Queenie Smith was an American

United States

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

 stage, television, and film actress.

Biography

Smith got an early start, being trained in ballet and dance and spent her teen years performing as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company in opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s such as Aida, La Traviata, and Faust. By the 1920s she was a star on Broadway in shows such as Helen of Troy, New York (1923), Sitting Pretty (1924), and The Street Singer (1929), and by the mid-30s had made her way into films. She starred on Broadway in George

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

 and Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....

's musical Tip-Toes

Tip-Toes

Tip-Toes is a musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson , lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. It centers on a vaudeville act known as the Three Kayes - composed of Al, Uncle Hen, and Tip-Toes - who try to pass themselves off as aristocrats in the upper class community of...

(1925). She costarred in the 1936 Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...

 film version of Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

's Show Boat

Show Boat

Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

, playing Ellie May Chipley. Smith replaced stage actress Eva Puck

Eva Puck

Eva Puck was a vaudeville headliner who later found success performing in Broadway musical comedies.-Early Life:...

 who had starred as Chipley in the 1927 premiere and 1932 revival of Show Boat.

In 1947 she appeared in the film The Long Night

The Long Night (1947 film)

The Long Night is a 1947 film noir directed by Anatole Litvak and produced by RKO. It is a remake of Le Jour se lève by Marcel Carné. The drama features Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price, Ann Dvorak, and others.-Plot:...

 and then played other character roles on film, and later, television. She was seen as 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...

's wife in The Great Rupert

The Great Rupert

The Great Rupert, is a 1950 comedy family film, produced by George Pal, directed by Irving Pichel and starring Jimmy Durante, Tom Drake and Terry Moore...

, and in guest shots in many television shows, including The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, A.E.S. Hudson Street

A.E.S. Hudson Street

A.E.S. Hudson Street is a comedy television show that aired on ABC in 1978. The short-lived series followed the antics of the staff of a run-down Adult Emergency Service hospital on Hudson Street, on the lower west side of Manhattan. It was cancelled after five episodes. -Cast and...

, Rhoda

Rhoda

Rhoda is an American television sitcom, starring Valerie Harper, which ran for five seasons, from 1974 to 1978 airing in 109 episodes. The show was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky,...

, Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, Barney Miller

Barney Miller

Barney Miller is a situation comedy television series set in a New York City police station in Greenwich Village. The series originally was broadcast from January 23, 1975 to May 20, 1982 on ABC. It was created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker...

, Mother, Jugs & Speed

Mother, Jugs & Speed

Mother, Jugs & Speed is a 1976 black comedy film directed by Peter Yates. It stars Bill Cosby , Raquel Welch , Harvey Keitel , and Larry Hagman as employees of an independent ambulance service trying to survive in Los Angeles.-Plot:...

, Chico and the Man

Chico and the Man

Chico and the Man is an American sitcom which ran on NBC for four seasons, from September 13, 1974 to July 21, 1978. It stars Jack Albertson as Ed Brown , the cantankerous owner of a run down garage in an East Los Angeles barrio, and Freddie Prinze as Chico Rodriguez, an upbeat, optimistic Chicano...

, McMillan & Wife, Love American Style, The Waltons

The Waltons

The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...

, Here's Lucy

Here's Lucy

Here's Lucy is Lucille Ball's third network television sitcom. It ran on CBS from 1968 to 1974.-Background:Though The Lucy Show was still hugely popular during the previous season, finishing in the top five of the Nielsen Ratings , Ball opted to end that series at the end of that season and create...

, The Funny Side

The Funny Side

The Funny Side is an American sketch comedy program that aired on NBC as part of its 1971 fall lineup.-Synopsis:The Funny Side was hosted by Gene Kelly and starred five pairs of actors and actresses who were presented as married couples...

, Hawaii Five-O

Hawaii Five-O

Hawaii Five-O is an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman. Set in Hawaii, the show originally aired for twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980, and continues in reruns. The show featured a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett,...

, The Monkees

The Monkees (TV series)

The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...

, The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple (TV series)

The Odd Couple is a television situation comedy broadcast from September 24, 1970 to July 4, 1975 on ABC. It starred Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison. It was based upon the play of the same name, which was written by Neil Simon.Felix and Oscar are two divorced men....

, The Love Boat

The Love Boat

The Love Boat is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24,1977, until May 24,1986.The show starred Gavin MacLeod as the ship's captain...

, Maude

Maude (TV series)

Maude was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 12, 1972 until April 22, 1978.Maude starred Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay, an outspoken, middle-aged, politically liberal woman living in suburban Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York with...

and Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie (TV series)

Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...

(in a recurring role as "Mrs. Whipple").

Queenie Smith was a teacher and mentor to many a young actor. She taught at the Hollywood Professional School and was the Director for the training program at Melodyland Theater, Anaheim, California, during the 60's.

She worked right up until the year of her death; her last role being "Elsie" in the Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon...

/Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn

Goldie Jeanne Hawn is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969...

 film Foul Play

Foul Play

Foul Play is a 1978 American comic mystery/thriller film written and directed by Colin Higgins. In it, a recently divorced librarian is drawn into a mystery when a stranger hides a roll of film in a pack of cigarettes and gives it to her for safekeeping....

(1978

1978 in film

The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 1 - Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a documentary of the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour premieres in Los Angeles, California....

). She 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...

a month before her 80th birthday.