Trivia

Was last known to be a teacher in the Washington D.C. area and notably reluctant to discuss his film career.

He was attending parochial school in the Bronx, New York City, when he was discovered.

He was an administrator for the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa in the late 1960s.

Served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Had a Ph.D in Education from Michigan State University.

All four of his grandparents were from Ireland.

Survived by his six children, Ann, Matt, Eileen, Kevin, Mark and Paul and 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Tommy was cremated. His ashes were given to his family.

As he reached adulthood, Kelly's roles in movies were minor and he was often uncredited. He appeared in The Magnificent Yankee in 1950, which turned out to be his last of 19 films before ending his acting career.

In 1939, Tommy Kelly had a small but memorable part in Gone with the Wind as the boy crying in a band playing "Dixie" in Atlanta while the death lists are given out.

Kelly was generally reticent about his years as an actor after retiring from Hollywood at the age of 25.[.

He began his acting career at the age of twelve when he was selected to play Tom Sawyer in the 1938 movie The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the first Technicolor adaption of Mark Twain's classic 1876 novel. Approximately 25,000 boys had auditioned for that role and it is said that famous producer David O. Selznick handpicked Kelly for the role. Despite Kelly's earning good critical reviews for his performance, the film was only a poor financial success.

He served as superintendent of international schools in Liberia and Venezuela. He eventually returned to the United States and worked in an important position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington. Ever conscious of the value of education, in his thesis he focused, among other things, on the relative advantages of children who were educated in U.S. military dependent schools abroad.

As with many other stars, the war years found Tommy in the U.S. Army; he served in the infantry rather than the USO, as did some other child stars.

Tommy Kelly was an American child actor.