"Nelly Don" on local TV tonight

The story of Nell Quinlan Donnelly, aka Nelly Don, is one part Horatio Alger, one part women's lib, and one part stranger-than-fiction crime story. Having played for 34 weeks at the Screenland Theater, the documentary "Nelly Don" makes its television debut at 7:30 tonight on KCPT.

  Born to a poor Irish Catholic family in rural Kansas, Donnelly built the Nelly Don dressmaking empire in the 1920s in Kansas City, bore an out-of-wedlock child by a U.S. senator and survived a kidnapping that took a bizarre turn when local mobster Johnny Lazia dispatched 25 carloads of his goons to hunt down the kidnapper.

  “Nelly Don” is by local insurance maker Terence O'Malley, who became fascinated with the Nelly Don story and produced the film on his home computer. The film is also available on DVD.