- William Gargan, RaIn, 1931. UA chief Joseph M Schenck ordered director Lewis Milestone to drop Kelly – as he’d just been released from San Quentin after serving 25 months for the manslaughter of actor Ray Raymond in a fight over Kelly’s affair with Mrs Raymond. Gargan took over the shy marine who catches hooker Joan Crawford’s eye and doesn’t knows what to do with it. Kelly would have.
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Edward G Robinson, Barbary Coast, 1935. Kelly passed Chamalis to Robinson, who promptly stole everything but the saloon piano in gold- rush days.
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Bruce Cabot, Divorce, 1944. Change of Bob, home from WWII, and the target of a five-times-married Kay Francis in the anti-divorce programmer. Ho hum. Kelly’s true story had more fire. He was sent to San Quentin for the manslaughter of his lover Dorothy Mackaye’s violent husband. She was also jailed. Wed on his release in 1931, their marriage lasted until her car smash death nine years later. His past did not harm Kelly’s Broadway/Hollywood career. Indeed, in Duffy of Sam Quentin, 1953, he actually played the jail’s real Warden Clinton T. Duffy.
- Alan Napier, Manhandled, 1948. Change of Alton Bennet, a once best-selling writer now on his uppers, dreaming of his richer wife’s murder and telling all, indirectly, to, as per the original title, The Man Who Stole A Dream.
Birth year: 1899Death year: 1956Other name: Casting Calls: 4