Hetty Kelly
Hetty Kelly (1893 - 4 November 1918) was an Irish-born dancer and music hall performer, and the first love of movie comedian Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin met her in 1908 in London when they were both performing for impresario Fred Karno at the Streatham Empire. She was with a song and dance troupe, Bert Coutts' Yankee-Doodle Girls, and Chaplin was playing a drunk in 'Mumming Birds'. He was 19 and she was 15. He remembered her as "a slim gazelle, with a shapely oval face, a bewitching full mouth, and beautiful teeth". She came to be the female ideal in Chaplin's mind and he recreated her in some of the female leads in his movies. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, written in 1964: “Although I had met her but five times, and scarcely any of our meetings had lasted longer than twenty minutes, that brief encounter affected me for a long time.”
Hetty married a British politician in 1915, had children and lived in Portman Square, London. She eventually died in the Spanish flu epidemic that ravaged Europe in the wake of the First World War. Chaplin did not learn of her death until three years later in 1921, on a visit to England.
Hetty's sister was musical comedy actress Edith Kelly, who married US millionaire Frank Jay Gould.[1]
Hetty Kelly was played by actress Moira Kelly in the 1992 movie Chaplin produced and directed by Richard Attenborough. She also played Oona O'Neill in the film.[2]
References
- ↑ "Frank J. Gould Did Wed Edith Kelly. His Marriage to Musical Comedy Actress in Paris Suburb. His First Wife, Mrs. Helen Kelly Gould, Is Expected to Marry Ralph Hill Thomas To-morrow.". New York Times. July 10, 1910. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
- ↑ Giles, Jeff (1993-01-03). "Moira Kelly; Playing Two Roles in 'Chaplin' While Dreaming of Joan of Arc". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-20.