Hollywood Says Goodbye to 3 Stooges' Leading Lady. Passes Away at Age 90.
Oh the good old days of slapstick humor and rubber chickens. Who could forget one the pioneer comedians, The Three Stooges?
Along with this new kind of humor came the blond bombshells of the 1050s. One of these glamorous icons was Greta Thyssen, who just passed away Saturday at the age of 90 after battling pneumonia.
Born in Hareskovby, Denmark, she traveled to Paris, and eventually made her way to Hollywood.
And her 39-24-36 measurements didn’t lie, as she quickly became known for her role as the Marilyn Monroe double.
Thyssen made her debut in B movies including the 1959 “Terror Is A Man” and the 1961 “Three Blondes in His Life.”
But she was best known for dating actor Cary Grant, a romance that ended after she spoke openly about their relationship to Cosmopolitan magazine and mentioning how he wouldn’t stop talking about his LSD adventures.
Thyssen co-starred with Grant in several Three Stooges shorts. But this beautiful, vivacious actress was much more than a bombshell.
“She was always cagey about her acting career and its trajectory. My mother was a very clever woman and extremely well read.
“If she had been born in a different era, I think she could have been a lawyer or professor,” said her daughter, Genevieve Guenther.
Working with the Three Stooges was the highlight of her acting career. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t love to be a part of that pie-throwing, rubber-chicken-over-the-head kind of fun?
In the 1958’s Three Stooges Quiz Whizz, Thyssen is seen hitting the stooges with a baseball bat and receiving a cake to the face in return.
She also had fond memories of the constant barrage of pies in the face.
“I didn’t quite understand that those kind of shorts would later be so admired and loved,” said Thyssen in a 2010 interview. Her movie career ended in 1967 when she decided to raise a family.
“I think that she always felt a little bit embarrassed about the movie persona that she adopted as this kind of voluptuous, glamorous Danish pastry with nothing between her head except silk and feathers.” says Guenther.
That sure wasn’t who she was. The people closest to her knew that.
After retirement, Thyssen began painting in her New York home. She was a beautiful woman, smart and described by acquaintances as straight and narrow: she was an amazing woman and left quite the legacy.
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