Frances Charlotte Greenwood (25 June 1890 - 28 December 1977) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, Greenwood started in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, and eventually starred on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

, 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

Giraffe

The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...

 in the eye."

In 1913, Oliver Morosco

Oliver Morosco

Oliver Morosco was an American theatrical producer, director, writerand theater owner.-Biography:Born Oliver Mitchell in Logan, Utah, Morosco was raised in San Francisco, California...

 cast her as Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo late in the run of L. Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...

 and Louis F. Gottschalk

Louis F. Gottschalk

Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk was an American composer and conductor born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a Missouri governor, also named Louis, he studied music in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father, a judge, was American consul.He came to attention as conductor of the U.S. premiere of Franz...

's The Tik-Tok Man of Oz

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz is a musical play with book and lyrics by L. Frank Baum and music by Louis F. Gottschalk that opened in Los Angeles, California on March 31, 1913. It is loosely inspired by Baum's book, Ozma of Oz , and the basis for his 1914 novel, Tik-Tok of Oz. It was promoted as "A...

(better known in its novelization

Novelization

A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...

 as Tik-Tok of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz is the eighth Land of Oz book written by L. Frank Baum, published on June 19, 1914. The book actually has little to do with Tik-Tok and is primarily the quest of the Shaggy Man to rescue his brother, and his resulting conflict with the Nome King.The endpapers of the first edition...

), then commissioned a successful star vehicle titled So Long Letty

So Long Letty

So Long Letty is a silent American comedy film directed by Al Christie, and starring Grace Darmond, T. Roy Barnes, and Colleen Moore. So Long Letty was an adaptation of a popular stage comedy/musical of the same name.-Story:...

, which is the role that made her a star.

She starred with such luminaries as Charles Ruggles

Charles Ruggles

Charles Sherman “Charlie” Ruggles was a comic American actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films. He was also the brother of director, producer, and silent actor Wesley Ruggles .-Background:Charlie Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California in 1886...

, Betty Grable

Betty Grable

Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...

, Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...

, Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...

, Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

, and Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda, GCIH was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's...

. Most of Greenwood's best work was done on the stage, and was lauded by such critics as James Agate

James Agate

James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...

, Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....

 and Claudia Cassidy

Claudia Cassidy

Claudia Cassidy , born in Shawneetown, Illinois, was a music, dance, and drama critic. She was so well-known for giving caustic reviews to what she considered bad performances that she earned the nickname "Acidy Cassidy." Her judgment, however, which was regarded as extremely controversial even in...

. One of her most successful roles was that of Juno in Cole Porter

Cole Porter

Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

's Out of This World

Out of This World

- Film and television :*Out of This World , a U.S. television series, 1987–1991*Out of This World , a 1962 British science fiction television series*Out of This World , starring Veronica Lake...

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

Rodgers and Hammerstein

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...

 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

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 of undisclosed causes, aged 87.

She was married twice, first, unsuccessfully to actor Cyril Ring

Cyril Ring

Cyril Ring was an American film actor. He began his career in silent films in 1921. By the time of his final performance in 1951, he had appeared in over 350 films, almost all in small and/or uncredited parts...

, brother of actress Blanche Ring

Blanche Ring

Blanche Ring , was an American singer and actress in Broadway theatre productions, musicals, and Hollywood motion pictures....

, and secondly and happily to composer Martin Broones.

External links

• Charlotte Greenwood web site
• Victoria Times-Colonist, Adrian Chamberlain, 26 May 2007
• 1925 portrait of Charlotte Greenwood modeling fur and her hair coiffed taken by Benjamin Strauss and Homer Peyton