Marietta Canty

Acting

Marietta Canty

Born 1905-09-30 · Hartford, Connecticut, USA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Marietta Canty (1905-1986) was an African American actress, community activist and recipient of numerous humanist awards. As an actress, Marietta Canty first appeared on Broadway in 1933. She also appeared in 40 films between 1940 and 1955, mostly in supporting roles and bit parts. Two of her first roles were in the films The Lady is Waiting (1942) and The Spoilers (1942), both with Marlene Dietrich in the leading role. Canty is perhaps best known as Delilah, Spencer Tracy's housemaid, in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and in its sequel Father's Little Dividend (1951). Canty retired from film acting in 1955, her last role in Hollywood was Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, where she had a memorable part as Sal Mineo's family maid.

Acting credits

A Streetcar Named Desire poster
7.6

A disturbed, aging Southern belle moves in with her sister for solace — but being face-to-face with her brutish brother-in-law accelerates her downward spiral.

A Streetcar Named Desire

1951

Rebel Without a Cause poster
7.5

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

Rebel Without a Cause

1955

The Crimson Key poster
4.5

Larry Morgan, a private detective, is hired by a woman who wants Larry to trail her husband. The husband is murdered and, shortly afterwards, the wife is also killed. Larry shuffles through a long list of suspects before revealing the killer...

The Crimson Key

1947

The Bad and the Beautiful poster
7.3

Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.

The Bad and the Beautiful

1952

Home Sweet Homicide poster
4.5

Mystery writer Marian Carstairs is hard at work trying to finish her latest novel. Her three children meanwhile are entertaining themselves by trying to solve a murder in their own neighborhood. In between gathering clues, the kids play matchmaker by trying to fix up their widowed mom with the handsome detective investigating the case.

Home Sweet Homicide

1946

Father of the Bride poster
7.0

Proud father Stanley Banks remembers the day his daughter, Kay, got married. Starting when she announces her engagement through to the wedding itself, we learn of all the surprises and disasters along the way.

Father of the Bride

1950

The Sea of Grass poster
6.1

On America's frontier, a St. Louis woman marries a New Mexico cattleman who is seen as a tyrant by the locals.

The Sea of Grass

1947

Father's Little Dividend poster
6.5

Newly married Kay Dunstan announces that she and her husband are having a baby, leaving her father to come to grips with the fact that he will soon be a granddad.

Father's Little Dividend

1951

The Spoilers poster
6.2

When honest ship captain Roy Glennister gets swindled out of his mine claim, he turns to saloon singer Cherry Malotte for assistance in his battle with no-good town kingpin Alexander McNamara.

The Spoilers

1942

The Toast of New Orleans poster
5.2

Snooty opera singer meets a rough-and-tumble fisherman in the Louisiana bayous, but this fisherman can sing! Her agent lures him away to New Orleans to teach him to sing opera but comes to regret this rash decision when the singers fall in love.

The Toast of New Orleans

1950

Boom Town poster
7.0

Two buddies who rise from fly-by-night wildcatters to oil tycoons over a twenty year period both love the same woman. McMasters and Sand come to oil towns to get rich. Betsy comes West intending to marry Sand but marries McMasters instead. Getting rich and losing it all teaches McMasters and Sand the value of personal ties.

Boom Town

1940

Boom Town poster
7.0

Two buddies who rise from fly-by-night wildcatters to oil tycoons over a twenty year period both love the same woman. McMasters and Sand come to oil towns to get rich. Betsy comes West intending to marry Sand but marries McMasters instead. Getting rich and losing it all teaches McMasters and Sand the value of personal ties.

Boom Town

1940

The Lady Is Willing poster
6.5

Bold, eccentric Broadway performer Elizabeth Madden befuddles her handlers by coming home with a baby she picked up on the street. She wants to keep the baby but has to find a husband to make adoption viable. She offers her new obstetrician Dr. McBain help with his research on rabbits in exchange for marriage - and he accepts. The marriage of convenience turns into a marriage of real love until Dr. McBain's ex-wife comes looking for money.

The Lady Is Willing

1942

Bright Leaf poster
6.0

Two tobacco growers battle for control of the cigarette market.

Bright Leaf

1950

Dreamboat poster
6.1

Thornton Sayre, a respected college professor - secretly formerly a silent films romantic action hero - is disturbed, feeling his privacy has been violated, and his professional credibility as a scholar jeopardized, when he learns his old movies have been resurrected and are being aired on TV. He sets out to demand this cease. However, his former co-star is the hostess of the TV show playing the films, and she has other plans.

Dreamboat

1952

The Heavenly Body poster
5.6

The beautiful wife of a tweedy astronomer becomes convinced that her astrologer's prediction of a new dream man in her life will come true.

The Heavenly Body

1944

My Foolish Heart poster
6.6

After a long absence, Mary Jane visits her schoolfriend Eloise, and Eloise's daughter Ramona. Eloise drinks too much and is unhappily married to Lew Wengler. Eloise falls asleep and remembers her time with her true love, Walt Dreiser, at the beginning of the Second World War. She recalls the events that lead up to her split with Mary Jane, and how Lew married Eloise rather than Mary Jane.

My Foolish Heart

1950

Words and Music poster
5.8

Encomium to Larry Hart (1895-1943), seen through the fictive eyes of his song-writing partner, Richard Rodgers (1902-1979): from their first meeting, through lean years and their breakthrough, to their successes on Broadway, London, and Hollywood. We see the fruits of Hart and Rodgers' collaboration - elaborately staged numbers from their plays, characters' visits to night clubs, and impromptu performances at parties. We also see Larry's scattered approach to life, his failed love with Peggy McNeil, his unhappiness, and Richard's successful wooing of Dorothy Feiner.

Words and Music

1948

Chicago Deadline poster
6.7

On Chicago's South Side reporter Ed Ames finds the body of a dead girl. Her address book leads to a host of names of men frightened by her death but claiming never to have known her. Ames comes to know quite a lot, dangerously so.

Chicago Deadline

1949

Silver Queen poster
6.0

A beautiful heiress is an excellent poker player. Her comfortable life changes when her father and his fortune die during market crash of the 1800's.

Silver Queen

1942

A Man Called Peter poster
6.6

Based on the true story of a young Scottish lad, Peter Marshall, who dreams of only going to sea but finds out there is a different future for him when he receives a "calling" from God to be a minister. He leaves Scotland and goes to America where after a few small congregations he lands the position of pastor of the Church of the Presidents in Washington, D.C. and eventually he becomes Chaplain of the U.S. Senate.

A Man Called Peter

1955

The I Don't Care Girl poster
7.3

This semi-film within a film opens in the office of producer George Jessel, who never saw a camera he couldn't get in front of, who is holding a story conference to determine the screen treatment for the life of Eva Tanguay, and Jessel is unhappy with what the writers present him.He tells them to look up Eddie McCoy, Eva's one-time partner, for the real inside story on the lusty and vital Eva. Eddie's version is that he discovered her working as a waitress in an Indianapolis restaurant in 1912, wherein singer Larry Woods and his partner Charles Bennett get into a fight over her and both land in the hospital, and McCoy convinces the manager to put Eva on as a single to fill their spot. She flopped, but McCoy arranges for Bennett to be her accompanist, and she went out of his life. The writers look up Bennett, now head of a music publishing company, who says McCoy's story is phony, and it was Flo Zigfeld who discovered Eva for his Follies.

The I Don't Care Girl

1953

Goin' to Town poster
9.0

General store owners, through a series of contrivances, end up on the better side of a practical joke being played on them.

Goin' to Town

1944

Three Hearts for Julia poster
6.5

When his wife threatens him with divorce, a reporter courts her again.

Three Hearts for Julia

1943