job and the two fell in love,
spending the next year and half working in nightclubs and in musical
comedies on Broadway.
When she was 17, Gene asked Betsy to marry him. "It was in front of the
Plaza Hotel in New York. We were sitting by the fountain and he said he
couldn't leave me to the mercy of New York when he went to Hollywood. I said
yes immediately. I didn't have any reservations at all. You don't when
you're in love."
They arrived in Hollywood as husband and wife on December 7, 1941, the day
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Kelly, 29, was contracted to David
Selznick but before long MGM asked him to be in For Me and My Gal and a star
was born.
Betsy claimed not to be fazed by his increasing fame. "I loved his work and
he was a great dancer and he was also a really interesting, educated fellow.
The fact that he was a star didn't matter to me. I was a snippy kid, I never
thought of him as an icon."
After the war, when the couple lived on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Betsy
also broke into films, appearing in The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947) and The
Snake Pit (1948) alongside Olivia de Havilland. But the parts dried upafter
she became involved in union politics and, like so many other Hollywood
left-wingers, was subject to investigation by Senator Joe McCarthy's House
Un-American Activities Committee.
However, she had one big film part to come - that of Ernest Borgnine's
plain-Jane girlfriend in the 1955 classic Marty, which won all the big
prizes at the 1956 Oscars. It was always said that she got the part only
because Kelly threatened to stop shooting at MGM if his young wife was not
allowed to work.
The marriage came to an end in 1957 and Betsy moved to Paris where she made
films with such European directors as Michelangelo Antonioni (The Cry).
While filming at Pinewood she met the Czech ?migre Karel Reisz. They married
in 1963. He had already directed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and would
go on to make Morgan and The French Lieutenant's Woman.
In 2003, Blair published her autobiography, The Memory of All That. "I have
nothing bad to say about Gene in any way," she said. "We were married 16
years and it just came to an end."
