Charley Grapewin

You all have seen The Wizard of Oz, right?  Well, if you haven't, stop reading this post, go to the library, rent The Wizard of Oz, watch it immediately, scorn yourself you not having any sort of cultural awareness, and then come read this post.

Anyway, midst the well-known actors in the movie, Judy Garland, of course, is an actor whose name is probably unfamiliar to most alive today.  Well for that matter, he was dead before we were born and maybe even before our parents were born.  The actor I'm referring to is Charley Grapewin, who played Uncle Henry in the 1939 film adaptation of the L. Frank Baum novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Grapewin's story starts well before 1939, in fact, he was nearly 70 when that movie came out.  No, Grapewin had a long, successful career as an actor before Judy Garland was even born.

Charles Ellsworth Grapewin was born on December 20, 1869 in Xenia, Ohio.  At a young age, he ran away from home and joined the circus, working trapeze artist with P. T. Barnum's circus.  He blossomed into a famous vaudeville actor.  In 1903, he performed in a stage adaptation of, what else, The Wizard of Oz.

By the turn of the century,Grapewin was staring in silent films and countless numbers of them.  He appeared in over one hundred films before the end of his career, including the 1940 version of The Grapes of Wrath, in which he played Aunt Em's husband.  He remains most remembered for his performance in the Technicolor The Wizard of Oz.