Charlotte Greenwood
Birth : 1890-06-25, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Death : 1977-12-28
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Frances Charlotte Greenwood (25 June 1890 - 28 December 1977) was an American actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Greenwood started in vaudeville, and eventually starred on Broadway, movies and radio. Standing around six feet tall, she was best known for her long legs and high kicks. She earned the unique praise of being, in her words, the "...only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye."
In 1913, Oliver Morosco cast her as Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo late in the run of L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (better known in its novelization as Tik-Tok of Oz), then commissioned a successful star vehicle titled So Long Letty, which is the role that made her a star.
She starred with such luminaries as Charles Ruggles, Betty Grable, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Buster Keaton, and Carmen Miranda. Most of Greenwood's best work was done on the stage, and was lauded by such critics as James Agate, Alexander Woollcott and Claudia Cassidy. One of her most successful roles was that of Juno in Cole Porter's Out of This World in which she introduced the Porter classic "I Sleep Easier Now."
Although the role was written with her in mind, film commitments prevented her from playing "Aunt Eller" in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit Oklahoma! (1943). She got her chance in the 1955 film version, just prior to retiring in 1956.
Charlotte Greenwood died in Los Angeles, California of undisclosed causes, aged 87.
She was married twice, first, unsuccessfully to actor Cyril Ring, brother of actress Blanche Ring, and secondly and happily to composer Martin Broones.
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Lucy
Former radio singer Kay learns from her gossipy friends that her husband, Steve, has had an affair with chorus girl Crystal. Devastated, Kay tries to ignore the information, but when Crystal performs one of her musical numbers at a charity benefit, she breaks down and goes to Reno to file for divorce. However, when she hears that gold-digging Crystal is making Steve unhappy, Kay resolves to get her husband back. The Opposite Sex is a remake of the 1939 comedy The Women.
Miz Agnes Tilbee
A lovesick girl and her grandfather groom their filly for the Kentucky Derby.
Aunt Eller
This joyous celebration of frontier life combines tender romance and violent passion in the Oklahoma Territory of the 1900s with a timeless score filled with unforgettable songs. Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit Broadway musical.
Ma Higgins
The health conscious, dairy-farming Higgins family begin each day with an invigorating swim. One day, traveling health-tonic salesman, Windy Weebe, comes to town and suggests they could swim the English Channel. Sponsored by "Liquapep" and coached by Windy, the family arrive in Europe. There it is decided that daughter Katie is the only one strong enough to enter the contest. But while she should be focused on the difficult and risky task ahead, Katie is pursed by dashing Frenchman, André Lanet... This comedic musical is well remembered for the scene when Katie dreams she is swimming with cartoon characters Tom & Jerry!
Mrs. Emilia Fielding
Professor Brookfield along with daughters Peggy and Susan move to small town Pasadena, California. Their new neighbor Mrs. Fielding helps them move in, and urges the girls to participate in the annual Rose Bowl beauty pageant. Meanwhile Mrs. Fielding's son Tom makes eyes at Peggy but she's smitten with a famous football star so she tries to redirect his interest to Susan.
Anna
Period musical about a song plugger who vows to turn an opera composer's music into popular hits.
Aunt Netty
David Palmer, a young chemist, returns to his father's Indiana farm, to marry a local school teacher, Ruth Treadwell. David meets again his father's horse-trainer, Ben Lathrop, whose daughter, Cissy, has left high school to help her father. Palmer marries and becomes wealthy through an invention, and is able to indulge his socially-ambitious wife. His father dies and Palmer returns to Indiana, where his interest in harness-racing is rekindled, as is his interest in Cissy Lathrop.
Mathilda
An orphan helps a doctor fight an epidemic in a small western town, in one of Allan Dwan’s closely observed studies in Americana.
Sara March
Aided by her eccentric friends, a young woman goes looking for her missing brother.
Martha
Newly-married Gary Ainsworth (Dennis O'Keefe) once gave his former sweetheart Mabel (Gail Patrick) a sexy negligee with his initials embroidered in the lacework. It is Gary's unenviable task to retrieve the incriminating undergarment from Mabel's room before his wife Geraldine (Marjorie Reynolds) gets wise.
Penelope 'Penny' Bolt
'Sparke' Thorton, a lad with a penchant for trouble, is sent to live with his Uncle and Aunt Bolt in Indiana after his Aunt Henrietta Bolt dies. Though he's not happy about the arrangement at first, his love of horses and his affection for a young filly that he plans to race make life bearable. He also finds romance with tomboyish 'Char' Bruce who shares his love for horses.
Mrs. Peyton Potter
A soldier falls for a chorus girl and then experiences trouble when he is posted to the Pacific.
Mrs. Dugan
Roger Hudson, a wealthy businessman who has moved to Washington to work for the government as a "dollar a year man," is late for a radio broadcast about his new department, the Mobilization of Woman Power for War. He takes a cab driven by Dixie Dugan, who hopes that being a cabbie while the country's men are away fighting will help the war effort. Her incompetent driving, however, results in an accident for which Roger must take responsibility in order to reach the radio station in time. Dixie then returns home, where she lives with her father Timothy, who is constantly practicing his air raid warden duties, her mother Gladys, an aspiring Red Cross worker, and cousin Imogene, who studies incessantly to become a "quiz kid." The Dugans rent out their spare rooms to Dixie's fiancé, Matt Hogan, and to blustering Judge J. J. Lawson. Matt, who works in a munitions factory, wants Dixie to settle down and marry him, but Dixie is determined to help her country.
Phoebe Gray
Broadway partners Vicky Lane and Dan Christy have a tiff over Christy's womanizing. Jealous Vicky takes up with her old flame and former dance partner, Victor Price, and Dan's career takes a nosedive. In hopes of rekindling their romance and getting Vicky back on the boards with him, Dan follows her to a ritzy resort in the Canadian Rockies, where she and Victor are about to open their new act. But things get complicated when Dan wakes after a bender to find that he's hired an outlandish Latin secretary, Rosita Murphy, which makes Vicky think he's just up to his old tricks again.
Martha Mason
When a small town veterinarian discovers that his just-graduated daughter is a gold-digging elitist, he devises a plan to help her rediscover old-fashioned family values. Director Ray McCarey's 1941 comedy stars Lynn Bari, Cornel Wilde, Charles Ruggles, Anthony Quinn, Charlotte Greenwood, Alan Mowbray and Chester Clute.
Aunt Susan 'Sue' Latimer
After losing nearly all of an inheritance to taxes, sisters Kay (Betty Grable) and Barbara Latimer (Carole Landis), waitresses at a drive-in restaurant in Texas, scheme to find rich husbands. With the aid of their aunt Susan (Charlotte Greenwood), the sisters take the last of their money and head to a well-known Miami resort where they soon meet two wealthy young men, Phil (Don Ameche) and Jeff (Robert Cummings), who begin a fierce rivalry for Kay, not realizing that Barbara has fallen in love with one of them.
Winnie Sage
Robin Hoodish gangster in 1929 Chicago is an object of affection, kind to New York hood and bad to a bad crook.
Binnie Crawford
The story—in which an American heiress on holiday in South America falls in love with an Argentine horse breeder against the wishes of their families—takes a backseat to the spectacular location shooting and parade of extravagant musical numbers, which include the larger-than-life Carmen Miranda singing the hit “South American Way” and a showstopping dance routine by the always amazing Nicholas Brothers.
Kit Ballantine
Wendy Ballantine's parents decide to retire from show biz so she can have a normal life. They are unwelcome in the small town until a storm lets the family show their stuff.
Lola Langdon
When the studios reject her because she"s too young, a young actress sets out to build a career on her own.
Wanda Sinclair
A brash American movie producer arrives at an army base in England wanting to shoot a movie and use the soldiers as extras. The base commander doesn't want any part of it, but the producer and his secretary cook up a scheme to trick the officer into letting him use the base and its men. Their plan succeeds, but things don't turn out quite the way they were expecting.
Mrs. Crozier
Modest picture centering on a blunderous jewel heist aboard an ocean liner.
Herself
In this holiday short, Jackie Cooper wants to throw a Christmas party for his friends on his football team but doesn't know how to go about it. His fellow stars at MGM help him out.
Pansy Potts
An inventor and his lanky girlfriend set an altitude record in his winged contraption.
Helen Martin
Musical comedy antics in an art deco bakery (motto: "Glorifying the American Doughnut") with Eddie Cantor as an assistant to a phoney psychic, who is mistaken for an efficiency expert and placed in charge. Complications ensue when the psychic and his gang attempt to rub the payroll.
Clara
A deeply in debt heiress tries to land a rich man while a collector from the Sheriff's office is guarding the assets in her house.
Sally Smith
After catching their husbands with other women, two wives go on a girls-only vacation.
Polly Hathaway
Jeffrey Haywood wants to marry to Virginia Embrey. However, Virginia refused to marry unless her older sister, the hard-to-please Angelica gets married first. Angelica, in turn, finds every man she knows too dull and predictable, and for this reason prefers to stay single. Jeff then tries to make Angelica interested in the mild-mannered and timid Reggie Irving passing him off as a notorious playboy to intrigue her. He asks his friend Polly to teach Reggie "how to treat a woman right", but he turns to be a disastrous learner.
A wife demands that her husband take over the household responsibilities, while she does his job, unaware that he is a piano mover. They both land in the hospital, sadder and sicker as a result of their experience.
After a woman experiences what happens to her when she joins the "Do a Good Deed a Day" Club, she feels like murdering the president of the organization.
Letty Robbins
Uncle Claude comes to the Ardmore Beach Hotel to see Tommy and his wife. At the hotel, with his two granddaughters Ruth and Sally, Uncle Claude meets a wise talking employee named Letty, which causes him to leave the hotel. When he finds Tommy, he mistakes Grace for his wife and likes her and the way she keeps a clean house. To get a big check from Uncle Claude and to see how life is with the other, the two couples switch spouses for a week.
