Betsy Blair | 'Marty' costar, 85

Betsy Blair, 85, an actress best remembered for playing the shy, plain-Jane schoolteacher who meets Ernest Borgnine's lonely Bronx butcher at the Stardust Ballroom in the 1955 movie

Marty

, has died.

Ms. Blair, who was blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s while married to screen legend Gene Kelly and later was married to director Karel Reisz, died of cancer in London last Friday.

The red-haired actress earned an Academy Award nomination as best actress in a supporting role as Clara Snyder in Marty, which won the Academy Award for best picture - as well as Oscars for screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, director Delbert Mann and Borgnine.

Ms. Blair's performance in Marty, Borgnine said, "was absolutely lovely. It was a pleasure working with her."

Ms. Blair, however, almost didn't get to play Clara, a role that Chayefsky had recommended her for: She had been blacklisted since 1950.

The actress, who had attended a weekly Marxist study group in New York 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 Ms. 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."

- Los Angeles Times