K
Kelley, Kitty
Identification American biographer
Born April 4, 1942; Spokane, Washington
Kelley first made her reputation in the 1970’s and 1980’s
as the author of unauthorized, sensationalistic, and best-
selling biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Eliza-
beth Taylor, and Frank Sinatra but perhaps became the most
famous biographer of the 1990’s with her controversial
books on Nancy Reagan and the British royal family.
Kitty Kelley is often cited as one of the factors in the
growth of books about famous people and celebri-
ties in the 1990’s. A former reporter forThe Washing-
ton Post, Kelley made a major impact on how biogra-
phies are written with the publication ofNancy
Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography(1991), an ac-
count that purported to reveal intimate new details
about the couple’s private life. Pres-
ident Ronald Reagan repudiated
Kelley’s biography of his wife, dis-
puting her reports that the couple
smoked marijuana and that Nancy
had had an affair with Frank Sina-
tra, but many of Kelley’s discoveries
were later confirmed, including the
fact that Nancy had relied on astrol-
ogers.
Unusual for a biographer, Kelley
became a public figure in her own
right, making news and appearing
in numerous shows on television
and radio. So iconic was she that she
was spoofed onSaturday Night Live
and then became the subject of a bi-
ography attempting to expose her
lies and half-truths. However, the bi-
ographer hardly dented Kelley’s
reputation—in part because even
though she has often been attacked
for publishing unsubstantiated sto-
ries, she has never lost a lawsuit or
had to retract what she has published. Although
most reviews of Kelley’s work in the 1990’s were neg-
ative, many journalists nevertheless admired her te-
nacity in researching her subjects’ lives and bringing
to biography a new level of candor.
In 1997, Kelley turned her attention to the British
royal family inThe Royals, a book that could not be
published in Great Britain because of libel laws,
which put the onus on the writer and publisher to
prove they have not libeled the subject. In the
United States, the law is just the opposite, so that the
burden of proof is placed on the plaintiff.The Royals
became the fourth best-selling nonfiction title of the
year in the United States, according toPublishers
Weekly. Essentially a history of the Windsors, a Ger-
man family who sought to obscure their roots on the
European continent, Kelley’s biography portrayed
the royals as self-indulgent, scandal-ridden, and in-Author Kitty Kelley poses next to a poster advertising her bookNancy Reagan: The
Unauthorized Biography, which portrays the former First Lady in an unflattering
light.(AP/Wide World Photos)