Biography
Jean Brooks, born Ruby Matilda Kelly, was an American actress and singer. She appeared in more than thirty films, primarily in supporting roles during the 1940s.
She began her professional career as a singer in New York before entering film with small parts. She worked at Universal Pictures in B-films and later signed with RKO, where she appeared in several Val Lewton productions, including The Leopard Man (1943) as Kiki Walker and The Seventh Victim (1943) as Jacqueline Gibson. She also featured in entries in the Falcon series.
Brooks was married to writer and director Richard Brooks from 1941 until their divorce in 1944. Her film roles diminished after the mid-1940s; she made her final screen appearance in 1948 and later lived in San Francisco, where she died in 1963.
