Marcus Cook Connelly was born to actor and hotelier Patrick Joseph Connelly and actress Mabel Fowler Cook in
McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His father died in 1902. Connelly attended Trinity Hall boarding school in Washington, Pennsylvania, after which he began collecting money for ads in
The Pittsburgh Press to help to support his mother. The play, a re-telling of episodes from the
Old Testament, was staged with the first all-black
Broadway cast. He contributed verse and articles to
Life, ''Everybody's'', and other magazines. Connelly was a drama teacher at
Yale University from 1946 to 1950. In 1968, Connelly published his memoirs,
Voices Offstage. Over the years, Connelly appeared as an actor in 21 movies, including
The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) with
James Stewart. Connelly's television debut as an actor came in 1953 in an episode of
Broadway TV Theatre on
WOR-TV. A review in the trade publication
Variety said that Connelly "handled himself with winning aplomb". A film about the Round Table members,
The Ten-Year Lunch (1987), won the
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and featured Connelly, who was the last survivor. The 1994 film
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a fictional account of the group, featured actor
Matt Malloy as Connelly. Connelly died on December 21, 1980, in St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan, aged 90. ==Filmography==