Rags Ragland(1905-1946)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
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.
