William Russell Hardie (1904-73) was a stage actor who made occasional appearances in films. He featured in a couple of dozen Broadway productions, including playing the lead in the original staging of The Criminal Code (1929), later filmed by Howard Hawks. He also starred in the premiere of The Primrose Path (1940).
Hardie featured prominently in two 1933 MGM musicals, acting alongside Alice Brady in both of them. In Broadway to Hollywood he played Brady’s son, while in Stage Mother he was her husband, dying both tragically and early in the picture.
In 1958, Hardie played Lt. Byrnes, head of the 87th Precinct in the film of Ed McBain’s Cop Hater.
John Cooper (1922-2011) was a rare child actor who managed to extend early success into a long and successful life and career. Cooper made his screen debut aged six, though he had been carried around as an extra before that, and appeared for a couple of years as one of Hal Roach’s ‘Little Rascals’.
Under contract to Roach, Cooper was loaned to Paramount to star in Skippy (1931), under the direction of his uncle, Norman Taurog. In the same year he supported Wallace Beery’s Oscar-winning turn in The Champ.
Cooper worked regularly throughout his teenage years, notably as the second male lead in Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940), also finding time to have an affair with Joan Crawford. His films as an adult in the 1940s were not of great note, and he took time out to serve in the navy. By 1949 he had started working regularly in television. In 1954 he made his first foray into television direction, going on to work on a wide variety of comedy and drama series, and winning two Primetime Emmys. From 1959, he was also working as a producer.
Cooper continued to act, and is well-known for playing Perry White in the Christopher Reeves Superman pictures. He finally retired in 1989.
Jackie Cooper made appearances in two MGM musicals: as a child in Broadway to Hollywood, and as a teenager in Ziegfeld Girl, as Lana Turner’s brother and Judy Garland’s beau.
Francis Phillip Wuppermann (1890-1949) was the Wizard of Oz. It was his most famous role, the one that has gained him immortality. But it was not his only role: he made about a hundred films altogether, including thirteen other MGM musicals.
A graduate of Cornell University (he studied business administration), Morgan made his start in acting in the theatre, in a Broadway production of Mr Wu in 1914. His screen debut came two years later, a supporting role in a Vitagraph picture. He was a journeyman player in both media until the late 1920s, when he appeared on stage in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1927). Three years later he created the title role in the comedy Topaze.
In the cinema, a highlight was co-starring as Bunny in John Barrymore’s Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917). He was always based in New York, and apparently told his friend Ralph Bellamy he was selling out by going to Hollywood. Six months later, Morgan was there himself and, after returning East for two Broadway productions, became a fixture in the film capital. He was under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the rest of his life, though he was loaned out in 1933 for Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.
Morgan had a few leading roles, for example in The Affairs of Cellini (1934), which earned him an Oscar nomination. More often, he worked as a character actor, always bringing added value to whatever picture he was in. Particular highlight was Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), as the tragi-comic Mr Matuschek, and his role in the anti-Nazi The Mortal Storm (1940).
The musicals in which Morgan appeared, beside The Wizard of Oz, were Broadway to Hollywood (playing the lead), The Cat and the Fiddle, Naughty Marietta, The Great Ziegfeld, Rosalie, Sweethearts, Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Hullabaloo (another lead), Thousands Cheer, Yolanda and the Thief and Summer Holiday. This means he worked with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Kathryn Grayson: most of the musical performers whose stars glittered in the MGM firmament.
Frank Morgan, despite his usually cheery persona on and off screen, had a serious problem with alcohol, believed to have been triggered by the murder of the brother with whom he was closest. He was a functioning alcoholic, but the impact on his general health was almost certainly a contributing factor to his death from heart failure at the age of 59, just after he had started shooting Annie Get Your Gun.
Mary Rose Brady (1892-1939) will have found it relatively easy to break into the New York film industry, given that her first picture, As Ye Sow (1914) was made by William A Brady Productions, her father’s company. She had previously acted on stage, including in a Broadway production with which her father was associated. She continued to work in the theatre during her film career, including a leading role in the 1931 premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.
Brady acted in films until 1923, then concentrated on the stage until travelling to Hollywood in 1933. After one supporting role at MGM, she starred in two musicals, playing very different kinds of stage mother: Broadway to Hollywood and Stage Mother.
Alice Brady’s most beloved role is probably as Carole Lombard’s batty mother in My Man Godfrey (1936), which earned her a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She won in the category the following year, for her part in In Old Chicago (1938), this time as Tyrone Power’s mother, responsible for starting the cataclysmic fire.
Brady’s final role was as yet another mother, the noble Abigail Clay in John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939)a
Tony Pastor’s Theatre, New York in the 1880s [Hansom Cab Drivers]. Lulu and Ted Hackett are a successful comedy-dance act on the East Coast vaudeville circuit [We Are the Two Hacketts]. They love each other, and Ted’s flirtations with chorus girls are closely watched over by Lulu. Their son, Ted Jr, joins the family act, and the Two Hacketts become the Three Hacketts.
The Three Hacketts (Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan and Alice Brady) find themselves in conflict with management
Ted Jr is a scene-stealer and already has the same eye for girls as his dad. Lulu’s sister offers to raise Ted Jr on her farm, but Lulu knows the only life her son wants is in show business.
Years later, Ted Jr falls in love with Anne Ainsley, a dancer. He also begins to see that the family’s act is becoming old fashioned. Anne leads her own dance troupe, ‘Anne Ainsley and Her Dancing Dolls’ [The Honeysuckle and the Bee].
Anne and Ted Jr are going out, but Lulu does not approve. Anne tells Ted Jr she has an appointment to see vaudeville star Joe Weber, of the Weber & Fields double act, to talk about a part in their new show. She offers to talk to Weber about Ted Jr, but he is not sure he has the heart to break up the Three Hacketts.
Anne (Madge Evans) and Ted Jr (Russell Hardie) restrain Lulu (Alice Brady)
Weber is impressed by Ted Jr’s loyalty to his parents. He offers him a part in the new show, and also offers to find parts for Lulu and Ted. The parents agree, but only because Ted persuades himself Weber and Fields actually want them as much as they want Ted Jr.
On the opening night [Snow Ballet], the show is running long and Lulu and Ted’s lines are cut [Ma Blushin’ Rosie]. Eventually, their dance is cut as well. After the show, Lulu and Ted do not attend the party at Delmonico’s. Ted Jr arrives home drunk and Lulu and Ted tell him they are quitting the show. Ted also warns his son not to start drinking too much.
Some time later, Ted Jr and Anne are married and performing as a double act [PoorLittle G-String; Melody in F]. Back in vaudeville, the Two Hacketts are struggling [In the Garden of My Heart] and their agent tells them their act is so out-of-date that he can no longer get them bookings on the Orpheum circuit.
Lulu and Ted meet Ted Jr and Anne at a railway station, but they have little to say to each other. Ted Jr and Anne’s show is having a successful tour, but Ted Jr has started drinking, and is philandering like his father, even though they now have a baby. An older colleague advises Anne that she needs to act to save her marriage. Anne confronts Ted Jr in their dressing room. They quarrel and Anne rushes from the room, falling from a balcony to her death.
A remorseful Ted Jr tells his parents that success went to his head and that he was responsible for Anne’s death. He continues as a solo performer, but is drinking heavily and eventually is fired. Lulu and Ted have raised their grandson, Ted III, who is now part of their act. They are reduced to performing six shows a day in theatres that also show films.
It is 1917, and they get a letter from Ted Jr telling them he has enlisted and is about to go overseas. A few months later, he is killed in action.
In 1929, vaudeville theatres are closing and converting to picture houses. Ted III has an offer to go to Hollywood, and does so against Ted’s wishes. He is a success, and Lulu and Ted go east to live with him. Ted III has a film star’s mansion, but has become conceited and, like his father, drinks and chases women too much. The studio boss tells him to start behaving or he will be let go.
Ted III goes missing, causing a costly delay on a picture he is making. Ted determines to find his grandson and does so. Dragging him back to the house, Ted tears a strip of him. Ted III insults his grandfather, who collapses.
Ted III reforms and begins to work hard. Lulu and Ted visit the set of the musical he is making. While watching his grandson perform a number incorporating moves he taught him as a boy [Knee Deep in Rhythm], Ted dies. Lulu holds his hand and watches Ted III dance.
James Francis Durante (1893-1980) had what in Britain might be called a Marmite personality: some people loved him, others hated him. For some, a little went a long way. (Personally, I’m a fan.) But what is undeniable is that Jimmy Durante had the longest career of any performer starring in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. It began in 1931, ended in 1962, and included eleven pictures across all four decades.
Durante started out in show business playing ragtime piano, and developed humour out of the musical performance. This led to vaudeville, and then radio, with time spent as part of a three-man comedy act.
He made his film debut in 1930, at Paramount’s New York studios. By the following year he was in Hollywood, working for Metro. Jimmy Durante, throughout his career, moved seamlessly between films, Broadway, radio, records and, later on, television. In 1934, for example, he made films in New York because he was appearing on Broadway in Jumbo, which he would film twenty-eight years later.
Durante was sometimes the leading man in films; for instance, Palooka (1934), where he got top billing over Lupe Velez. More often, however, he was third or fourth billed, providing comic support.
Durante’s first MGM musical, this time billed below Lupe Velez, was The Cuban Love Song. This was followed by Broadway to Hollywoodand Hollywood Party (playing versions of himself), then Student Tour, Two Girls and a Sailor, Music for Millions, Two Sisters from Boston, It Happened in Brooklyn, This Time for Keeps, On an Island with You and, finally, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
Durante’s last big screen appearance was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but he continued to work on television.
Born in Germany, raised in the UK, Leo Weiss (1873-1948) made at least 500 screen appearances in a career lasting a little over thirty years.
After working in British music halls, White travelled to America and was working in films by 1911. He eventually settled at Essanay Studios, working regularly with Charles Chaplin. He also featured in Wallace Beery’s Sweedie shorts. By 1920, he had already made over 120 films.
Despite his background in comedy, White ventured into more serious fare during the 1920s, with appearances in Blood and Sand (1922), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927).
White was in eight MGM musicals (all uncredited). He started out in The Florodora Girl, followed by Call of the Flesh, The Devil’s Brother, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and The Cat and the Fiddle. He was one of the hirsute Russian aviators in A Night at the Opera, and bowed out with Broadway Melody of 1938.
Later, White played the barber in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) and Emile the waiter in Casablanca (1942).
