Jean Brooks

Signed by an independent film production company that went under before she reached Hollywood, Brooks spent several years at Universal as a leading lady in B pictures, including several Johnny Mack Brown westerns. Her option was dropped in late 1941. By then she had married writer Richard Brooks, and, with a certain Broadway hoofer having just signed at MGM, she dropped the Kelly and became Jean Brooks. She signed with RKO, where she is remembered for three appearances for cult producer Val Lewton, particularly her performance as a haunted devil worshiper in The Seventh Victim (1943).

Her clipped delivery and intense acting style made her a promising bet for stardom, but RKO lost interest by mid-'44, and her roles gradually shrank until she was dropped in 1946. She and Brooks divorced, and his later studio biographies omitted her name. For years she was listed as a "Lost Player," championed by writer Doug McClelland in magazine articles. Eventually located in San Francisco, she worked as a classified ad solicitor for the San Francisco Examiner and married printer Thomas Leddy. In her last 15 years she suffered from an eating disorder, and in her last five years from Laennec's cirrhosis caused by alcoholism. She died on November 25, 1963, at Kaiser Hospital in Richmond, California, from complications of cirrhosis. She was an American actress of Caucasian ethnicity.