Obituaries

Actress Betsy Blair, 85, who also was screen great Gene Kelly's first wife, died March 13 of cancer in London, according to her daughter.

One of the films for which she is best known is appearing with Ernest Borgnine in the 1955 film Marty. She earned an Oscar nomination for the role.

Blair was a victim of the Hollywood blacklist during the time she was married to Kelly:

The actress, who had attended a weekly Marxist study group in New York City when she was 16, later came under the scrutiny of the FBI for her association with left-wing organizations such as the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, the Sleepy Lagoon Committee and the Civil Rights Congress.

But Blair's ideals "had always been American, not Russian," she wrote in her 2003 memoir, “The Memory of All That.” And her "battles and contribution -- small as it may have been -- were against racism, for strong unions, for the rights of women; to put it simply, for democracy."

Blair thought the world of Gene Kelly, but she still divorced him. She married Karel Reisz in 1963 and stayed with him until he died in 2002.