Darla Hood

Darla Hood is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. She never had a particularly successful adult career, although she did win a Tony Award for her performance in The Bad Seed, which she followed up by starring in the film version and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. At forty-seven, Hood died in North Hollywood, California, of acute hepatitis contracted while in the hospital for a minor surgery. Nancy was a child star, who had made so many movies by the time she was nine years old, that Film Daily called her "the most photographed child in America due to commercial posing.". During the 1960s and 1970s, she went to many Our Gang/Little Rascals festivals and conventions, meeting and greeting the various generations of fans. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, she was the sister of actor Jack Kelly. And she appeared in her own nightclub act at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, the Copacabana in New York and the Sahara in Las Vegas. Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 - January 2, 1995) was an American actress.

She did singing and voice-over on TV commercials, which included Campbell Soup and Chicken of the Sea Tuna. Hood was a guest on such TV shows of the early 1960s as Tell It to Groucho starring Groucho Marx and The Jack Benny Show, where she appeared as "Darla" in a spoof of the old Our Gang shows with Jack Benny. She played a secretary in the suspense drama The Bat (1959) with Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Joe Rivkin, who discovered her as a child, saw the cover and cast her in her first adult role in a movie.

In January 1959, she released a new record, Quiet Village. She and Granson had three children. Decker (married 1955-divorced 1957) and record company head Jose Granson (married 1957). Hood had two marriages, insurance salesman Robert W.

She had a hit record in 1957, I Just Wanna Be Free, and appeared in the movie Calypso Heat Wave singing a duet with Johnny Desmond. In 1955, she was a leading lady in the act of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She was a regular on The Ken Murray Show from 1950 to 1951. Hood then went out on her own with singing engagements in nightclubs and guest appearances on TV.

The group remained with Murray's Blackouts during its long run in New York and Hollywood. Shortly after graduation, the quartet was booked by producer and star Ken Murray for his famous "Blackouts," a stage variety show. While at Fairfax High School, she organized a vocal group called the Enchanters with four boys. When she outgrew her role in Our Gang, she appeared in a couple of other movies and attended school in Los Angeles.

The comedy movie shorts were later syndicated for television, in the mid-1950s, under the title The Little Rascals. From 1935 to 1941, she played Darla in Our Gang. She was then taken to Culver City, California, to appear in the Our Gang movies. Just after her third birthday, she was taken to New York City where she was seen by Joe Rivkin, a casting director for Hal Roach Studios, who arranged a screen test.

Her mother started her in singing and dancing at an early age, taking her to lessons in Oklahoma City. Her father worked in a bank and her mother was a music teacher. She was born Darla Jean Hood in Leedey, Oklahoma, the only child of James Claude Hood and Elizabeth Davner. Darla Hood (November 4, 1931 – June 13, 1979) was an American child actress.