Mary Ellen Kay(1929-2017)

This dainty brunette starlet of the 1950s was born Mary Ellen Keaggy of German, Swiss and Irish ancestry. She loved to sing and performed in front of audiences already by the tender age of six. Not surprising an aptitude, being raised in a family with an aunt who was an opera diva in New York, an uncle who was a lyric tenor and a grandfather who was a wiz on the guitar. By the age of 15, Mary Ellen hit the road with a local orchestra as a professional singer, and, just two years later, headlined at the Mayflower Ballroom in Inglewood, California. Her first proper acting gig on stage was as Meg in Little Women. Shortly after, she appeared with Leonard Nimoy in a play at the Glendale Centre Theatre. While studying at the Bliss-Hayden School of Theatre she was discovered by a talent scout and this led her on the road to tinseltown.

After a handful of bit parts at Columbia and RKO, Mary Ellen won an audition at Republic in January 1951 and was signed to a short-term contract. In just a single year, she managed to rack up a string of eleven screen credits, including six westerns with Rex Allen (whom she described as 'wholesome'). For The Last Musketeer (1952), she was trained in the running mount by Allen and by (ex-rodeo clown) Slim Pickens (whom she called 'a laugh-a-minute'). By the end of that brief tenure at Republic, Mary Ellen had become an adept horsewoman. This training paid dividends as it helped to keep her gainfully employed for the remainder of the decade. Towards the end of her Hollywood tenure, she made several television guest appearances in The Lone Ranger (1949) and on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950), eventually fading into retirement by the mid-60s.