Winnie Lightner
Acting
Biography
Winnie Lightner (born Winifred Josephine Reeves; September 17, 1899 – March 5, 1971) was an American stage and motion picture actress.
Born: September 16, 1899
Place of Birth: Greenport, New York, USA
Known For
Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films
Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).
Gold Diggers of Broadway
Three Broadway chorus girls seek rich husbands.
Dancing Lady
Janie lives to dance and will dance anywhere, even stripping in a burlesque house. Tod Newton, the rich playboy, discovers her there and helps her get a job in a real Broadway musical being directed by Patch. Tod thinks he can get what he wants from Janie, Patch thinks Janie is using her charms rather than talent to get to the top, and Janie thinks Patch is the greatest. Steve, the stage manager, has the Three Stooges helping him manage all the show girls. Fred Astaire and Nelson Eddy make appearances as famous Broadway personalities.
The Life of the Party
Two female song-pluggers decide to become ruthless gold-diggers, with comic results.
Hold Everything
A man is mistaken for a champion fighter.
The Stolen Jools
Famous actress Norma Shearer's jewels are stolen… (Star-packed promotional short film intended to raise funds for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanatorium.)
Sit Tight
Winnie Lightner is the head of a health clinic and has Joe E. Brown as one of her employees. Brown is a wrestler named JoJo and he is forced to enter the ring and face down a musclebound masked opponent (Frank S. Hagney). Making matters worse, the masked marauder is convinced that his wife has been fooling around with JoJo. JoJo is knocked out early in the proceedings, whereupon he dreams he's a sultan surrounded by harem girls. A romantic subplot involves Paul Gregory and Claudia Dell. Gregory works for Dell's father and Dell asks her father to give Gregory a promotion so that she can spend more time with him. When Gregory refuses to be promoted without earning the position, she threatens to have him fired and Gregory quits his job. Gregory attempts to start a new career as a championship wrestler and is trained by Lightner and Brown. When Dell finds out about this, she attempts to stop him and asks for his forgiveness. She pleads with him to not fight but he has already promised...
The Show of Shows
Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!
She Had to Say Yes
Florence Denny is Tommy Nelson's girlfriend and secretary at a clothing manufacturer during the Great Depression. In order to boost sales they have been using professional female entertainers to keep their clients very happy, but the clients are getting bored of them. Tommy convinces management to replace the professionals with "volunteers" from the pool of stenographers. Inevitably some clients expectations are greater than their "dates", boyfriends become unhappy, and the "voluntary" duty becomes less so over time. At first, Tommy prevents Florence from being a volunteer, but eventually the prospect of a bonus becomes too great and he encourages her to volunteer. Afterwards, Tommy considers Florence a loose woman.
Side Show
A circus side show performer tries to discourage her younger sister from following in her footsteps.
Filmography
as Herself (archive footage)
as Elizabeth
as Rosette LaRue
as Maizee
as Georgine Hicks
as Doris Roberts
as Pat
as Gertrude Dale
as Winnie
as Winnie
as Flo
as Toots Breen
as Winnie Harper
as Performer in 'Pingo Pongo' & 'Singing in the Bathtub' Numbers
as Mabel