Actress. She is best remembered for her portrayal of the sinister Jacqueline Gibson in "The Seventh Victim" (1943). She began her career singing in nightclubs with the Enric Madriguera Orchestra in New York City, New York, where she was discovered by film director F. Herrick Herrick, who arranged for her a film contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Between 1935 and 1948, she went onto appear in over 40 motion pictures, often portraying wives, socialites, debutantes, socialites, villains, secretaries, women with a past, girlfriends, and philanthropists, in such features as "Frankie and Johnnie" (1935), "The Crime of Dr. Crespi" (1935), "The Wife of the Party" (1936), "Wedding Yells" (1938), "Miracle on Main Street" (1939), "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" (1940), "Son of Roaring Dan" (1940), "The Green Hornet Strikes Again!" (1941), "Buck Privates" (1941), "Too Many Blondes" (1941), "Riders of Death Valley" (1941), "Fighting Bill Fargo" (1941), "Klondike Fury" (1942), "The Boss of Big Town" (1942), "The Falcon Strikes Back" (1942), "The Leopard Man" (1943), "The Falcon and the Co-eds" (1943), "A Night of Adventure" (1944), "Youth Runs Wild" (1944), "The Falcon in Hollywood" (1944), "Two O'Clock Courage" (1945), "The Falcon's Alibi" (1946), and "The Bamboo Blonde" (1946). During her career, she sometimes was credited as either Jeanne Kelly or Robina Duarte and she was married to screenwriters Richard Brooks (whose surname she later took as her own) and William Douglas Lansford; both unions ended in divorce. After appearing in her last major film role in "Women in the Night" (1948), she retired from acting and settled in Western California where she lived for the remainder of her life being active with Catholic Charities, focused on her third, and final, marriage to newspaper editor Thomas Leddy, and enjoyed a newfound career working as a solicitor for The San Francisco Examiner.