Elsie Ames | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 18, 1902 New Jersey, United States |
| Died | May 3, 1983 Northridge, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Occupation | Actress |
Elsie Ames (May 18, 1902 – May 3, 1983) was an American comic dancer and film actress. Between 1937 and 1974 she acted in 15 films. She is best known as the female film partner ofBuster Keaton.[1]
Ames was half of thevaudeville team Ames and Arno, doing a slapstick adagio routine. Theirs was a good, standard vaudeville act, asVariety reported in 1938: "Elsie Ames and Nick Arno make every second of their knockabout routine count for laughs. Nothing seems left to chance. Also, a mid-center walloper is the encore."[2] Ames and Arno performed their act on film in theBing Crosby musicalDouble or Nothing (1937).
Elsie Ames's willingness to take pratfalls and physical punishment in the name of comedy made her a natural candidate forColumbia Pictures' short subjects. ProducerJules White had a host of male physical comedians under contract, but no female comics who could withstand the films' high slapstick content. In 1940 White hired Ames, who stood a little over five feet tall, as a foil for 5' 5" Buster Keaton. She worked with Keaton in five of his 10 Columbia shorts, and received featured billing. After the final short in the series,She's Oil Mine, Keaton let his Columbia contract lapse, leaving Ames idle. White tried to keep her Columbia career going, co-starring her withHarry Langdon (in two shorts) and thenEl Brendel (in one final short). She left Columbia in 1942.
She made two further movies, both with Nick Arno, doing their dance specialty.
Elsie Ames's daughter,Elizabeth Deering, is also an actress. Elizabeth "Betty Lou" Deering was married 1964–1983 toSeymour Cassel. Ames and her then son-in-law acted together inMinnie and Moskowitz (1971). Ames and Deering acted inA Woman Under the Influence (1974).
Spook Speaks, The - Curta-metragem produzido e dirigido porJules White pelos estúdios daColumbia Pictures Corporation no ano de 1940. A história leva as letras deEwart Adamson,Clyde Bruckman eElwood Ullman. ComBuster Keaton, Elsie Ames,Don Beddoe,Dorothy Appleby,Lynton Brent,John Tyrrell,Bruce Bennett eEvelyn Young.
"Minnie and Moskowitz,"John Cassavetes's sixth and, in many ways, most ambitious film, is also his friendliest, in the dish-throwing, door-pounding, exclamation-pointed manner of a comic strip. [...] Florence ..... Elsie Ames