Geneva Mitchell

From trading barbs with Mary Duncan in Morning Glory (1933) to taking it in the face from the Three Stooges and Andy Clyde in Columbia two-reel comedies, brunette starlet Geneva Mitchell was all over the place in the 1930s. She had been a specialty dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies and appeared in such popular shows as Louis 14th and Sally prior to making her screen bow in a 1929 Vitaphone short. Yet despite her many film appearances, Mitchell was rather more famous for her offscreen escapades than anything she did in front of the camera. The fiancée of actor/director Lowell Sherman (who had cast her in Morning Glory in the first place), Mitchell took the witness stand in 1934 on behalf of the late star's business manager in a suit against the Sherman estate. The resulting hullabaloo had barely died down when Mitchell was back in court, this time accused of forcing her agent, George H. Talbot, into duping the authorities with a publicity hoax. Reportedly, Talbot had concocted a false holdup stunt merely to get his client into the newspapers. The unfortunate agent was sentenced to pay a fine or spend 100 days in jail and although Mitchell herself was acquitted for lack of evidence, the judge pointedly suggested that she pay Talbot's fine. Despite the notoriety, Geneva Mitchell failed to become a household name and she left films in 1946 due to health problems. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi