Elise Cavanna

Elise Alyse Cavanna (born Elise Alyse Seeds; January 30, 1902 – May 12, 1963) was an American film actress, stage comedian, dancer, and fine artist. She went by the following names: Elise Seeds, Alyse Seeds, Elise Armitage, Elise Cavanna, and Elise Welton.

Stage and film career She was born Elise Alyse Seeds in Germantown, Philadelphia, to Sally D. Burk and Thomas M. Seeds. Cavanna was 6 feet tall and very svelte. She gave dance recitals in New York City, but grew dissatisfied and instead became a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Cavanna was a comedian with Joe Weber and Lew Fields before she entered motion pictures in 1926. Her first film was Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (1926) with Louise Brooks and Evelyn Brent. Next she performed as an "early morning customer" with Brooks and W.C. Fields in It's the Old Army Game (1926). She worked with Fields in four other of his films, most notably The Dentist, where her scenes as a writhing victim of the brutal dentist (Fields) were deemed so risque that they were edited out for television broadcast decades later. Her on-screen interplay with Fields was compared by film historian William K. Everson to that between Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont. Cavanna remained in films until the late 1930s, compiling more than twenty screen credits.

In 1932, while living in Los Angeles, she met and married Merle Armitage (1893–1975), a writer, book designer, musician, and WPA administrator. She became more interested in visual art and art social circles after her marriage. The art was best appreciated through the "mind's eye" rather than the eye itself. Cavanna's art was shown in October 1949 as part of the contemporary section in the California Centennials Exhibition of Art at the Los Angeles County Museum, Exposition Park. Oils, water colors, and prints from 20th-century artists were presented along with a historical section, which assembled early art. It displayed life in California from 1800 through 1870.

In 1937, Cavanna completed the 16′ x 6′ oil-on-canvas painting Air Mail for the Oceanside, California, post office. The painting depicts a realistic but stylized airplane flying over a landscape that looks similar to California. Cavanna was one of the first nonobjective painters in southern California. Each one of her pictures was brightly colored, filled with energy, and could be viewed as a separate portion of a frieze. Feitelson and Lundeberg wrote a manifesto in 1934, describing their art as post-surrealism. Their desire was to use art to communicate the connection between the conceptual and the perceptual.

Later years and death In 1961 Cavanna and her husband James Welton co-authored the book Gourmet Cookery for a Low Fat Diet, which contains 200 recipes for making fatless meals.

Elise Cavanna Welton, at age 61, died of cancer in Hollywood, California, on May 12, 1963. Her gravesite is located at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Filmography