American scandalmonger author of unauthorized celebrity biographies, including “Jackie Oh!” in 1978, “The Last Star,” about Elizabeth Taylor, in 1981, and “His Way: Frank Sinatra” in 1986. She made some $4 million on her biography of Nancy Reagan, released 4/08/1991. Her most recent book was “The Royals,” released in 1997.
Kelley was born in Spokane, Wash., the eldest of seven children (six girls, one boy). She is the daughter of a well-to-do lawyer and an alcoholic mother, and numerous reports indicate that it was an abusive household, where Kelley was still being beaten with a hairbrush when she was 20 years old. She graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s in English in 1964. She tried teaching briefly, then got a job as a VIP hostess at the General Electric Progressland Pavilion in the New York World’s Fair in 1965. Ironically, she had a chance to meet Jackie Kennedy at the Pavilion.
She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1967. She worked as a receptionist for Senator Eugene McCarthy during his 1968 presidential bid. In 1969, she became a researcher for “The Washington Post,” which she says she quit to become a freelance writer in 1971, though some stories say she was fired.
A bottle blonde with breathless voice and tenacious ambition, Kelley wrote her first book in 1975, “The Glamour Spas.” She then went on to write a host of unauthorized celebrity bio’s, usually marked with some never-before-reported sensationalism that continue to call her credibility into question. Much of her work is maligned for half-truths, exaggeration, un-named sources, implication, and second-hand gossip.
Kelley divorced publicist Michael Edgley in 1990 after 14 years of marriage, no children. She later lived in Virginia with her second husband, allergist John Zucker, 56 (in 1997). Her book “The Royals,” had just brought in an advance of $4.4 million.
George Carpozi Jr.’s scathing biography of her, “Poison Pen,” was published in August 1991.
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