Inez Courtney

Biography

Redhead Inez Courtney was the quintessential coquettish soubrette of Broadway musical comedy in the 1920's. Having left school, she abandoned plans to become a milliner and instead embarked on a career as a 'specialty dancer' in vaudeville (where she acquired the nickname 'Mosquito'),serving a five-year apprenticeship. She was on Broadway by 1919, first as part of the ensemble but soon garnering good reviews for "The Wild Rose" by Rudolf Friml and then for the college musical "Good News" (1927), where she danced two numbers with Gus Shy. She even had a leading role in "Spring is Here" (1929) but came to Hollywood at a time when musicals were beginning to fade - after the Great Depression. She was an also-ran to Marilyn Miller in Sunny (1930) and Bernice Claire in The Song of the Flame (1930). Towards the end of 1930, she negotiated a contract with Harry Cohn at Columbia and appeared for ten years in non-musical roles, usually as sarcastic or wise-cracking friends to Jean Harlow, Ginger Rogers or Nancy Carroll. She occasionally returned to the theatre, the last time for "Hold Your Horses" in 1933 and retired from the screen in 1940 to settle down with her second husband, an aristocratic wine merchant, Luigi Filiesi, in Rome.