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Although better known in her later career for her supporting roles in sitcoms like “All in the Family” (she played Archie’s liberal neighbor Irene Lorenzo) and “Laverne & Shirley” (she was the girls’ landlady, Edna Babish), actress/comedian/singer/dancer Betty Garrett had a notable, if brief, bigscreen stint in which she played other scene-stealing supporting characters. Celebrating what would have been Garrett’s 105th birthday (she was born May 23, 1919, in St. Joseph, Missouri, and died Feb. 12, 2011, in Los Angeles at age 91), Turner Classic Movies airs the first five of the seven feature-length films in which Garrett appeared from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Up first is her debut movie: Big City (1948), described on its movie poster as being a “big-hearted drama with songs” in which Garrett plays singer “Shoo Shoo”
Grady. Next is the 1949 musical romantic comedy Neptune’s Daughter (pictured), which finds Garrett playing the similarly named character Betty Barrett, the “mancrazy” sister of star Esther Williams’ character, Eve Barrett. Then, in the musical On the Town (1949), Garrett appears as Brunhilde “Hildy” Esterhazy, who takes to sailor-on-leave Chip (Frank Sinatra). Garrett and Sinatra also factor in the next musical, Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), in which Garrett’s Shirley Delwyn becomes an ardent fan of Sinatra’s ballplayer Dennis Ryan. Finally, Garrett appears in Words and Music (1948), a biographical musical film loosely based on the creative partnership between composer Richard Rodgers (Tom Drake) and lyricist Lorenz Hart (Mickey Rooney).