Florence Henrietta "Hetty" Kelly (August 28, 1893 – November 4, 1918
''Bristol Post'', News section, April 8, 2014. Accessed 5 April 2016. The biographical material on Hetty is found in an email, reprinted in this article, written by Chaplin's biographer David Robinson.) was an Irish dancer and music hall performer and the first love of movie comedian

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

Life

Kelly's father was a window-frame maker in

Camberwell Camberwell ( ) is an List of areas of London, area of South London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark, southeast of Charing Cross. Camberwell was first a village associated with the church of St Giles' Church, Camberwell, St Giles ...

. Her siblings both found success and made themselves noteworthy to some degree. Her sister, musical comedy actress Edith Kelly, married American millionaire

Frank Jay Gould Frank Jay Gould (December 4, 1877 – April 1, 1956) was a philanthropist and a member of the wealthy Gould family. He was the owner of French Riviera casinos and hotels. Biography He was born on December 4, 1877, in Manhattan, New York Cit ...

, and later

Albert de Courville Albert Pierre de Courville (26 March 1887 – 15 March 1960) (born in Croydon, England) was a writer and director of theatrical revues, many of which featured the actress and singer Shirley Kellogg, whom he married in June 1913. Career In abo ...

. Her brother, Arthur, became an executive for

United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...

, which Chaplin cofounded. At the age of 21, Kelly married Lieutenant (later "Sir") Alan Edgar Horne (1889–1984) in August 1915.David Robinson, ''Chaplin: His Life and Art'' (Penguin: 2nd revised edition, 2001), index entry on Sir Alan Edgar Horne Horne was a lieutenant in the Surrey Yeomanry. (In 1941 Horne succeeded his father to the Horne baronetcy of Shackleford, in Surrey.) The couple lived at 5 Tilney Street, Mayfair, London.

met Kelly in 1908 in London when they were both performing for impresario

Fred Karno Frederick John Westcott (26 March 1865 – 17 September 1941), best known by his stage name Fred Karno, was an English theatre impresario of the British music hall. As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in ...

at the Streatham Empire. She was with a song and dance troupe, Bert Coutts' Yankee-Doodle Girls, and Chaplin was playing a drunk in ''Mumming Birds''. He was 19 and she was 15. He remembered her as "a slim gazelle, with a shapely oval face, a bewitching full mouth, and beautiful teeth". She came to be the female ideal in Chaplin's mind, and he re-created her in some of the female leads in his movies. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, written in 1964, "Although I had met her but five times, and scarcely any of our meetings had lasted longer than twenty minutes, that brief encounter affected me for a long time." Chaplin wrote a letter to Hetty Kelly on July 18, 1918. Kelly died in October 1918 in the

Spanish flu epidemic The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest document ...

that ravaged Europe in the wake of the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. Chaplin did not learn of her death until three years later in 1921, when Arthur Kelly informed him on a visit to England. Kelly was played by American actress

Moira Kelly Moira Kelly (born March 6, 1968) is an American actress. She is known for portraying Kate Moseley in the 1992 film '' The Cutting Edge'' as well as single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama '' One Tree Hill''. She is also known for playing the ...

in the 1992 film ''

Chaplin Chaplin may refer to: People * Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), English comedy film actor and director * Chaplin (name), other people named Chaplin Films * ''Unknown Chaplin'' (1983) * Chaplin (film), ''Chaplin'' (film) (1992) * Chaplin (2011 fi ...

'', produced and directed by

Richard Attenborough Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough (; 29 August 192324 August 2014) was an English actor, film director, and Film producer, producer. Attenborough was the president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Acade ...

. Moira Kelly also played Chaplin's fourth and last wife,

Oona O'Neill Oona O'Neill, Lady Chaplin (14 May 1925 – 27 September 1991) was a British actress, the daughter of American playwright Eugene O'Neill and English-born writer Agnes Boulton, and the fourth and last wife of actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. ...

(who resembled Hetty Kelly), in the film.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Hetty 1893 births 1918 deaths Irish female dancers Place of birth missing Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic