Ann Pennington

Bio: Famous for her dimpled knees, diminutive Ann Pennington was one of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld's most charming discoveries whose signature dance, "The Black Bottom," came to epitomize her era. Moonlighting in the movies, Pennington starred as Suzie Snowflake (1916), The Rainbow Princess (1916), and Sunshine Nan (1918), popular if middling entertainment… More Bio: Famous for her dimpled knees, diminutive Ann Pennington was one of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld's most charming discoveries whose signature dance, "The Black Bottom," came to epitomize her era. Moonlighting in the movies, Pennington starred as Suzie Snowflake (1916), The Rainbow Princess (1916), and Sunshine Nan (1918), popular if middling entertainment that didn't interfere with her nightly appearances in the Follies or George White's Scandals. In the 1920s, Pennington's screen appearances were mainly specialty turns but she did star as The Mad Dancer (1925), in which she posed in the nude. When sound came in, Pennington was highly visible in early musicals such as Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Tanned Legs (1929 -- although the gams in question were June Clyde's not Ann's), and Happy Days (1929). The latter, in which she appeared as herself, was Pennington's final feature film until, inevitably, The Great Ziegfeld (1936). In that epic film-biography of her erstwhile mentor (played with less than historical accuracy by William Powell), she again appeared as herself, but the footage ended up on the cutting-room floor. She played a couple of minor supporting roles on screen in the early 1940s and continued appearing on stage and in vaudeville until the late 1940s. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi