Occupation Actress Parents Kirsten Woxholt Role Singer | Name Greta Gynt Years active 1934–1963 Siblings Gil Woxholt | |
Full Name Margrethe Woxholt Died April 2, 2000, London, United Kingdom Spouse Frederick Moore (m. ?–1983) Movies The Dark Eyes of London, Dear Murderer, Tomorrow We Live, The Arsenal Stadium, London Town Similar People Arthur Crabtree, Thorold Dickinson, Wesley Ruggles, Ronald Neame, Harold French | ||
Movie Legends - Greta Gynt
Greta Gynt (15 November 1916 – 2 April 2000), born Margrethe Woxholt, was a Norwegian singer, dancer and actress. She is remembered for her starring roles in the British classic films The Dark Eyes of London, Mr. Emmanuel, Take My Life, Dear Murderer and The Ringer.
Contents
The Wit and Wonder of Greta Gynt
Biography
Greta Gynt was born Margrethe Woxholt in Oslo, Norway. As a child, she came with her parents to Britain and started dancing lessons at the age of 5. Eventually, they moved back to Norway. At aged 12, she started out as a dancer at the Chat Noir shows in Oslo. After the Swedish film Sången till henne (1934), her mother, costume designer Kirsten Woxholt, felt her daughter would have better luck in Britain. She got a letter of recommendation from Fox Film and moved back to the UK.
She played lead roles in minor British films in the 1930s and early '40s, but by the late 40s she appeared in major films. The Rank Organisation was trying to market her as the British Jean Harlow. She also tried an unsuccessful career in the US, absurdly miscast in MGM's Soldiers Three as a platinum blonde with made-up bosom, and went back to Britain afterwards.
Her most famous films are the 1939 Bela Lugosi film The Dark Eyes of London as the tough heroine, heroic as an underground leader in Tomorrow We Live, touching as Jewish Elsie Silver in Mr. Emmanuel 1944, forceful as loyal wife proving her husband`s innocence in the thriller Take My Life, a promiscuous murderess in Dear Murderer, both from 1947, and as a nightclub singer singing "The Shady Lady Spiv" in Easy Money (1948). Her last film was a Columbia Pictures release, The Runaway 1963 (released 1966) in which she played the lead.
Personal life
Reportedly, she adopted the name Gynt after she heard a pianist playing Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite in a hotel in London in the late 1930s. In her 1938 radio interview with NRK she states her husband exclaimed "What`s this?" and her name was born.
Gynt was married four times. Her last husband was Frederick Moore, a plastic surgeon, who died in 1983. She semi-retired after marrying him and was out of the public spotlight by the mid 1960s. She was the sister of second unit photographer Egil "Gil" Woxholt (1926-1991) who photographed scenes in the 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, A View to a Kill, and many others.