The best possible book that could have been written about Jack Kelly, best remembered today as "the guy who played Maverick who wasn't James Garner". It's extremely well researched with great access to Kelly's surviving relatives and plenty of newspapers and magazines that have been gone through. Kelly should be honoured someone has gone to this effort to write such a book about him.
It doesn't change the fact that he didn't have that interesting a career. His non Maverick credits are spectacularly unimpressive, despite Kelly starting as a child star - support parts in Forbidden Planet and To Hell and Back, the lead in some forgotten films (Hong Kong Affair, Love and Kisses), some theatre, lots of guest stints, being host of Sale of the Century. It's not very impressive, especially when compared to co-stars Jim Garner and Roger Moore - there aren't even that many decent cult favourites on there, apart from a Cold War flick The Commies are Coming.
Kelly was a household face at least with his hit TV series but when that was cancelled he was dumped by his studio (Warner Bros) he displayed a real knack of plunging into obscurity - you'd have thought he'd be able to star in a couple of low budget films at least, even in the late 60s, but he didn't. Rod Taylor was once up for the role of Bart Maverick - one feels he would have used it as more of a springboard to do more.
Alexander, his extremely diligent biographer, blames this on part on his drinking - Kelly was an alcoholic, albeit a highly functioning one, which prevented his career from reaching its full potential and helped kill his two marriages. She's too polite to say (or doesn't believe) another reason: that he was basically was a bland actor, who suited the 50s but not so much the late 60s. Even his name is kind of bland.
Kelly was no dummy though - even as his acting career wound down, he managed to hold on to his money, moving into real estate. He became Councilman then Mayor of Huntington Beach and had a great "third act" to his life - he might have risen higher had he not died of a heart attack in 1992.
Kelly's life was a little more interesting than his career - he had a model mum, actress sister (Nancy Kelly from The Bad Seed which I didn't know), started as a child actor, did a lot of MC work, was best mates with Desi Arnaz and adored JFK. Still, despite Alexander's sterling work I did find this heavy going at times - all the talk about Kelly's love for cooking and opinions on things and his endless, endless guest appearances on TV. It is the last word on Jack Kelly to be sure - I just hope her next subject is a little more noteworthy.
No comments:
Post a Comment