Betsy blair

Elizabeth Winifred Boger was born on December 11, 1923, in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. As a child, she already stood out as a child model, and she was soon recruited for various Broadway shows. Her life would change forever when, as a teenager, she met Eugene Curran Kelly, better known as Gene Kelly , in a New York nightclub, who fell in love with her despite their age difference (he was 29, and Betsy only 17). ). After getting married in 1941, they decided to go to Hollywood, where Kelly was a success as an actor and dancer, and he surrounded himself with renowned cronies such as Judy Garland , Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe .

Despite the fact that she came from musical theater, Betsy Blair never acted in any film with her husband. Even she herself recognized that she did not reach the level of Cyd Charisse and company in dancing. She debuted as a secondary in The Guilt of Janet Ames , a drama, a genre that the actress would hardly abandon. Her second job was a brief appearance in the memorable Double Life , where Ronald Colman was a zealous stage actor. She also had small roles in Nest of Vipers , Mystery Street and A Ray of Light . The recognition of her would come with Marty, where she was the endearing girl who was dating the leading butcher. For her work, the actress was nominated for an Oscar for Best Secondary and won the BAFTA from the British Academy for Best Foreign Actress.

Interested in politics, Betsy Blair joined the Screen Actors Union, and related to members of the communist party. This fact caused her to be included in the black list of the Committee on Un-American Activities. She was about to be left out of the cast of Marty , because she was being investigated, but her husband pressured them to give her the role. Despite the enormous impact that this film had, she Blair hardly returned to work in Hollywood since then. She was recruited by the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bardem to become the protagonist of the legendary Calle Mayor, who convinced him precisely because of his political affinity, since Bardem proclaimed himself a communist. As soon as filming began, Bardem was arrested for his participation in a student revolt in Madrid. “I went to see him in prison to tell him that I would not continue filming without him,” Blair commented during his stay in Logroño in 2008, where he returned to collect an award half a century later. “I received pressure to continue filming,” explained Blair, who decided to take advantage of his status as a Hollywood star, to demand that the producers wait for Bardem’s return. The film finally won the Critics’ Award at the Venice Festival, and Blair played one of the most remembered characters in Spanish cinema, the spinster who is the object of ridicule by a group of undesirables.

After divorcing Kelly, in 1957, Blair joined Czech director Karel Reisz . She with him she settled in London, where she died.