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.
