Zelma O'Neal
| Zelma O'Neal | |
|---|---|
| Born |
29 May 1903 Rock Falls, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | November 3, 1989 (aged 86) Largo, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1927 - 1937 |
| Spouse(s) | Anthony Bushell (1928–1935) |
Zelma O'Neal (May 29, 1903 – November 3, 1989) was an actress, singer, and dancer in the 1920s and 1930s. She appeared on Broadway and in early sound films, including the Paramount Pictures films Paramount on Parade and Follow Thru (both 1930).
She was born in Rock Falls, Illinois, on May 29, 1903, and moved to Chicago at the age of two. She attended public schools until she was fourteen, when she went to work in a factory and later took office jobs. She worked occasionally in vaudeville, at first without pay and later professionally as a vaudeville act with her sister Berenice and a piano player. Her touring brought her to the East Coast, where she was cast in Good News. Of her appearance in that musical comedy set on a college campus, Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times in 1927: "one pert young freshman, Zelma O'Neal, dances herself into willing exhaustion to the snapping tune of 'The Varsity Drag'." In a profile, the paper referred to "her personality, which experts say resembles that of a caged cyclone".
She was part of the cast that took Good News to London in 1928. There she met British actor Anthony Bushell.
She returned to New York for a role in the musical Follow Thru. She married Bushell in New York on November 22, 1928. He was appearing on Broadway in Maugham's The Sacred Flame.Follow Thru opened in January 1929 and proved a hit. It ran almost a full year. In it she and Jack Haley sang "Button Up Your Overcoat". Atkinson wrote:
That merry brat, Zelma O'Neal, who stomped her way into fame in Good News, has now moved up several rungs of the ladder to one of the leading parts. In company with Jack Haley, an excellent dancer and comedian, Miss O'Neal dances with every joint in her body, makes impertinent faces, sings loud enough to be heard, and in general makes herself invaluable throughout the evening. One of their best numbers in the second act, "I Could Give Up Anything But You", this pair of active buffoons fills out into a marvelously diversified escapade. None of the commoner repressions of the day confine Miss O'Neal's gauche and racy antics. She has such a good time cutting up in public that the audience has a better [one].
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