Mary Kennedy (3) [1896–1987]

Mary Kennedy was born May 28, 1896, in Claxton, Georgia, the daughter of Edmund Foster Kennedy and Josephine McMahon Kennedy. Following an education in convent schools in Georgia and Florida, she moved to New York and appeared in silent films with the Cosmopolitan Film Company and in several theater productions between 1917 and 1935, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931) with Katharine Cornell. Also a playwright, her first success was Mrs. Partridge Presents , co-authored with Ruth Hawthorne, which was presented on Broadway in 1925 and published by Samuel French. In addition to plays, Kennedy wrote novels, short stories, poetry, and books for children. She was a member of Actors' Equity, the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the Poetry Society of America, and the Society of Women Geographers.
On June 11, 1921, Kennedy married the American composer Joseph Deems Taylor (1885-1966); their daughter Joan Kennedy Taylor was born in 1926 and the couple divorced in 1934. Mary Kennedy studied at Radcliffe College (1943-1945) and Columbia University (1947-1949), and was awarded three fellowships at the Macdowell Colony. She died on April 24, 1987, in Norwalk, Connecticut.