Jack Kelly (actor)
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| Jack Kelly | |
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| Born | September 16, 1927 Astoria, Queens |
| Died | November 7, 1992 Huntington Beach, California |
Jack Kelly (born in Astoria, Queens, New York, September 16, 1927— died November 7, 1992, in Huntington Beach, California) was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the TV series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962. Kelly shared the series, rotating as the lead from week to week, first with James Garner as Bret Maverick (1957-1960) then with Roger Moore as Beau Maverick (1960-1961) and Robert Colbert as Brent Maverick (1961; for two episodes) before becoming the only Maverick (alternating with reruns from the Garner era) in the fifth season. Kelly was also the brother of movie actress Nancy Kelly.
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[edit] Maverick (1957-1962)
The various anti-heroic Mavericks were well-dressed poker-playing professional gamblers roaming the Old West with the benefit of superb scripts. The series had an enormous cultural impact during a time when there were only three television networks and most cities had only three TV channels to choose from. Kelly came into the show in the eighth episode, and never matched Garner's popularity with viewers and subsequent casting directors, although he did have his enthusiastic admirers; with a deep voice and Barrymoresque profile, Kelly enjoyed an attentive following among many female viewers. Kelly shared the lead with Garner in the most often discussed episode, "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", on which the first half of the 1975 movie The Sting appears to be based, and rescued Bret at the climax of "Duel at Sundown", in which Garner fistfought Clint Eastwood.
[edit] Kings Row (1955)
Kelly played Robert Cummings's role for one season in a 1955 television series based on the movie Kings Row, in which future Wagon Train scout Robert Horton played Ronald Reagan's part. Kelly played a young doctor coping with his small town environment. The show was one-third of the Warner Bros. Presents wheel series, hosted by Gig Young and rotating the scheduled hour with a similar television version of the popular movie Casablanca as well as the new western series Cheyenne.
[edit] Red Nightmare (1962)
In 1962, Kelly played the lead in Red Nightmare, also known as The Commies Are Coming, the Commies Are Coming in its derisive 1985 video re-release incarnation, a Cold War film narrated by Jack Webb in which Kelly's character wakes up one morning to discover that America has been taken over by Communists. The supporting cast included Andrew Duggan, Peter Brown, Peter Breck, and Robert Conrad.
[edit] Other Movies and TV Series
Kelly appeared in a number of movies as well, including Forbidden Planet (1956) and as a villain in Young Billy Young (1969) with Robert Mitchum. From 1969 to 1971, he hosted the NBC daytime game show Sale of the Century, but was replaced by Joe Garagiola. Kelly was also briefly a TV series regular in Get Christie Love! (1974) and The Hardy Boys Mysteries (1978). In addition, he made guest appearances on various TV shows, one of the most memorable being his performance as Dr. Chauncey Beauregard in "Night of the Red Dog," an episode of the popular western comedy Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy. Altogether, Kelly played more than a hundred roles in various television shows and movies, not counting his 75 appearances as Bart Maverick in the original 1957 Maverick series.
[edit] Brother of Nancy Kelly
Born in the Astoria section of New York City, Jack Kelly came from a prominent acting family. His mother, Nan Kelly, had been a popular stage actress, and his sister Nancy Kelly, whom he strongly resembled in facial structure, was a major movie leading lady in the 1930s, having appeared in thirty-six films between 1926 and 1977. She portrayed Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James (1939), also featuring Henry Fonda, and played opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone later that same year. She won a Tony for the play The Bad Seed, reprised the role for the 1956 movie version, and was consequently nominated for an Academy Award the year before Maverick went into production. Oddly, she never appeared with her brother in his television series, perhaps because they looked enough alike that she could only have played his sister. Jack Kelly's sister actually had a much more successful acting career than he did, meaning that he had his innings with a flourishing sibling in both fiction and reality.
[edit] Forever Maverick
Kelly played Bart Maverick occasionally throughout his life, with James Garner in the TV-movie The New Maverick (1978) and Garner's TV series Bret Maverick (1981; Kelly was slated to become a regular the following season but the show was cancelled), and once more the year before his death in The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), but his acting career otherwise ended in the 1970s and he went into real estate and local politics in Huntington Beach, California, with the unique slogan "Let Maverick Solve Your Problems." Kelly died of a stroke in 1992.
