John Ogden Greenstreet was the son of late British-American actor Sydney Hughes Greenstreet. The actor was renowned for his nefarious plotting and mystery characters in movies like The Maltese Falcon. John Ogden Greenstreet is recognized due to his father’s popularity.
John Ogden Greenstreet’s Family
John Ogden Greenstreet was born in 1920 to the famous British-American actor Sydney Greenstreet and his wife Dorothy Marie Ogden. John Ogden’s father, Sidney Hughes Greenstreet, the son of tanner John Jarvis Greenstreet and Ann was born on December 27, 1879, in Sandwich, Kent. He was one of seven siblings. At the age of 18, he left home to become a rich tea grower in Ceylon, but a drought put him out of business. He started running a brewery and, to pass the time, studied acting.
John Ogden Greenstreet’s Career
John Ogden worked as a sales manager for a tobacco company. On the other hand, John’s father Sydney Greenstreet made his theatrical début in 1902 as a killer in a Sherlock Holmes play at the Marina Theatre in Ramsgate, Kent. With Ben Greet’s Shakespearean company, he performed throughout Britain. In 1905, he made his New York City acting debut in Everyman. He made appearances in shows like the As You Like It revival.
He performed in numerous plays in both Britain and America, spending the majority of the 1930s at the Theatre Guild with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. His theatre performances included everything from musical comedies to Shakespeare, and his years of such extensive acting on landmasses led to several requests to star in movies. Until the age of 61, he resisted. Due to his immense love for theatre, he had refused to movies until making his big debut in The Maltese Falcon produced by the Warner bros.
With Malaya (also 1949), which he starred in as the third billing behind Spencer Tracy and James Stewart, Greenstreet’s cinema career came to an end within a little more than eight years. He collaborated with several prominent celebrities during those years, including Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, and Clark Gable. The Last of My Solid Gold Watches, a one-act drama by Tennessee Williams, was written with Greenstreet in mind and is dedicated to him. Greenstreet portrayed Nero Wolfe in the 1950s and 1951s on the radio series The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, which was largely based on the rotund detective genius invented by Rex Stout.
John Ogden Greenstreet’s Father Death
John Ogden’s father Sydeney Greenstreet has kidney ailment called Bright’s disease in addition to diabetes. He stopped making movies five years later, and complications from both ailments led to his death in Hollywood in 1954. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in the Great Mausoleum’s Utility Columbarium section, which is off limits to the general public. John Ogden Greenstreet the sole child he had with Dorothy Marie Ogden, was his only heir.
