Betsy Blair -December 11, 1923 – March 13, 2009) was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London. Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in 1940. There she met Gene Kelly. They were married the following year, when she was seventeen years old. The couple divorced sixteen years later, in 1957. After work in the t ...