Mitzi Green

Mitzi Green (born Elizabeth Keno) (October 22, 1920 – May 24, 1969) was an American child actress for Paramount and RKO, in the early talkie era.

Background

Born in The Bronx, New York, 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. At the age of 14, she played a soubrette role in the 1934 film, Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round; this film closed out the first stage of her Hollywood career.

She went on to Broadway, where she starred in the original production of Rogers and Hart's Babes in Arms.

Green made one more film in 1940, then went back to stage and nightclub work. 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).

In 1955, she co-starred with Virginia Gibson and Gordon Jones in the short-lived TV sitcom So This Is Hollywood (1955), in the role of Queenie Dugan, a hoydenish stuntwoman.

After a brief stint on the nightclub circuit, 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.

Death

Green died of cancer aged 48 in Huntington Beach, California on May 24, 1969. She was interred at Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.

Filmography

• The Marriage Playground (1929)
• Honey (1930)
• Love Among the Millionaires (1930)
• The Santa Fe Trail (1930)
• Tom Sawyer (1930)
• Follow the Leader (1930)
• Finn and Hattie (1931)
• Skippy (1931)
• Dude Ranch (1931)
• Newly Rich (1931)
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1931)
• Girl Crazy (1932)
• Little Orphan Annie (1932)
• Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934)
• Santa Fe Trail (1940) uncredited
• Lost in Alaska (1952)
• Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952)

As herself:

• Paramount on Parade (1930)
• The Slippery Pearls, aka The Stolen Jools (1931)

Stage

• Babes In Arms (1937)
• Walk With Music (1940)
• Let Freedom Sing (1942)
• Billion Dollar Baby (1945)

External links

• Mitzi Green at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs of Mitzi Green and bibliography