Betsy Blair: Oscar-nominated, blacklisted actress passes away at 85

Betsy Blair: Oscar-nominated, blacklisted actress passes away at 85

The Oscar-nominated actress and teenage bride of Gene Kelly, Betsy Blair, has passed away in London at the age of 85, her publisher said on Thursday.

Betsy Blair, the New Jersey-born actress, who later married film director Karel Reisz, suffered from cancer and died on March 13.

The British publishers of Blair's 2003 autobiography Mark Searle, at Elliot & Thompson, confirmed her death.

Betsy Blair swapped suburban high school for life as a nightclub dancer in New York, where she met Kelly, then a choreographer on the brink of success.

Betsy Blair and Kelly married in 1941 and moved to Hollywood, where he became a major star. She was 17 and he was 29. The couple divorced in 1957.

Blair, beginning in the late 1940s, took parts in "The Guilt of Janet Ames," and "A Double Life." But her movie career stalled after her enthusiasm for leftist causes landed her on Hollywood's blacklist.

"To be very left-wing in Hollywood was to work for the unions, to work for the blacks, the ordinary things that are social democratic principles," Blair told Britain's The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2001.

Blair, following a part in "Kind Lady" in 1951, struggled to win new movie roles for several years, focusing instead on caring for the couple's daughter, Kerry.

In "Marty" (1955), Blair took her most famous role, playing a dowdy school teacher who captures the heart of a lonely Italian-American butcher. The movie brought Academy Award nominations for both leading actors_ but Blair lost out on the best supporting actress award, though her co-star, Ernest Borgnine , won for best actor.

Kelly and Blair separated two years later, . She rarely discussed their split in public, and refused to criticize Kelly, who died in 1996. "I have nothing bad to say about Gene in any way ... We were married 16 years and it just came to an end," she told The Guardian in 2001.

Blair moved to Paris, finding herself more popular in Europe than in the U.S., and took roles in movies in France, Spain and Italy.

She later moved to London and in 1963 she married respected Czech filmmaker Reisz, director of the 1960 movie "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning."

Blair, for several years, worked mainly in theater and television and briefly halted her acting career to train as a speech therapist.

Although, in 1988 three decades after her last Hollywood film, Blair returned to the United States to star in "Betrayed" alongside Tom Berenger. A year later, she took a part in the television series "Thirtysomething."

Arabella Weir, the British comedian, a friend of Reisz's children, said she developed a close bond with Blair.

"She was a tremendously loving, loyal and ceaselessly supportive friend and really good, often wicked, fun. You could talk to her about absolutely anything nothing shocked her," Weir told The Guardian newspaper.

In the 2002 flick "The Hours", Blair was offered a role alongside Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore , but turned down the part to care for Reisz, who died in the same year.

Betsy Blair is survived by her daughter, Kerry, from her marriage to Kelly.