Mitzi Green (Elizabeth Keno)

Mitzi Green

Mitzi Green was cast in such conventional juvenile parts as Becky Thatcher in Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931) opposite Jackie Coogan and Jackie Searl. She also starred in the title role of Little Orphan Annie. 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. Mitzi Green went on to Broadway, where she starred in the original production of Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (1937). Two of Green’s numbers in the musical were “My Funny Valentine,” which would ultimately become a jazz standard in many cover recordings and performances, and “The Lady is a Tramp”. Mitzi Green made one more film in 1940, then went back to stage and nightclub work, including Walk With Music by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer and the Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical Billion Dollar Baby. Green married Broadway (and later movie and TV) director Joseph Pevney and retired to raise a family. In 1951, she returned briefly to the screen opposite Abbott and Costello in Lost in Alaska (1951) and in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), co-starring another Mitzi–Mitzi Gaynor. In 1955, she starred with Virginia Gibson and Gordon Jones in the short-lived TV sitcom So This Is Hollywood, in the role of Queenie Dugan, a high-spirited stuntwoman. After a brief stint on the nightclub circuit, Mitzi Green retired again, although she did appear in summer stock and dinner theater around the Los Angeles area thereafter, and she appeared occasionally as a guest on talk shows.

More Images

  • mitzigreen103a -

  • mitzigreen105a -

Born

  • October, 22, 1920
  • USA
  • The Bronx, New York

Died

  • May, 24, 1969
  • USA
  • Huntington Beach, California

Cause of Death

  • cancer

Cemetery

  • Eden Memorial Park
  • Mission Hills, California
  • USA

4735 profile views