Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Roaring Twenties Update

Walter Satterthwait called my attention to this info about one of the actors in the film.

Paul Kelly (actor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Born in Brooklyn, New York, Kelly began his career as a child actor in silent films at age 7 before growing up to become a Broadway and film actor. Kelly appeared in over one hundred movies, most of them as a tough guy character actor in the 30s, 40s and 50s.

His career momentum was briefly halted with a two-year (1927-1929) forced hiatus when he spent 25 months in California's San Quentin prison for beating to death actor Ray Raymond in a fistfight. Raymond's widow, Dorothy MacKaye, later married Kelly. She was briefly imprisoned for being an accomplice in the murder."

3 comments:

jj solari said...

now THIS is cool hollywood gossip. I always THOUGHT it was odd you never saw Paul Kelly in any group shots with other actors. Guess that incident made them all skittish. HAHAHAHA guess it had the opposite effect on the wife of the guy he beat to death. I need to know more now. This caper pro'bly has threads trailing off it all over the place.

Cap'n Bob said...

I hear he was Don King's role model.

Brent McKee said...

Dorothy Mackaye wrote a play about women in prison that was eventually turned into a Barbara Stanwyck movie "The Ladies They Talk About." She died in a car accident in 1940 when she rolled her car near their home in Northridge. What Wikipedia doesn't mention is that Kelly died on November 6, 1956 - Election Day. He voted for Stevenson.