Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone (1905-68) became an actor after graduating from Cornell in 1927. After gaining extensive experience on the New York stage, he joined the influential Group Theatre, where he became a proponent of Stanislavsyan techniques. Tone made his first film, The Wiser Sex (1932) at New York’s Astoria Studios.
In 1933, Tone signed with MGM and moved to Hollywood. He gained early prominence playing the romantic lead in Gabriel Over the Whitehouse (1933). Metro often loaned him to other studios, where he made some of his most interesting films, including John Ford’s The World Moves On (1934) at Fox and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) at Paramount. In 1937, he starred opposite Katharine Hepburn in RKO’s Quality Street.
When his contract ended in 1939, Tone went back to work on Broadway for a year or so. During the war, he appeared in two outstanding pictures, Billy Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and the seminal film noir Phantom Lady (1944).
In 1949, Tone produced, co-directed and starred in RKO’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower. He performed the same functions in an independent film of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1957. One of Tone’s last major films was Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965).
Franchot Tone acted in three MGM musicals during his 1930s contract: Stage Mother, Dancing Lady (with future wife Joan Crawford) and Reckless.
Edwin Booth Willis (1893-1963) worked on the design of over 800 MGM pictures, in a career lasting a little over thirty years. He was nominated for Academy Awards 32 times, and won on eight occasions. In broad terms, Willis was an art director, but his specialism was set decoration and the bulk of his credits were in this capacity.
After working as an art director for Tiffany Pictures in the 1920s, Willis worked exclusively for Metro, obtaining three types of credit: Associate Art Director (AAD), Interior Decorations (ID) and Set Decorator (SD). He did early work as SD on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).
Willis worked on some of the studio’s major critical and commercial successes, including Queen Christina (1933, for ID), The Thin Man (1934, as AAD), Anna Karenina (1935, as AAD, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936, as AAD), Camille (1936, as AAD), The Good Earth (1937, as AAD), Captains Courageous (1937, as AAD), Boys’ Town (1938, as AAD), The Women (1939), Ninotchka (1939, as SD), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941, winning an Oscar), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), Madame Curie (1943), Gaslight (1944, winning an Oscar), John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1944), The Yearling (1946, winning an Oscar), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), State of the Union (1948), Act of Violence (1948), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Little Women (1949, winning an Oscar), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful 1952, winning an Oscar), Julius Caesar (1953, winning an Oscar), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, winning an Oscar), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Lust for Life (1956).
Willis had a particularly extensive collaboration with Vincente Minnelli, decorating most of his musical and non-musical pictures
Edwin B Willis contributed to 153 musicals, around 70 per cent of MGM’s total output. It could be argued that this makes him the single most influential figure on the look of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical. The pictures were:
Not a lot of information is available about Miriam Marlin (1905-89), whose brief Hollywood career (1933-37) mostly involved playing chorus girls. It seems reasonable to assume that she had some experience in that area before appearing in pictures.
Marlin was a chorus girl in all three of her uncredited appearances in MGM musicals, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and Dancing Lady.
Isabelle Keep (1898-1975) was a small-part player who made almost sixty films between 1919 and 1937. She is probably best-known today for playing Mrs Laurel in Perfect Day (1929) and Mrs Hardy in Be Big! (1931).
Keith appeared briefly in a few major pictures–John Ford’s Riley the Cop (1928), Mata Hari (1931), Anna Karenina (1935)–but can mostly be seen in programmers.
She was uncredited in three Metro musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Reckless.
Muriel Adele Evanson (1910-2000) was spotted in Hollywood aged 16 and given her first part in Mademoiselle Modiste (2926). While still at school, she worked for years in bit parts and did some acting for stock companies.
In 1929, Evans played the female lead in Joyland, a Lupino Lane comedy short. After a short break from acting to get married and divorced, she worked for MGM and Hal Roach, including a role in Laurel and Hardy’s Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).
From then on, Evans’s career was a combination of small, often uncredited, appearances in ‘A’ pictures such as Queen Christina (1933) and Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and, much more frequently, leading roles in’B’ westerns. She was a regular leading lady for Buck Jones and for John Wayne during his wilderness years.
By 1940, Evans had more or less retired from screen acting, though she did continue to do radio work. Much later, she worked as a nurse at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, where she also lived out her final years.
Muriel Evans was in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.
Ernestine Hill (1910-2000), like many others, was a model and beauty contest competitor who ended up becoming a Goldwyn Girl. She made her first screen appearance in Eddie Cantor’s Whoopee! (1930).
After a few uncredited roles, including in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood and Dancing Lady in 1933, Howard achieved a handful of credits, notably in Edmund Goulding’s 1943 comedy, Claudia. But she does not seem to have taken her career very seriously, and spent much of her time taking photographs.
Howard only made about a dozen pictures, but also published two volumes of photographs, including one which captured a world tour she undertook with her close friend Cole Porter.
Moses Harry Horwitz (1897-1975) was the senior stooge in the Three Stooges, at least after the split with Ted Healy, with whom they had performed as, well, Ted Healy and his Stooges. Moe was always a little less stupid than his two comrades, and meted out punishment when it was (and also when it was not) needed.
Moe made his earliest films, for Vitagraph, as a teenager in the 1900s, but these were apparently destroyed in a fire. He and his brother Shemp then undertook a variety of show business jobs, until they teamed up with Healy in the early 1920s. This partnership was on and off over the years, and eventually Shemp was replaced by brother Curly.
Healy and the stooges appeared in several MGM pictures before Healy struck out on his own again and Larry, Moe and Curly became the Three Stooges. Moe Howard, along with Larry Fine, appeared in all 190 of the Three Stooges’ shorts and all twelve features.
Moe was in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.
Jerome Lester Horwitz (1903-52) was, by general consent, the greatest of the six performers who, at various times, comprised the Three Stooges. His brother Moe and vaudeville performer Larry Fine were permanent presences in the trio, but Curly, somewhat reluctantly, took over when original member Shemp Howard decided to leave.
Curly Howard had been a watcher-on of his brothers’ performances when they were a part of the act called Ted Healy and his Three Stooges, and was drafted in when Shemp grew tired of working with the difficult Healy. He was required to cut his hair down to the scalp, something he hated for the rest of his life.
But Curly was considered the most naturally gifted comedian in the act, and introduced many of its best-loved bits of business: the mock-Brooklyng pronunciation (“Soitanly!), the manic laugh (“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk”) and much of the physical buffoonery, which he could improvise at will.
Curly appeared in almost 100 Three Stooges shorts between 1933 and 1947, when ill-health, culminating in a stroke, ended his career.
The Three Stooges never made their own feature film during Curly’s tenure, but he did make brief appearances in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.
Nelson Ackerman Eddy (1901-67) was one of MGM’s first great musical stars. An operatic baritone, he appeared in fifteen musicals, playing the lead in all but the first three. In eight of them, he was partnered with Jeanette MacDonald.
From a poor background, Eddy was a boy soprano who went on to have various jobs while indulging his love of music. He engaged in amateur productions, was noticed by the press and, by the age of 23, was working for the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company, and also sang with the Savoy Company.
Eddy spent some time in Europe, acquiring voice training, then returned to the USA and concentrated on concert performances. He was appearing in Los Angeles when Hollywood knocked on his door. He signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but the studio did not initially know what to do with him. He made his debut in Handlebars (1933), a musical short, and sang without credit in Broadway to Hollywood. In the same year he appeared as himself in Dancing Lady and Student Tour.
Then MGM struck gold.Just before his option with Metro ran out, he was teamed with MacDonald in Naughty Marietta. The picture made a sizeable profit and an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. This led to their re-teaming in Rose-Marie, Maytime, Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, New Moon, Bitter Sweet and I Married an Angel.
In addition, Eddy starred in Rosalie, Let Freedom Ring, Balalaika and The Chocolate Soldier. He only appeared in a handful of films after leaving MGM, most notably The Phantom of the Opera (1943) at Universal. His last film was Northwest Frontier (1947), made at Republic and partnering him again with his Balalaika co-star, Ilona Massey. He continued to give live performances for the rest of his life, dying after a stroke experienced while on stage.
Not even his best friends would pretend that Nelson Eddy could act; he was stiff, with a very limited range of line readings. But there is always something engaging about his performances, which always seem good-humoured and lacking in self-importance. This is especially the case in his films with Jeanette MacDonald, which constituted the Golden Age of MGM’s operetta cycle.
Australian-born Mary Jeanette Robison (1858-1942) grew up in London and emigrated to New York in 1877. She went on to become one of the ‘great ladies’ of the American stage and, later in life, pursued a successful screen career.
Robson developed her craft in comedic and character roles on the stage from 1883, and by 1911 had established her own touring company. She made some film appearances in the 1900s, and in 1920 was in John Barrymore’s New-York-made version of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
But in 1927, after being widowed for the second time, Robson moved to Hollywood and devoted herself to film acting. She played the Matron in Chicago (1927) and, in 1933, was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for playing Apple Annie in Capra’s Lady for a Day. She was Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), but her most frequently revived role was as Aunt Elizabeth in Bringing Up Baby (1938).
May Robson acted in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Reckless.
