An Interview with Charlotte Greenwood (1916) 🇺🇸

One of the richest scenes in Sam Bernard’s “Nearly a Hero,” his Broadway starring vehicle of some seasons ago, was when he picked a stately show girl out of the chorus and attempted to measure her with a tape line, with the result that the athletic young woman caught him by the lapels and vigorously swung him across the stage, so that he landed after three glides, five spins and one grand kerflop, with his head hanging over the footlights in the vicinity of the bass viol in the orchestra.

by Pete Schmid

Much water has flowed under the bridges since then, and ordinarily it would be safe to assume that the girl who had played the “bit” had gone the way of her calling and was either exercising the tyranny of a wardrobe mistress or else had married a Palm Beach millionaire who was afraid to divorce her on account of the alimony he knew she could get.

But ordinary assumptions in this case will not do. The girl in this case did not go the way of her calling, for this was not the calling to which she belonged. Today she is one of the leading comediennes in musical comedy, with a record of success behind her probably more meteoric than that of any young women who has “arrived” within the past ten years.

Her name is Charlotte Greenwood.

Charlotte Greenwood — co-star with Sydney Grant in Oliver Morosco’s sensational midsummer musical hit, So Long Letty, and also co-star with Sydney Grant in the filmzation of the Charles Frohman success, “Jane,” by the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company.

When a biographer, rather stupidly trying to produce the picturesque, asked Miss Greenwood if there was any high-sounding private schools or convents which might be introduced in the customary fashion into her record, she eyed him with a distrustful slant.

“None of that in mine! If you think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I wasn’t!”

Then she laughed in her hearty way, for the thing amused her.

“I was born in Philadelphia, and went to school in Boston, and all the fancy schooling I ever got was in the good old public schools. It was the Prince School, if you think I’m afraid to tell it.”

At this point Miss Greenwood’s new husband assured:

“A very good school.”

The biographer’s snobbish weakness to social advantages seemed to require it.

And by the way:

Charlotte Greenwood recently spent her honeymoon producing Jane at the Oliver Morosco moving picture studio, in Los Angeles. Her home is a cunning gray bungalow with a depth of porch room at 1544 Curson, out in fashionable Hollywood. Charlotte Greenwood and Cyril Ring, the good-looking brother of Blanche Ring, were married recently. Cyril Ring is a royal good fellow, a handsome young actor, the pet of the famous Ring family, and sensible enough to be proud of being called “Blanche Ring’s brother,” or “Charlotte Greenwood’s husband.” He is a stalwart, powerful chap, with a fine’ pair of shoulders, a crack tennis player, and greatly liked throughout the show business for his freedom from “side.” After seeing him one still feels Charlotte Greenwood has good judgment.

“What are some of the things about you, Miss Greenwood, before: — well, before people began to hear about you?” “The things before never sound like much.” Her tone was abrupt. “It was all hard work.”

There was a slight ring of steel. It gave a hint of the mettle in this tall, decisive girl who has climbed from a Broadway chorus to the top of the heap; to a place, in fact, where theatrical managers openly appraise her as one of the most unique and profitable stage personalities before the public today.

‘‘But how did you get started?”

“In vaudeville. I was on the Orpheum two seasons, but you never heard much about us.”

“Any time!” interrupted the photographer, who looked up from his Graflex, into whose hood he had been peaking to get Miss Greenwood in focus as she posed against the brick pillar of her porch. “I saw you myself at Des Moines; you and the little fat girl at the piano. And you were immense!”

Charlotte Greenwood gave a frank little gasp, then smiled with pleasure, whereupon, with an uncanny penetration of men’s minds, she called in to the maid to ransack the refrigerator and set forth, set forth.

“But what gave you the idea to go into vaudeville?”

“Oh, Miss Burnham and I were always tooling around the stage and at rehearsals, she playing and I singing and cutting up, and the rest of the chorus — “The rest of the what?” Until now the facts of her chorus history had not come out.

“The rest of the chorus. That’s how I started, you know, in the chorus. I was with Sam Bernard on Broadway.”

And then she went to tell about the lapel incident and the long-distance fling. “Then you went into vaudeville?” “Then I went into vaudeville with Miss Burnham, she continuing to play and I to sing. As I said before, we were on the Orpheum two seasons and I never thought anybody was very crazy about us until one night at Keith’s, in New York, Shubert saw us and engaged me with Sydney Grant for the Winter Garden. And then my ship began to come in.”

A smile came over her face with this recollection that held a world of meaning. For now her ship has come in so bountifully.

“The Winter Garden was a terrific experience,” continued this remarkable girl, who is leading the triple life of Letty by Night, Jane by day and Charlotte Greenwood Ring in between times. “You never could tell how you were going. One night you’d be a riot and think you were great, and the next night Harry Fox ahead of you would be a riot and you’d think you were a frost. You always had to keep after the audience; keep right on your toes. I never worked so hard in my life. It was a regular ‘institution.’”

From Miss Greenwood’s recurrent use of the word, “institution,” it must have a subtle meaning in the argot of the performer which the biographer did not get, and furthermore got away before he could ask about. From the intonation it would not be recommended to the Winter Garden’s publicity department.

“But I guess it had a good deal to do with making me,” she added.

Be it known, however, that Charlotte Greenwood and Sydney Grant were one of the biggest “riots” ever put over at the Winter Garden.

“Tired listening?” she asked. Reassurance was volcanic. “Well, the rest is just current history. I was in The Passing Show of 1912 at the Winter Garden. Then in The Man With Three Wives, written by Franz Lehár, or the Merry Widow Waltz, and my part, a rube bride, gave me the best chance I ever had. I went back to the Winter Garden for The Passing Show of 1913 and Mr. Morosco engaged Mr. Grant and myself as stars in The Tik Tok Man of Oz on the Coast, and after that he took us to New York in Pretty Mrs. Smith. Now our chance has come in So Long Letty, and because there is no limit to our ambition, and the hills keep coming in, we are also doing Jane at the Morosco moving picture studio in between. I guess he wants to see how we spend our time and so works us night and day. But believe me, we’re willing.”

Asked for an impression of this, her first moving picture experience in the Morosco photo-comedy Jane, Miss Greenwood paused a moment in a manner that indicated the stage was more familiar to her; probably even preferable. Knowing full well you are primarily a business woman, do you realize that where one performance upon the stage introduces you at the most to about 1700 people, a day’s performance upon the screen stands a splendid chance of introducing you to 175,000, and in a score of different parts of the globe at once. Alongside a first-rate screen celebrity the king of anyone of the warring nations could pass and never be known.”

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Charlotte Greenwood glanced up quickly and the figures began to sink in.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, June 1916
(The Photo-Play Journal for June, 1916)

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see also So Long Letty (1929)