Sethma Williams (1915-2014) was a dancer who had a brief career, then gave it all up to raise a family.
One of her earliest appearances must have been Madam Satan, in which she danced aboard the zeppelin, aged about 15.
Williams acted in a handful of films during the 1940s and early 50s, culminating with the role of a dancer in My Favorite Spy (1951).
Dancer Jessie K Bailey (1913-??) and her husband, Ernest Benjamin Harris Rubins (1905-84), were what Variety called a “class adagio routine” under the name Rita and Rubin.
They married in 1929, when Rita was sixteen, and appeared in a number of films during the 1930s and early 40s. Two of these were Madam Satan, in which they were part of the ‘Ballet Mécanique’, and A Night at the Opera.
Margaret Rose Valliket (1913-87) is the mysterious Marie Valli, whose sole credit on IMDb is Madam Satan, playing, quite aptly, Confusion.
Shortly afterwards, she changed her name to June Knight and went on to a successful career on Broadway and, to a lesser extent, in Hollywood. Her one other MGM musical was Broadway Melody of 1936, in which she was the first person to sing ‘I Gotta Feelin’ You’re Foolin’’.
Knight made a habit of launching standards, introducing ‘Just One of Those Things’ and ‘Begin the Beguine’ in Broadway shows. She also sang Cole Porter’s ‘A Picture of Me Without You’, with its memorable couplet “Picture Central Park without a sailor/Picture Mr Lord minus Mr Taylor”.
Louis F Natho (1894-1942) frenchified his surname and started his film career in 1919. He went on to make over 150 appearances, including as one of the (many) reporters in Citizen Kane (1941). In the sound era, Natheaux was usually uncredited.
Louis Natheaux made three musicals at MGM: Madam Satan, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and Bitter Sweet.
Wilfred Van Norman Lucas (1871-1940) is believed to have appeared in around 400 films between 1908 and 1940, as well as directing over 50.
Lucas was Canadian, moving to the United States in his teens. He started out as a singer, performing both light and grand opera, and also made some appearances on Broadway. The Biograph Company hired him in 1908, where he worked with D W Griffith. His first starring role in a feature, alongside the young Bessie Love, was in Acquitted (1916).
In the same year, along with many other friends of the director, Lucas played a cameo in Griffith’s Intolerance.
Lucas made a successful transition to sound pictures, where he worked a number of times with Laurel and Hardy, including as the Warden in Pardon Us (1931) and the Dean in A Chump at Oxford (1940).
Lucas was in three MGM musicals: Madam Satan, The Devil’s Brother (as Alessandro, again with Stan and Ollie) and Naughty Marietta.
Lorimer Johnston (1858-1941) was an actor, writer and director from around 1913.
Johnston directed the last of around 70 films in 1923 (The Cricket on the Hearth, in which he also acted), and concentrated solely on performing, with and without credit. By 1930, when he played a butler in Madam Satan, it was mostly the latter. Johnston’s final appearance was in The Great McGinty (1940).
Elizabeth Barton (1900-50), despite her chosen stage name, was from Little Rock, Arkansas. Her actor sisters, Margaret and Evelyn, also went by Francisco professionally.
She started out as a child actor on the stage, and was a busy screen performer throughout the 1920s, almost always in credited supporting roles.
In 1930, Francisco was one of the costumed party-goers in Madam Satan.
Maria Romano (1907-97) was an actor who appears to have made three screen appearances in the early 1930s. The first of these was at the zeppelin ball in Madam Satan.
George Frederick Benge (1875-1955) was an English actor who made a living in Hollywood mostly playing butlers, valets, footmen and assorted dogsbodies and lackies. Perhaps his finest hour was as Ronald Colman’s slightly-intrepid valet Danny in Bulldog Drummond (1929).
It’s not clear when Benge relocated to America, but he made the first of his over-200 screen appearances in 1922, as one of Prince John’s henchmen in Robin Hood. He then played his first butler in The Ten Commandments (1923) (in the modern section, not running the Pharaoh’s household).
Benge was in six Metro musicals: Madam Satan, (as the butler on a zeppelin) Rosalie, Sweethearts, Living in a Big Way, Royal Wedding and Million Dollar Mermaid.
Lotus Thompson (1904-63) won an Australian beauty contest at the age of 15 on account of her beautiful legs. She took up stage acting after leaving school and made her first film in 1921. She secured some lead roles and was described in publicity as “Australia’s loveliest girl”.
In 1924, Thompson and her mother moved to Hollywood, and she found work at the Hal Roach studio. There followed, in 1925, a curious incident in which she attempted to scar her legs, allegedly with nitric acid, claiming that she hated the way producers only saw her legs, rather than her potential to play drama. This was either the act of a mentally disturbed young woman, or a publicity stunt.
Thompson secured a few roles thereafter, but by the mid-30s was taking bit parts. Her final credit was as Eve in Madam Satan.
