Paul Kelly was a tough guy actor who hit it as big as he ever would in the 1930s and 1940s…after serving a prison term for manslaughter. If you are a frequent visitor to streaming sites on your Roku such as Pub-D-Hub and Movie Vault and other sites where B-movies in glorious black and white are the tall order of the day, then you will chance across the name Paul Kelly in the opening credits down around five or six names beneath the leading players in numerous movies.
What makes Paul Kelly’s story fascinating, however, is not that he was a great actor and certainly not that he was a great person. He was a killer who stole another man’s wife, spent time in prison and then somehow actually managed to come back and enjoy a second act in his career that actually eclipsed the first act before his premature death on the south side of 60.
If you think it amazing that Robert Downey, Jr. has enjoyed a career high after more than a decade of drugs, guns and multiple arrests, then you are right. If he was in any other career than show business, Downey’s name would be nothing more than one whispered in dark corridors as a cautionary tale of what not to do. Paul Kelly killed a man and came back to a career that actually peaked after leaving behind the prison bars of San Quentin. Of course, that’s where the resemblance ends.
Paul Kelly was never a major star and he didn’t get to become one courtesy of the kind of weird Hollywood act of contrition and redemption that has been such a boon to Downey. Kelly’s career as a third or fourth banana peaked with “The Roaring Twenties” in terms of recognition and “Fear in the Night” in terms of actual cinematic genius.
Many of the movies Paul Kelly appeared in tell a story far less interesting than his own life story that found him doing time in the infamous San Quentin prison. But then when you mess around with another man’s wife and he decides he’s not going to idly sit by, well, Kelly should probably have been thankful that prison was where he wound up instead of pushing up daisies.
Everybody loved Ray Raymond’s wife, Dorothy Mackaye. Or, at least, Ray and Paul loved her. Raymond discovered the adulterous nature of the relationship and confronted the guy who wanted to be the FBI agent of movie stardom but had to settle for being a civil servant of far less nobility. Paul Kelly never became the star he wanted and instead had to settle for infamy. Consider him the O.J. Simpson of his time. Except that Simpson never made it back to the silver screen, even in movies of far less quality than “The Roaring Twenties” like Kelly was forced to accept.
The meeting did not go well. Ray Raymond told Paul Kelly to stay away from his wife. A fight ensued. Punches were thrown. At first, it looked like Raymond merely got the worst end of the deal and would still have to put up with his wife being stolen by a cut-rate hack. Then a few days later he died of those injuries and Paul Kelly faced a career change. Going to prison for manslaughter that may actually have been closer to outright murder usually is a career-killer. Unless that career is show business.
Maybe the craziest part is that both Kelly and Mackaye served time in prison for the death of Ray Raymond, yet were allowed to marry each other upon release. If ever there was an argument in support of allowing gay marriage
