Patsy Kelly

Happy Birthday, Patsy! Patsy would be 108 today... This photo, reportedly from 1933, was used as a promo photo for a radio show she did in 1944, when she looked VERY different than she does here! It was radio, so I suppose it didn't matter, really. Maybe it was the only photo the promoters could get their hands on?

107? Say it ain't so! Happy Birthday to Patsy who would have indeed been 107 years old today. Born in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn tenement apartment before the doctor could even get there, she always seemed to be a little ahead of her time!

On December 15, 1934 the 13th Todd-Kelly 2 reel short, Bum Voyage, was released in theaters by MGM. In this one, the girls find 2 tickets for a cruise to Bermuda and of course get on board only to find that their room is inhabited by (a supposedly) trained gorilla. Hilarity ensues, as I am sure you can imagine. Since the trainer of the gorilla was the one who tossed the tickets in the first place and since the girls were the ones with the tickets to the room, the ship’s crew has assumed they are taking responsibility for the gorilla, which of course, has escaped and is eluding capture. Ordered to get the gorilla back in its cage, Thelma has to assume the role of gorilla trainer, which leaves our Patsy to don a gorilla suit (because of course every cruise ship has one laying around) and pretend to be the trained gorilla.

80 years ago today, Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly short, “Twin Triplets” was released in theaters. A good synopsis can be found here: http://www.lordheath.com/index.php?p=1_1395-Twin-Triplets Patsy’s friend Thelma would be dead within two months. Photo is from Motion Picture Daily (1935).

70 years ago today, Patsy Kelly recorded an Armed Forces Radio Service show (also broadcast across the US) with then famous cabaret singer, Hildegard, who had her own show entitled, The Raleigh Room. Patsy would go on to guest star on Raleigh Room many more times as well as travel around the US doing USO shows with Hildegard and an entourage of other entertainers. Here’s a link of this broadcast http://randsesotericotr.podbean.com/category/variety/  - scroll down to program 25 (noted as pgm 25). Patsy comes on after Hildegarde’s first song, at about the 1:56 mark. Photo has Hildegard on the left, Don McNeill in the center, and Patsy on the right.

Happy Birthday, Patsy Kelly! Patsy would have been 105 years old today... This photo is of Patsy and Thelma on set where Thelma (back in the days before everyone had a personal assistant) actually purchased (and had delivered) a cake for Patsy. Thelma's gift to Patsy? An entire assortment of condiments because Patsy loved any and every kind of sauce... ketchup, mustards, chili sauce, you name it!

This was the third movie Patsy made with Ms. Davies (the first was Going Hollywood in 1933 and Page Miss Glory in 1935) and Marion requested her specifically for this movie. She even gave Patsy a gift of jewelry for agreeing to be in the picture. When asked if Patsy ever met Ms. Davies' famous paramour, William Randolph Hearst, she said that she had, indeed met him and that he was a very kind, nice man with a very high voice.

Both photos are from "Broadway Limited", one scene shot with "Renfru" and the other a publicity still.

The reviews that people bothered to write on both TCM.com and imdb.com are all positive and almost laudatory, but the average votes are 50/50. Given that it has Loretta Young, Robert Taylor, AND Patsy Kelly, it is doubtful you’ll regret having watched it. New York Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B03E5DD113FEE3BBC4A52DFB066838D629EDE gives Patsy a good notice.

Patsy had a life-long love and respect for her friend and co-star Thelma Todd. In fact, in most interviews she gave (namely after Thelma's death), she usually referred to Thelma as "The Great Thelma Todd""The Talented Miss Todd", or things to that effect. Andy Edmonds, in his book, "Hot Toddy" (which has now been dismissed as inaccurate), states that they were not good friends off the set. For some reason, this has always bothered me as there are so many evidences to the opposite! The first pic shows them socializing and clowning around at a party and the other is a photo of them playing cards between takes. The newspaper clip was part of an article/obituary written about Miss Todd after she died from The Fitchburg Sentinel, Dec. 19th, 1935.

We totally take "home video" or cell phone video for granted in this day and age. How's this for some pretty awesome video, which appears to be taken by vacationers in Los Angeles catching Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly, and their director, Gus Meins outside of the Brown Derby in Hollywood. It's short, but it's something, so I'm not complaining. Reportedly from the summer of 1933.

http://macguffinmovies.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/hill-tillies-no-5-checked-out/

The photo and the article are about five years apart, but as you can see, Patsy was capable of having nice legs. In future posts, I'll write about the circumstances and process that led Patsy to shed many pounds, for her picture, "There Goes My Heart", for which this a promo shot. The article was five years later as a promo for "Danger! Women at Work".

71 yeas ago today, on April 5, 1943 ‘My Son, The Hero’ was released by PRC. From Moviefone.com: My Son, the Hero was a rare comedy from the PRC studio mills-and rarer still, it was directed by melodrama specialist Edgar G. Ulmer. Roscoe Karns plays a third-rate fight manager misleadingly known as Big Time. Justifiably proud of his war-correspondent son Michael (Joseph Allen Jr.), Big Time tries to measure up to his son's accomplishments by writing letters to the boy, claiming to be a wealthy businessman. When Michael comes home on furlough, Big Time panics, worrying that he'll be exposed as a fraud. But he hasn't taken into consideration his golden-hearted ex-wife Gerty (Patsy Kelly) and punchdrunk prizefighter Kid Slug (Maxie Rosenbloom), who help Big Time come off as a hero in the eyes of his son. According to sources IMDb and Wikipedia, PRC never spent more than $100,000 on any production and this movie only took 6 days to film (which is unsourced and I find very hard to believe). As most PRC films are in the public domain, you can see this movie for FREE here: https://archive.org/details/MySonTheHero It's worth a watch. Review average is about 6.5/10 stars from different sites. Being a very low budget 'B Movie' studio, PRC movies were usually shown as the first film of a double bill of B movies or run with a 2nd run big studio movie.

54 years ago today, on March 31, 1960 ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’ was released by MGM. This movie was Patsy's first feature length movie since 1943 (17 years, for those bad at math). Though a small part, the movie starred a very strong cast (David Niven, Margaret Lindsay, and Spring Byington, to name a few) and began what would mark as the start to her slow resurgence in 'the business.' This website has a several screen caps (with Patsy in some of them) and chronicles the storyline of the movie via pictures which refreshed my memory but quick! http://hookedonhouses.net/2010/05/09/doris-days-fixer-upper-in-please-dont-eat-the-daisies/

79 years ago today, March 30, 1935 the 16th Todd-Kelly short, ‘The Tin Man’ was produced by Hal Roach Studios and released by MGM. Thelma and Patsy find themselves in a spooky house inhabited by a nut who is a mechanical genius and has made a robot who does everything. The inventor manipulates the robot's control board from a hidden room. The girls are soon in a panic. Patsy gets into an argument with the robot and loses the match of wits. Blackie Burke, an escaped convict, is using the house as a hideout, and this adds to the problems the girls already have. - Written by Les Adams for imdb.com