Charley Grapewin in The Wizard of Oz as Uncle Henry

Charley Grapewin
as Uncle Henry

This image "reprinted by permission,
Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles,
CA © all rights reserved."

On December 20, 1875, in the small town of Xenia, Ohio, Charley Grapewin was born. Either Grapewin was a driven man or it is just that he lived so long. From the age of 10 he began a lifetime of upward mobility within some form of show business. As a young child he used his ability as a roller skater to gain entry into at least two different circuses. He also began to practice with a group of aerial acrobats and briefly appeared in the last circus as a trapeze artists.

He had left the circus in Portland Oregon when offered a job to act in a stock company there. By 1890 Grapewin was hooked on a theatrical career. From there he was hired for his first professional stage work at the age of 14. From there he was hired for his first professional stage work.

Grapewin began to write stage plays which he sold and acted in. He is credited with writing a play called "The Mismated Pair" which was the first legitimate Vaudevillian sketch without singing or dancing.

In the early part of his career he met and married his wife the then 15 year old Anna Chance. The union lasted 47 years and shortly after that celebration Anna Chance Grapewin died. They were childless.

Some of the highlights of Grapewin's career were M-G-M's film The Good Earth, with Paul Muni. At the time the Wizard of Oz was made only The Good Earth and Ben Hur cost the movie studio more dollars to produce. The Good Earth was a story written by the West Virginia author Pearl S. Buck and the book won a Nobel Prize in literature and also the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in literature.

One of the next films in which Grapewin played a leading role, as Grandpa Joad, another Pulitzer Prize winning book of John Steinbeck's, The Grapes of Wrath. He also played Jeeter Lester in the Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road.

Oddly enough in all the material that I looked at about Charley Grapewin there was not one word about the role of Uncle Henry that he played in the Wizard of Oz. During his life span, with everything else he did, he is credited with having made over 100 films.

Charley Grapewin died on February 2, 1956 at the age of 80. Upon the filing of his will it was disclosed that his long time housekeeper was the beneficiary of his Estate.

With many of the prestigious roles played by Charley Grapewin we who love Oz will still best remember the lovable Uncle Henry as a part of the total charm of the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.

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