LOCAL
N EWS
Musical movie on Nelly Don will be screened in
Parsons
“Nelly Don — The Musical Movie” is coming to the Parsons Municipal Auditorium in December. The event is a fundraiser for Parsons Historical Museum.
The film is a musical about a Parsons woman who moved to Kansas City and became a successful dressmaker. The nearly two-hour movie has appeared on screens in Kansas City and elsewhere. It serves as a biopic on Nell Quinlan Donnelly Reed and is written by Terence O’Malley. O’Malley is an attorney, author, musician and filmmaker who wrote a book and documentary about Nelly Don in 2006. He wrote and produced a play that showed in 2019, “Nelly Don Musical.” Nelly Don was O’Malley’s great-great-aunt.
The Parsons debut of the film will be at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14. O’Malley will be introducing the film and will have a question and answer period after the movie. Tickets cost $10 in advance or $12 at the door. Tickets can be ordered online through Great Wonders Productions.
Nell Quinlan was born March 6, 1889, and died in September 1991 at age 102. Her father, John, worked See MOVIE, Page 12.
the Katy Railroad in Parsons and he and his wife had 13 children. At one time the family lived at 1820 Stevens and then at 1921 Crawford.
Nell and her Irish family attended St. Patrick Catholic Church and she and her siblings the Catholic school, which was run by French nuns at the time, according to O’Malley. She took to sewing at a young age by duty and necessity.
He told the Sun previously that she made doll clothing early in her life. By her pre-teen years or early teen years she was making her clothing, her son told the Parsons Sun in 1991.
Nell attended Parsons Business College and learned stenography. She moved to Kansas City at age 16 to work as a stenographer. She began a dress-making company in 1916, the Donnelly Garment Co., and later renamed it Nelly Don, a derivative of her married name. She had married Paul Donnelly at St. Patrick’s in Parsons about age 17.
By 1931, Nelly Don was making 5,000 dresses a day. She invented a house dress that was stylish and popular for the time and her company sold 75 million dresses. Clothing stores across the country carried her brand, including stores in Parsons.
She sold the company in the 1950s and it continued to operate after that.
O’Malley said the film is an extension of the successful play. The music is virtually the same. Daniel Doss directed the music for the film. Kansas City actor Julie Pope plays Nell Reed and Tim Ahlenius plays James Reed.
The movie mentions Parsons but was not filmed in Parsons, O’Malley said. He said in the movie Nell references Parsons, saying her dreams had come true and that it was more than anything that a girl from Parsons, Kansas, could have imagined.
