BIOGRAPHY OF STARS

Chronicle (Levin), 18 January 1947, Page 7

BIOGRAPHY OF STARS

GREENSTREET SCREENS "FAT ' MAN" "Nobocly loves a fat man," according to a popular adage. If that is true it may explain, in parl, just why Sydney Greenstreet has Lurned to villainy in his motion picture work. He specialiscd in comedy rolcs on the stage for some forty years but in motion pictures he started out as a suspisious charactcr in "The Maltcse Falcon" and he has continued that way ever since. That Greenstreet is a fat man no one will attempt to deny. The primrose path of movie decadence is a pleasant road, according to Greenstreet. "Warner Bros. has made screen villainy very pleasant to me," said the fat man, who once thought the role of Sir Toby Belch in "As You Like It" would be his favourite i miming of all time. "If the public likes to hate me, why that's all well and good with me. I'm not running for office." With the exception of a brief period when he attempted to become a tea planter in Ceylon, Greenstreet hasn't stopped acting since he broke into amateur theatricals when he was 21. He got his first professional opportunity a few years later with the. Ben Greet players in England. He has appeared with Sir Herbert Tree, Margaret Anglin, Julia Marlowe, Viola Allen, David Thorndike, Mitzi, Lou Tellegen and many other noted stage favourites. He made his American bow some 25 years ago. "Motion pictures," said Sydney Greenstreet, "are extraordinary chings. . I make one picture and find that more people know about me than they did during my 37 years on the stage. Remarkable how many speetators they reaeh." Bad as he may have been in •'Background to Danger" and "The Mask of Dimitrios," Warner Bros. gilded him a little in "The Conspirators" and gave him a heart of gold in "Indiscretion." In "Devotion," the story of the Bronte Sisters he plays the part of Thackery, ■"hrough whose good offices the Brontes got their real chance in the writing world. Bobby Soxers will be glad to know hex is 66, weighs 280 lbs. and was born in Sandwich, , Kent, England. .