Florenz Ames (born Florenz Sebastian Kolb) was an American film and theater actor, dancer, and singer.
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Biography
Florenz Ames was born in Rochester, New York in a family with German roots. He began his acting career very late. With the support of his older brother, playwright Winthrop Ames, a prominent theater and music hall producer in New York at the time, he started out as a singer and dancer in vaudeville, often performing small scenes with his wife, Alice "Adelaide" Winthrop. Under the name "Ames and Winthrop", they appeared in a revue called Alice in Blunderland, with Winthrop in the title role and Ames playing the other parts. He eventually established himself on Broadway and appeared in a number of shows and musicals from before World War I through the Korean War, including the original productions of Of Thee I Sing, and Oklahoma!, as well as several Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
From 1950 to 1956, he played Inspector Richard Queen in the first television adaptation of Ellery Queen detective series, sharing the title role with Lee Bowman. From then on, his screen career took off, with numerous film and television roles appearing between 1950 and 1958. He appeared alongside some of the biggest names in Hollywood of the 1950s: Grace Kelly, Robert Mitchum, Barry Sullivan, Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Glenn Ford, Greer Garson, Doris Day, and others.
