Mitzi Green
Encyclopedia
Mitzi Green (October 22, 1920 – May 24, 1969) was an American child actress for Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 and RKO, in the early talkie era. She then acted 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...

 and in other stage works, as well as in films and on television.

Background

Born in The Bronx, New York, Green was cast in such conventional juvenile parts as Becky Thatcher in Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer (1930 film)
Tom Sawyer is a 1930 American drama film directed by John Cromwell. The screenplay by Grover Jones, William Slavens McNutt, and Sam Mintz is based on the 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain....

 (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931) opposite Jackie Coogan
Jackie Coogan
John Leslie Coogan , known professionally as Jackie Coogan, was an American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on 1960s sitcom The Addams Family...

 and Jackie Searl
Jackie Searl
Jackie Searl was an American child actor who began performing on a local Los Angeles radio at the age of three...

. She also starred in the title role of Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...

. At the age of 14, she played a soubrette role in Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934). This film closed out the first stage of her Hollywood career.

She went on to 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...

, where she starred in the original production of Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

 and Hart
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...

's Babes in Arms
Babes in Arms
Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a teen-age boy who puts on a show with his friends to avoid being sent to a work farm.- Production history:...

 (1937). Two of Green's numbers in the musical were "My Funny Valentine
My Funny Valentine
"My Funny Valentine" is a show tune from the 1937 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical Babes in Arms in which it was introduced by former child star Mitzi Green...

," which would ultimately become a jazz standard in many cover recordings and performances, and "The Lady is a Tramp
The Lady Is a Tramp
"The Lady Is a Tramp" is a show tune from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical Babes In Arms in which it was introduced by former child star Mitzi Green. This song is a spoof of New York high society and its strict etiquette...

".

Green made one more film in 1940, then went back to stage and nightclub work, including Walk With Music by Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagy Carmichael
Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.Alec Wilder, in his study of the...

 and Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...

 and the Betty Comden
Betty Comden
Betty Comden was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century...

 and Adolph Green
Adolph Green
Adolph Green was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday...

 musical Billion Dollar Baby
Billion Dollar Baby
Billion Dollar Baby is a musical set on Staten Island and in Atlantic City during the late 1920s. It follows the adventures of an ambitious young woman, Maribelle Jones, in her quest for wealth during the Prohibition era. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, fresh from their success with On the Town,...

. Green married Broadway (and later movie and TV) director Joseph Pevney
Joseph Pevney
Joseph Pevney was an American film and television director.-Biography:Pevney was born on September 15, 1911 in New York City, New York.He made his debut in vaudeville as a boy soprano in 1924...

 and retired to raise a family. In 1951, she returned briefly to the screen opposite Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...

 in Lost in Alaska (1951) and in Bloodhounds of Broadway
Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952 film)
Bloodhounds of Broadway is a 1952 musical film based on a Damon Runyon story and starred young starlet Mitzi Gaynor, along with Scott Brady, Mitzi Green, Marguerite Chapman, Michael O'Shea, Wally Vernon and George E. Stone. It was directed by Harmon Jones....

 (1952 film) co-starring another Mitzi--Mitzi Gaynor
Mitzi Gaynor
-Life and career:Gaynor was born as Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago, Illinois to Pauline Fisher, a dancer, and Henry von Gerber, a violinist, cellist, and music director. The family first moved to Detroit and when she was eleven to Hollywood, California.She trained as a ballerina...

.

In 1955, she starred with Virginia Gibson
Virginia Gibson
Virginia Gibson is an American dancer, singer and actress of film, television and musical theatre.-Career:...

 and Gordon Jones in the short-lived TV sitcom
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 So This Is Hollywood, in the role of Queenie Dugan, a high-spirited stuntwoman.

After a brief stint on the nightclub circuit, Green retired again, although she did appear in summer stock
Summer Stock
For the article about the theatre genre, see Summer stock theatre.Summer Stock is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical made in 1950. The film was directed by Charles Walters and stars Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, and Phil Silvers...

 and dinner theater
Dinner theater
Dinner theater is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. Sometimes the play is incidental entertainment, secondary to the meal, in the style of a sophisticated night club, or the play may be a major production with dinner less important, or in some...

 around the Los Angeles area thereafter, and she appeared occasionally as a guest on talk shows.

Death

Green died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 at age 48 in Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County in Southern California. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 189,992; making it the largest beach city in Orange County in terms of population...

 on May 24, 1969. She was interred at Eden Memorial Park Cemetery
Eden Memorial Park Cemetery
Eden Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery located at 11500 Sepulveda Boulevard, Mission Hills, California, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.-Notable interments:*John Brown , actor*Lenny Bruce , comedian...

 in Mission Hills, California
Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California
Mission Hills is a suburban community in the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California.It is located near the northern junction of the Golden State Freeway and the San Diego Freeway . The Ronald Reagan Freeway bisects the neighborhood. Mission Hills is the northern...

.

Filmography

  • The Marriage Playground (1929)
  • Honey (1930)
  • Love Among the Millionaires (1930)
  • The Santa Fe Trail (1930)
  • Tom Sawyer (1930)
  • Follow the Leader (1930)
  • Paramount on Parade
    Paramount on Parade
    Paramount on Parade is a all-star revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Victor Heerman, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H...

     (1930) as herself
  • The Slippery Pearls, aka The Stolen Jools (1931) as herself
  • Finn and Hattie (1931)
  • Skippy
    Skippy (1931 film)
    Skippy is a film that was released in 1931. It was one of the first films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Don Marquis, Norman Z. McLeod, and Sam Mintz was based on the comic strip Skippy by Percy Crosby...

     (1931)
  • Dude Ranch (1931)
  • Newly Rich (1931)
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1931)
  • Girl Crazy
    Girl Crazy (1932 film)
    Girl Crazy is a 1932 musical film adaptation of the stage play of the same name. The film was very unlike the stage play except for its score. It was tailored for the comic talents of Wheeler & Woolsey, a popular comedy team...

     (1932)
  • Little Orphan Annie
    Little Orphan Annie
    Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...

     (1932)
  • Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934)
  • Santa Fe Trail
    Santa Fe Trail (film)
    Santa Fe Trail is a 1940 western film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The film was one of the top-grossing films of the year, being the seventh Flynn-de Havilland collaboration. The film also has nothing to do with its namesake, the famed Santa Fe Trail...

     (1940) uncredited
  • Lost in Alaska
    Lost in Alaska
    -Plot:The time is the 1890s, and the place is San Francisco. George Ball and Tom Watson are firemen who rescue 'Nugget' Joe McDermott from committing suicide by drowning. Joe wants to die because his girlfriend, Rosette no longer loves him...

     (1952)
  • Bloodhounds of Broadway
    Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952 film)
    Bloodhounds of Broadway is a 1952 musical film based on a Damon Runyon story and starred young starlet Mitzi Gaynor, along with Scott Brady, Mitzi Green, Marguerite Chapman, Michael O'Shea, Wally Vernon and George E. Stone. It was directed by Harmon Jones....

     (1952)

Stage

  • Babes In Arms
    Babes in Arms
    Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a teen-age boy who puts on a show with his friends to avoid being sent to a work farm.- Production history:...

     (1937)
  • Walk With Music (1940)
  • Let Freedom Sing (1942)
  • Billion Dollar Baby
    Billion Dollar Baby
    Billion Dollar Baby is a musical set on Staten Island and in Atlantic City during the late 1920s. It follows the adventures of an ambitious young woman, Maribelle Jones, in her quest for wealth during the Prohibition era. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, fresh from their success with On the Town,...

     (1945)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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