Charlotte Greenwood

This long-legged, gangly comic actress' career stretched from turn-of-the-century vaudeville to the splashy musical films of WWII and beyond. Charlotte Greenwood left school early and took to the stage, first as a chorus girl in "The White Cat" (1905), later in vaudeville with Eunice Burnham, billed as "Two Girls and a Piano." She became a star with the stage show "So Long, Letty" (1916), which established her character for all time: a rowdy, man-chasing gal with a good heart and a stork-like dancing skill ("Lady Longlegs" was Greenwood's nickname). With her long face and prominent chin, Greenwood was not pretty in a conventional sense, but she nonetheless starred in a series of "Lettys": "Linger Longer, Letty" (1919), "Letty Pepper" (1922), "Leaning on Letty" (1935). Greenwood appeared in a number of other shows, as well as two indifferent silent films, "Jane" (1915) and "Baby Mine" (1927).