Besides managing regular matinee and evening performances for the public, the trio conducted full rehearsals using just the Kismet understudies, to keep them sharp.

[29] By September 1914, while touring Canada, Kelly had been promoted to the supporting role of the Beggar Kasim, and his brother Thomas had joined the cast as Caliph Abdaliah.

[36] Kelly had joined Stuart Walker's Portmanteau Theatre company by February 1916, when he took part in benefit performances for Friendship House in Washington, D. C., attended by first lady Edith Wilson.

[55] Broun said the principal character Jonathan,[fn 6] played "sympathetically" by Kelly, aroused little interest compared to supporting roles performed by Edgar Stehli and George Gaul.

The play stumbled through some dismal tryouts, and as word spread of its weak appeal, Walker found the Shubert's were booking them into less desirable theaters in small markets.

Trying to boost the play's appeal, Walker hired a well-known character actor for $400 a week, angering Kelly, whose top pay had been $250 during Seventeen.

[64] Producer George C. Tyler, having heard Piccadilly Jim was floundering, offered Kelly and Gordon leads in the second company for the new Broadway hit Clarence, at $500 and $150 a week respectively.

Tyler made it easy for them, by arranging rehearsal schedules in New York City so the couple could commute down to Washington, D. C. for the last few performances of Piccadilly Jim.

While Gordon recovered from a leg-straightening operation,[69] producer Tyler cast Kelly to support Lynn Fontanne in Dulcy, a new three-act comedy by George S. Kaufman[fn 7] and Marc Connelly.

[fn 8] The first week's play was Clarence, with Ruth Gordon reprising her role of Cora, but with Kelly taking the name part, and Percy Helton as Bobby.

The performance was good, and unmarred by the normal stock company mishaps, according to the local reviewer, who also complimented Kelly and Gordon on their maturing skill.

[87] When they returned, they played the leads in the tryout for a new comedy called Bristol Glass, written for them by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson.

[92] Sheppard Butler of the Chicago Tribune called the play "thin", speculated that it was largely Tarkington's work with little by his co-author, but praised the performances of Kelly and Gordon.

[93] McGlynn, having starred in Abraham Lincoln for years, reportedly carried an air of tragic gloom into the role of Adam Tweedle, so that someone said he "played the whole second act as if he knew Booth were going to kill him in the third".

[96] Alexander Woollcott called Tweedles "a delightful and unsuccessful comedy" in a later essay, in which he praised Gordon and Kelly as "both charming and capable".

[99] Following Tweedles, Kelly starred in a new play by Caesar Dunn, called A King for a Day, which opened at the Cort Theatre in Chicago, on November 25, 1923.

[102] After two months in Chicago, Kelly took over the Broadway lead for the musical at the Little Theatre, "...and the show is enhanced considerably by the change" according to one reviewer.

His gradations in the dialogue, his cues, his humerous inflections, his aim that never misses the effect he intends, his quality of odd pathos, defeat and bubbling spirits, and the intelligent comment that he supplies along with the convincing naturalness of his playing, can be praised as far as you like to go.” —Stark Young, review of Badges[105] During July 1924, Kelly was signed by Famous Players.

Kelly played the lead, a hotel clerk with correspondence school training as a detective, who mixes in with a girl involved with nefarious characters.

[115] Jones possesses certain personality traits, including Midwestern optimism and a penchant for throwing money at challenges, that anyone who knew Tyler would recognize.

[116] Critical appreciation for Kelly's performance and that of Lucille Webster as the producer's wife were offset by a lackluster romance with Mildred MacLeod that slowed down the third act.

[116][117] The romantic interest for Kelly's character was recast with Sylvia Field by the time the show hit Broadway, on September 23, 1925, at the Longacre Theatre.

[115][118][119] One critic noted the play was "not much more than a sucession of bright jokes and wise cracks hung together on the thread of an obvious plot", at which the "audience laughed uproariously".

[121] Most critics concentrated on Kaufman's writing in their reviews, giving only a final paragraph plaudit to Sylvia Field, Lucille Webster, Gregory Kelly, and others.

[122] The Butter and Egg Man was a true Broadway success, running through April 17, 1926 for 250 performances then immediately going on tour, starting with Brooklyn.

[123] While still playing in New York for The Butter and Egg Man, Kelly would take the midnight train to Philadelphia to be ready for the next morning's shooting of his second film for Famous Players, The Show-Off.

[129] Samuel Hopkins Adams, in his 1945 biography of Alexander Woollcott, said Kelly "...was not only a rising young actor, but a singularly fine and winning character".

"[131] While performing on tour in Pittsburgh with The Butter and Egg Man, Kelly suffered a heart attack on Friday afternoon, February 25, 1927.

Alexander Woollcott and Neysa McMein were awoken at Neshobe Island by a telegram messenger with the news, and spent the rest of the night talking about Kelly.

[134] Woollcott later wrote a memorial essay, in which he said: "I wish, too, I could find words for a final paragraph that would tell you how brave, how sensitive, how courteous a gentleman Gregory Kelly was".