Ms. Kelly burst into the movies in 1969 in “Sweet Charity,” an adaptation of the stage musical about an ever-hopeful taxi dancer — a dance partner for hire — in a run-down Times Square dance hall. Ms. Kelly played the dancer Helene, one of two best friends of the title character, Charity Hope Valentine, played by Shirley MacLaine. Chita Rivera played the other.
Although lesser known than the movie’s big stars — Sammy Davis Jr. also had top billing — Ms. Kelly more than held her own, especially in the seductive number “Big Spender” and the energetic “There’s Got to Be Something Better Than This,” in which the three dance-hall girls express their determination to get respectable jobs.
Onstage, Ms. Kelly played Helene in the London production of “Sweet Charity” (with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and a book by Neil Simon). The director, Bob Fosse, who also directed and choreographed the show on Broadway, asked Ms. Kelly to reprise the role for the movie, which was to be his feature-film directorial debut.
He called her “the best dancer I’ve ever seen.”
She went on to other movie roles, including “The Andromeda Strain” (the original), “Soylent Green”, and “The Spook Who Sat By the Door”. She also did guest spots on a lot of 70s TV that wasn’t “Mannix”: “Cannon”, “Police Woman”, “The Streets of San Francisco”. She also played a public defender on “Night Court”.
Despite her many acting roles, Ms. Kelly’s first love was dance.
“The only time I feel complete expression is when I’m dancing,” she told the black weekly The New Pittsburgh Courier in 1968. “Then I feel I have no problems, no worries, no hangups. I feel I could do anything in the world.”