Orry-Kelly’s Unpublished Biography still with family, in 1996.

“Hell must be filled with beautiful women and no mirrors”

http://theoscarsite.com/whoswho3/orrykelly.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orry-Kelly

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/orrykelly/

Orry-Kelly with Tony Curtis on the set of his Oscar-winning “Some Like it Hot” film where he was costume designer.

http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A140703b.htm

Kelly, Orry George (1897 – 1964)

Birth:

31 December 1897, Kiama, New South Wales, Australia

Death:

26 February 1964, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Cultural Heritage:

• Manx

Occupation:

• costume designer

KELLY, ORRY GEORGE (1897-1964), dress designer, was born on 31 December 1897 at Kiama, New South Wales, son of William Kelly, a tailor from the Isle of Man, and his Sydney-born wife Florence Evaleen, née Purdue. Orry attended Kiama Public and Wollongong District schools. His distinctive first name (later hyphenated with his surname for professional use) was derived from a variety of carnation in his mother’s garden and from that of an ancient Manx king. After working briefly in a Sydney bank, Kelly was attracted to the stage. He studied art, acting, dancing and voice, and became a protégé of Eleanor Weston. Moving to New York in 1921, he found employment first as a tailor’s assistant, then as a painter of murals for nightclubs and department stores. He also formed a friendship with a young Englishman Archibald Leach, later known as Cary Grant, sharing living quarters with him and another Australian expatriate Charles (‘Spangles’) Phelps, a former ship’s steward.

 

Kelly’s murals soon led to employment as a title designer for silent films for the Fox Film Corporation, and to designing stage sets and costumes for players like Katharine Hepburn, Ethel Barrymore and Jeanette MacDonald. In 1931 he moved to Hollywood where Grant helped him to gain entry into First National Pictures Inc. Between 1932 and 1944 Orry-Kelly was chief costume designer at Warner Bros, working on hundreds of films and forming—with ‘Adrian’ at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Travis Banton at Paramount Pictures Inc.—a triumvirate of the leading men in his profession. Kelly dressed many major stars, but his most distinguished work was done for Bette Davis, whose ‘red’ ball gown in the black-and-white film, Jezebel (1938), was probably his best-known single creation.

 

An uneasy relationship with studio chief Jack L. Warner, caused chiefly by Kelly’s alcoholism, came to a head in 1944 when Warner discharged him. Orry-Kelly subsequently secured a three-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation to dress Betty Grable. From 1950 he freelanced with several studios and established private workrooms. Despite declining health and mounting personal problems, he maintained his professional status, designing for Rosalind Russell, Leslie Caron, Kay Kendall, Shirley MacLaine and Natalie Wood among others. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him three Oscars for best costume design for An American in Paris (1951, shared with two others), Les Girls (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959).

 

A quarrelsome, hot-tempered man of slightly less than middle height, with brown hair and large blue eyes, Kelly was brilliant but difficult, a versatile perfectionist who used only the finest hand-finished fabrics. His period costumes were noted for their richness and authenticity; those he designed for Davis helped to define her strongly individualized screen characters. His style was marked by its felicitous balance of realism and artifice, and achieved glamour without vulgarity. A talented amateur oil-painter, he also designed ties, cushions and shawls. He enjoyed contract bridge and watching prizefights. Witty, popular and gregarious when not affected by alcohol, Kelly was known to his intimates as ‘Jack’. He never married. Leaving an unfinished memoir, ‘Women I’ve Undressed’, he died of cancer on 26 February 1964 at Los Angeles and was cremated.

Orry Kelly with Kay Francis

Here is the family tree from the Kiama Pilot’s Cottage on Orry-Kelly.

 Here is a shot of the Kelly siblings at a 1905 Church of England Sunday School Concert kindly donated to Sue Eggins’ display at the Kiama Pilot’s Cottage Museum!

Here are the three Kelly children. Billy, Muriel and Orry Kelly.

and here is a young Orry, and one can see that having a father who was a gentleman tailor meant you were always beautifully dressed, as a form of advertising perhaps!

I believe his father William Kelly is the man with moustache in middle row, third from left but I am trying to find the copy identifying him as the first surf rescue captain. I will publish a photo from the Kiama Pilot’s Cottage exhibition of Orry’s Mother, Mrs Hart, off to visit her son in Hollywood shortly!

Kiama Surf Club 1912 members:- Back: (l to r) W. Cocks, J. Kingsbury, J. Loomes, F. Kingsbury, unknown, unknown, I. Thomas, S. Gabriel. Centre:- G. Tory, H. Thomas, W. Kelly, J. Bullen, A. Pollack, P. Walker, W. Farquharson, D. Walker. Front: D. Duggan, S. Smylie, J. Murdoch, A. Henderson, H. Tidmarsh.

Here is William Kelly’s gentleman tailor shop, around 1913.

Here is his mother Mrs J.J. Hart, the rather theatrical woman on the left, with Eleanor Weston, who had been Orry’s mentor in his younger days, about to travel to Hollywood by liner.

Mrs J.J. Hart in a later newspaper article

This was published in Wollongong (NSW Australia), in the Illawarra Mercury Weekender feature liftout (written by Katrina Lobley)on Saturday June 29th, 1996. She now works at the Sydney Writers Centre. 

http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/meetourteam.htm

Ph: (02) 9929 9237

Michelle Hoctor is the heritage writer for the Illawarra Mercury and probably knows about  Orry-Kelly descendants’ whereabouts. The important part is the fact that a copy of  the biography lies with the Kelly family, and Orry-Kelly wanted it to be made into a film, but because it was revealing lurid details of Cary Grant’s homesexual past it was suppressed in a court case, the article alleges.

There is also a story  of Orry in the army in the St Petersburg Times December 20th 1942

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19421220&id=fbUKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5466,6937175

and a year later Orry writes an article for the St Petersburg Times covering a Hollywood fashion parade.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19430103&id=_LQKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=dk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4089,3025257

He wrote a syndicated column for INS, Hearst’s International News Service.

Check out comments for an update on living relatives of Orry-Kelly( at least last year in 2008)

Orry George Kelly (Birth certificate confirms this is the correct name despite about six versions) at about 8 years old in what was probably a studio shot at Cock’s Photographic Studio in Kiama. ( it may have been part of a dramatic production, but the boat in the photo has ‘Kiama’ on it and appears in other studio shots, well spotted Sue Eggins!)

The Kiama and District Historical Society Secretary Sue Eggins has put together an ‘Orry-Kelly’ Exhibition for a showing of a Orry film (Casablanca) shown in August 2009 as part of the Kiama Council 150th anniversary celebrations. http://www.kiama.nsw.gov.au/media/pdf/Media-Releases/090421-150th-celebrations.pdf

The film was shown at Pics’n'Flicks at Gerringong Town Hall on Friday August 7th, 2009 (http://www.visitnsw.com/town/Gerringong/event.aspx)and will be opened by the much loved film critic ‘Mr Movies’ Bill Collins who is passionate about Orry Kelly and apparently collects Orry-Kelly. He certainly would be a good lead for anyone seekng a copy of Orry’s unpublished biography!

Saturday 8th August 2009 Update; on film and exhibition; Gerringong Pics’n'Flicks showed ‘Casablanca’ which was a great success (lots of familiar dialogue), Bill Collins was unable to attend, and Sue Eggin’s ‘Orry-Kelly’ exhibition is currently showing at the Kiama Pilot’s Cottage.

A local boutique hotel, the Kiama Sebel Harbourside, has named its community gallery the Orry-Kelly gallery.

This is a pic of the current Orry-Kelly exhibition at the Pilot’s Cottage in Kiama put together by Sue Eggins as part of a very successful Kiama Council 150th Anniversary Celebration.

The Kiama Independent did a story as this as well!
http://www.kiamaindependent.com.au/article/display_a_tribute_to_kiamas_hollywood_hero/

http://www.kiamaindependent.com.au/article/sebel_opens_gallery_space

I will take a photo of  (Orry’s father)William Kelly’s silver watch for bravery (he dived down and saved a ship in Kiama Harbour) that is on display at the Kiama Pilot’s Cottage.

And here it is!

William Kelly’s story http://www.nswoceanbaths.info/people/p008.htm

Orry came back to Kiama, too late for his father’s funeral in 1924

Eleanor Weston (  proprietor of the flower shop ‘The Grove’  ) travelled to Hollywood to visit Orry  in the 1950s. She was a member of the Weston Family who were publishers of the “Kiama Independent’  and also his mentor during his days at Miss Swindell’s Academy in Kiama.

In the centenary booklet of the Kiama Public School (published in 1961, three years before Orry died) Orry is fondly remembered by a old school chum…..

Mrs M. Tidmarsh.

“Orry Kelly and Ray Walker were the best painters in the school. They used to paint designs for chocolate boxes. I used to skate with Orry Kelly and we always got first prize for the best couple at fancy dress balls”

Ice used to be put down on floors in Kiama for skating, and for a while in the 1910s and 1920 a floor at School Flat park for roller skating. The chocolate boxes referred to could well have been for Atkinsons confectionery in Kiama. With a local ice cream parlor,  skating and local chocolates ( because of the dairy production in the area) Kiama must have been an idyllic  place to grow up! There’s a film for you, Hollywood, the ‘Young Orry-Kelly’ bio-pic!

Check out King Orry’s Grave on the Isle of Man!

http://www.iomguide.com/kingorrysgrave.php
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