Winifred Josephine Reeves (1899-1971) started performing as a singer in vaudeville when she was fifteen and was very quickly playing at New York’s Palace Theatre, the dream of every singer and hoofer in every Hollywood backstage musical.
From 1922, Lightner was starring in Broadway revues. She made a couple of early musical shorts in 1928-29, but then scored a huge success in the Technicolor Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929). Sadly, her biggest success is now a lost film, which was criminally careless of Warner Bros.
Lightner’s time as a film star was very short. The musicals she shot in 1932 were released with the music excised, and a subsequent attempt to recast her as a dramatic actor failed. By 1933, she was playing second fiddle to Joan Crawford in MGM’s Dancing Lady.
After just fourteen feature films, Lightner retired from show business in 1934 to raise a family with her Gold Diggers director, Roy Del Ruth.
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