Rags Ragland
Actor
Biography
Rags Ragland was a boxer, then a burlesque comedian and then a Broadway performer before ending up in Hollywood to repeat his stage role as the boisterous sailor in Panama Hattie (1942), in which Ann Sothern played on film the part that had been played on Broadway by Ethel Merman. Ragland, typecast as a good-natured oaf with a knack for fracturing the English language, had as his sole movie employer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in some two dozen of whose lighter vehicles he appeared, in the company of such MGM luminaries as Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.
Date of Birth 23 August 1905, Louisville, Kentucky
Date of Death 20 August 1946, Los Angeles, California (uremic poisoning)
Filmography
The Canterville Ghost
as Big Harry Waters 1944
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood
as Self 1945
Girl Crazy
as 'Rags' 1943
Du Barry Was a Lady
as Charlie / Dauphin 1943
Whistling in the Dark
as Sylvester 1941
Somewhere I'll Find You
as Charlie 1942
3 Men in White
as Hobart Genet 1944
Her Highness and the Bellboy
as Albert Weever 1945
The War Against Mrs. Hadley
as Louie 1942
The Hoodlum Saint
as Fishface 1946
Meet the People
as Mr. Smith 1944
Born to Sing
as 'Grunt' 1942
Ringside Maisie
as Vic 1941
Whistling in Dixie
as Chester Conway / Sylvester 'Lester' Conway 1942
Whistling in Brooklyn
as Chester Conway 1943
Sunday Punch
as 'Killer' Connolly 1942