Grace Woods (dates unknown) appeared in a couple of dozen pictures, mostly shorts, during the 20s and 30s.
Woods did a lot of work for the Mack Sennett and Hal Roach studios, and was in a number of Laurel and Hardy films, including Two Tars (1928), where she got a faceful of oil, and the musical The Devil’s Brother.
Walter Shumway (1884-1965) was a character actor from 1918 to 1950. He actually played the lead in his first picture, What Becomes of the Children? (1918), and directed a remake of the same story, sometimes known as Children of Divorce in 1936. This, his sole outing as a director, was made for Puritan Pictures, the forerunner of Monogram.
Shumway was generally in credited roles throughout the silent period but, by 1933, was taking uncredited bit parts, one of which was in The Devil’s Brother. In 1941, he played the garbageman at the end of Hawks’s Ball of Fire.
Information is scarce on the show business career of Lillian E Moore (1916-2001), and this is not helped by IMDb confusing her with a later actor with the same name.
She certainly appears to have had small parts in two Laurel and Hardy pictures, The Devil’s Brother and Sons of the Desert (both 1933), and also in the Claudette Colbert vehicle She Married Her Boss (1935). There is also a suggestion that she was in some Our Gang shorts. A Lillian Moore also appeared on Broadway as chorus girls in at around the same time, but is probably not the same person.
But that’s about it, apart from the fact that she was married to the hugely prolific character actor Roy Roberts and is buried alongside him.And it is her gravestone that reveals Moore’s real claim to fame. It describes her, not as an actress, but as a Women Air Force Service Pilot.
When America entered the Second World War, Moore secured a pilot’s licence and became one of the first women to fly for the US military in wartime, serving as a ferry pilot.
Winfield Scott Mattraw (1880-1946) weighed 362 pounds at his heaviest, and was discussed as a possible new Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. He never achieved that level of success, but did appear in over fifty films in sixteen years.
And Mattraw didn’t even make his first film until he was 44. Although well-known as an amateur comedian and actor in his home town, his day job was managing a local theatre, which included booking the acts and shows.
In 1922, Mattraw made a tentative move towards professionalism by accepting a three-day vaudeville engagement. Then, in 1923, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood. He made a good start, with a two-reel comedy western bringing him to the attention of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. This led to an uncredited comic turn as a eunuch in Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924).
Mattraw worked steadily thereafter, including as comic relief in a series of Universal ‘B’ westerns. He was also uncredited but noticeable (Mattraw was always noticeable) in some ‘A’ pictures, including The Invisible Man and Design for Living (both 1933), Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). He lives on (though uncredited) as the voice of Bashful in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
He was in two MGM/Hal Roach musicals with Laurel and Hardy: The Devil’s Brother and Babes in Toyland (as the town crier).
Kathleen Marjorie Herbert (1899-1974) began performing in British music halls before moving to the United States, where she first worked in vaudeville and the legitimate theatre.
Deslys made her screen debut in Tarnish (1924), and notched up around 75 appearances over the next twenty-eight years. She was in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), establishing her frequent persona as the heroine’s more rotund friend. She later became a regular at the Hal Roach Studios. She played a variety of roles in six Laurel and Hardy pictures, including as Ollie’s wife in Should Married Men Go Home? (1928). She also made regular appearances with Charley Chase.
Deslys later appeared, uncredited, in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). playing it straight as a jail matron in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and Pat and Mike (1952, her last film).
Kay Deslys acted, without credit, in three MGM musicals: The Devil’s Brother (with Laurel and Hardy), The Big Store and Singin’ in the Rain.
Alice Donau (1880-1939) was 39 when she made her screen debut in 1919. It is reasonable to suppose that she had been working on the stage prior to that, but no information is readily available.
Belcher was a character actor with a comic bent, appearing mostly in minor roles in very minor pictures, though there were two exceptions to the latter rule. She was in Victor Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped (1924). And in 1933 she appeared in The Devil’s Brother.
Fern Maxine Salyer (1910-96) had a Hollywood career lasting about eighteen months.
As Marion Bardell, she made her debut in a supporting role in Henry Hathaway’s Under the Tonto Rim (1933). Immediately afterwards, she had her best-remembered role, as Ollie’s disappointed bride in the Laurel and Hardy short Me and My Pal (1933).
She made an uncredited appearance in The Devil’s Brother, and another in The Captain Hates the Sea (1934).
And that’s all, folks.
James Carmody Lankton (1884-1942) was a character actor who made over 200 films, often playing angry authority figures, and frequently making comedy out of his baldness. He appeared often in support of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy.
Following a period in vaudeville and burlesque shows, Morton made his first film in 1912, while also working as a stage actor in Los Angeles. But his screen career really began after the introduction of sound, when he did a lot of work at the Hal Roach studios.
As well as comedy shorts, Morton made appearances, often uncredited, in features, including Modern Times (1936)Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) and The Return of Frank James (1940).
Morton was in four Metro musicals: The Devil’s Brother, Naughty Marietta, A Night at the Opera and The Bohemian Girl.
Shortly before his death, Morton went on tour with The Laurel and Hardy Revue (1940).
Robert Clinton Oakes (1899-1972) made close to 400 film and television appearances in a career that lasted over forty years. The son of a Montana horse rancher, it was fitting that a huge proportion of his roles were in westerns.
Chandler made his first, uncredited, appearance in a Paramount western in 1927, but was starring opposite Betty Bronson in his second, Open Range (1927). Sound posed no problem for him, and he had a featured role in The Forward Pass (1929). But the status of his roles on non-westerns and ‘A’ pictures started to decline. Eventually, he settled into a long series of credited and uncredited character parts.
Chandler had small parts in ten Cecil B DeMille pictures, took orders from Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials, and showed up in films as diverse as Roman Scandals (1933), Marie Antionette (1938), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Laura (1944), The Dark Mirror (1946), Red River (1948) and Rancho Notorious (1952).
For MGM, Chandler appeared in The Devil’s Brother and, uncredited, in The Merry Widow, The Bohemian Girl, The Firefly, Rosalie and Born to Sing.
Matthew O’Grady McHugh (1894-1971) never achieved the level of fame of his brother Frank, but appeared in more films (well over 200) than his sister Kitty.
From a theatrical family, the three siblings performed a stage act together as teenagers. Afterwards, Matt worked in stock companies before making his Broadway debut in Street Scene in 1929, and recreated his role in the 1931 film version.
The following year, McHugh and Edward Brophy played the Rollo brothers, owners of the carnival in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932). Here, as in most of his other roles, he acted with a Brooklyn accent, despite having no connection with the area.
McHugh’s later appearances, mostly uncredited, included parts in Barbary Coast (1935), Holiday (1938), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Devil and Miss Jones (1942), Phantom Lady (1944) and The Dark Corner (1945).
Matt McHugh was in four MGM musicals: The Devil’s Brother, and uncredited in Dancing Lady, Broadway Melody of 1938 and At the Circus.
