Dorothy Granger

Dorothy Granger was an incredibly prolific comic actress working primarily from the 1930s through the 1950s, though her nearly 250 movie credit count is misleading since most of the titles were comedy shorts. Granger won a Texas beauty contest as a 13-year-old, and by 18 she was appearing in her first films. Eventually, Granger worked with nearly every comedy giant, beginning with Fatty Arbuckle (as a director), followed by Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, and The Three Stooges during the 1930s, and later teamed up with Abbott and Costello and Jack Benny in the 1950s. She earned the reputation as the perfect comedic foil and appeared with a host of lesser-known figures in numerous comedies, including "Wig-Wag" in 1935, and "Two Jills and a Jack" in 1947. Granger's most frequent collaborator, meanwhile, was the not-quite-legendary comic star Leon Errol, whose real name also became his on-screen name; Granger played his on-screen wife, ''Mrs. Errol.'' The duo made their first film together in the early '30s, though they didn't begin their true stretch of comedy shorts for RKO until 1944, beginning with "Girls! Girls! Girls!," and not letting up until "Too Many Wives" in 1951. Understandably burnt out on comedies, Granger also ventured into feature-length Westerns later in her career, where she sacrificed a change in genre for smaller roles.