We didn’t include Charlotte Greenwood in our blog about Star Gestures or Shtick. But we could have.
Greenwood, however had quite a career in musicals and comedies and, although she often worked in her high stepping, it is not in all of her movies.
Born in Philadelphia in 1890, she worked vaudeville circuits before emerging in silent movies and then in mainstream Hollywood talkies such was 1955’s big screen version of the musical Oklahoma, where she played (honestly enough) a double-jointed vaudevillian (see below).
Her kicks were truly astonishing. By one account her skills continued through middle age. She was capable of complete leg splits as well as the ability to kick higher than the top of her head, sideways.
She certainly was a long legged creature. Some accounts put her height at a round six feet, others five-feet-eight-inches. In any case, we believe no one in show biz kicked quite as impressively than Greenwood, who died in 1978 at the age of 88 (probably kicking all the way).
The fact that Greenwood was actually a fairly attractive woman by Hollywood standards, the image of a proper lady, led to various supporting parts. Who suspected that this relatively staid woman could kick so uproariously?
WOW, I’m surprised… I thought there would be a whole stack of COMMENTS today for Lady Longlegs and her KICK!
As I’ve said so often, there are so many, many topics and sub-topics about HOLLYWOOD and the movies that never get a mention on here…
So I can well understand why they don’t get written about by Joe & Frank, because as is clearly evident each day this blog published, there is NO demand, NO interest in them. Just like there is so little interest in what the ‘guys’ do write about.
Sadly, there are very few readers who take the time to COMMENT and share their views and memories of a certain movie or actor… Very few, who take the time to show their appreciation for a blog that takes a lot of effort to put together each day.
Joe and Frank think I scold their ‘readers’ in writing all this, possibly scare-off other comments with my insight and opinions, but it looks like years before I discovered what a great site this is, there wasn’t much interest back then either.
The ‘guys’ have reached out to their ‘readers’ asking for what they’d like to see, but again – NO COMMENT!
As for CHARLOTTE GREENWOOD, I kind of feel that I might just be the only one among their ‘readers’ that has the only book ever written about her -Charlotte Greenwood: The Life and Career of the Comic Star of Vaudeville, Radio and Film by Grant Hayter-Menzies.
It is a good-read, and for those that can only remember her for playing Aunt Eller in OKLAHOMA, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what an interesting life and career she had…
And as Dean Martin once sang -Ain’t that a KICK in the head!
Bob Hope relayed the story of standing with Groucho and First Lady Mrs. Roosevelt while Greenwood did her leg bit during a War Bond drive, and remembers, as Greenwood placed her calf against the side of her head, Marx saying to the First Lady, “Ya know, YOU could do that if you put your mind to it!”