Betsy Blair, 85, an actress best remembered for playing the shy, plain-Jane schoolteacher who meets Ernest Borgnine’s lonely Bronx butcher at the Stardust Ballroom in the 1955 movie “Marty,” died March 13 in London.
Blair was blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s while married to screen legend Gene Kelly and later was married to director Karel Reisz.
The red-haired actress earned an Academy Award nomination as best actress in a supporting role as Clara Snyder in “Marty,” which won the Academy Award for best picture.
In 1957, the year after she received her Oscar nomination, Blair and Kelly divorced and Blair moved to Paris.
“How could I have left Gene, this wonderful man, after 16 years of marriage?” Blair said in a 2003 interview. “To this day, I can’t explain it.” Then she added: “It had nothing to do with sex. It was freedom.”
