Bobby Connelly
actor
- Birth name:
- Robert Joseph Connelly
- Born:
- 1909-04-04, Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1922-07-05, Lynbrook, Long Island, New York, USA
- Professions:
- actor
Biography
Brooklyn-born on April 4, 1909, to hoof-and-joke troupers, Bobby Connelly toddled straight from nursery to nickelodeon, debuting before the camera in 1912. A year later he signed with Vitagraph—its stages only a stone’s throw from his own stoop—and promptly turned “Sonny Jim,” a mischievous moppet in a popular string of one-reelers, into a household grin. Between takes he scraped away at a half-size violin, a pastime that paid off when he bowed on the big screen as child prodigy Leon Kantor in the 1920 tearjerker “Humoresque.” By then his weekly paycheck rivaled that of studio executives, and he even fronted his own touring vaudeville unit, basking in top-billed spotlight. Late in 1921 a stubborn cough settled in his chest; bronchitis, worsened by an overworked heart, kept him bedridden through the winter. On July 6, 1922, the boy who had once made America laugh quietly drew his last breath at the family home in Lynbrook, Long Island—his reel forever frozen at twelve.
