Biography
Born on 25 June 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charlotte Greenwood died on 18 January 1978 in Beverly Hills, California. Standing tall and slender, the immensely likeable actress brought a spunky, eccentric presence and an astonishingly loose-jointed high kick to numerous musical films of the 1940s. She first attracted attention on Broadway in The Passing Show Of 1913; the following year her “flat-footed” kicks and splits in Pretty Miss Smith, especially during the number “Long, Lean, Lanky Letty,” so impressed producer Oliver Morosco that he renamed the production Long-Legged Letty. The Letty persona sustained occasional stage work through So Long, Letty (1916), Linger Longer Letty (1919) and Letty Pepper (1922), each later adapted for the screen, while Greenwood also appeared in several Broadway revues during the 1920s and simultaneously built a career in silent pictures.
The transition to sound proved effortless; throughout the 1930s she worked chiefly in comedies yet found room for occasional musicals such as Flying High (1931) and the Eddie Cantor vehicle Palmy Days (1932). In 1940 she shared the screen with Shirley Temple and Jack Oakie in Young People, then delivered memorable turns in a string of 20th Century-Fox musicals that included Down Argentine Way, Tall, Dark And Handsome, Moon Over Miami, Springtime In The Rockies, The Gang’s All Here, Wake Up And Dream and Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949). She also hosted her own nationally networked radio program during the decade. Returning to Broadway in 1950, Greenwood starred in Cole Porter’s Out Of This World and nightly halted the show with the plaintive yet hilarious “Nobody’s Chasing Me” (“Nobody wants to own me/And I object/Nobody wants to ’phone me/Even collect”). Three years later she demonstrated several aquatic maneuvers to Esther Williams in Dangerous When Wet, and in 1957 she made her final screen appearance as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! An obituary published in Variety noted that Oscar Hammerstein II had originally written the role for Greenwood in the landmark 1943 Broadway production, yet prior commitments had kept her from accepting it at the time.
Greenwood married actor Cyril Ring in 1915; born 5 December 1892 in Massachusetts, he died 17 July 1967 in Hollywood, California, the marriage ending in divorce in 1922. Two years later she wed composer Martin Broones, born 10 June 1892 in New York City and deceased 10 August 1971 in Beverly Hills; the union lasted until Broones’s death. A biography drawn from Greenwood’s unpublished 1947 memoir Never Too Tall appeared in 2007.
The transition to sound proved effortless; throughout the 1930s she worked chiefly in comedies yet found room for occasional musicals such as Flying High (1931) and the Eddie Cantor vehicle Palmy Days (1932). In 1940 she shared the screen with Shirley Temple and Jack Oakie in Young People, then delivered memorable turns in a string of 20th Century-Fox musicals that included Down Argentine Way, Tall, Dark And Handsome, Moon Over Miami, Springtime In The Rockies, The Gang’s All Here, Wake Up And Dream and Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949). She also hosted her own nationally networked radio program during the decade. Returning to Broadway in 1950, Greenwood starred in Cole Porter’s Out Of This World and nightly halted the show with the plaintive yet hilarious “Nobody’s Chasing Me” (“Nobody wants to own me/And I object/Nobody wants to ’phone me/Even collect”). Three years later she demonstrated several aquatic maneuvers to Esther Williams in Dangerous When Wet, and in 1957 she made her final screen appearance as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! An obituary published in Variety noted that Oscar Hammerstein II had originally written the role for Greenwood in the landmark 1943 Broadway production, yet prior commitments had kept her from accepting it at the time.
Greenwood married actor Cyril Ring in 1915; born 5 December 1892 in Massachusetts, he died 17 July 1967 in Hollywood, California, the marriage ending in divorce in 1922. Two years later she wed composer Martin Broones, born 10 June 1892 in New York City and deceased 10 August 1971 in Beverly Hills; the union lasted until Broones’s death. A biography drawn from Greenwood’s unpublished 1947 memoir Never Too Tall appeared in 2007.