The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Films

  • Dewey Robinson

    Burly character actor Dewey Robinson (1898-1950) appeared in well over 200 feature films in a Hollywood career lasting less than twenty years.

    Robinson started out as a stage actor, and was in a couple of Broadway productions during the 1920s. In 1931, he was cast as Big Tony Catello in Enemies of the Law, the first of many roles as criminals, and the next year had a small part in I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932).

    Notable films featuring Robinson include Blonde Venus (1932), She Done Him Wrong (1933), Roman Scandals (1933, as the slave auctioneer), Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935, as Snug the joiner), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Ghost Ship (1943), Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945) and The Bells of St Mary’s (1945).

    Robinson was a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company, and appeared in eight of the director’s pictures, including playing the sheriff in Sullivan’s Travels (1941).

    Dewey Robinson can be seen in uncredited roles in nine MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Student Tour, The Merry Widow, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Big Store, Two Sisters from Boston, Fiesta, Neptune’s Daughter and That Midnight Kiss.

  • J H Peters

    J H Peters (dates unknown) is another of those mysterious performers who made a couple of appearances in 1930s’ Hollywood pictures, then disappeared. His case is made even more mysterious by the fact that we do not even know what his first names were.

    One of Peters’s roles was in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle.  

  • Earl Oxford

    William Earl Oxford (1906-81) was a singer and actor who made his Broadway debut in 1930. He continued to feature in Broadway shows for the next twenty years, and also pursued a successful recording career.

    Oxford made his first appearance on screen singing at the start of Should Ladies Behave (1933). He made a handful of appearances in features and shorts up till 1936, and then gave up on Hollywood. Two of the films were MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle and (allegedly) The Merry Widow.

    He made one final appearance, as Sgt Earl Oxford, in the Warner Bros wartime Irving Berlin extravaganza, This is the Army (1943).

  • George Nardelli

    Discrepancies between IMDb and the AFI Catalogue are normal when it comes to actors’ work. It is usually claimed that this is because, while the former is crowd sourced and includes short films and television appearances, the former is restricted to feature films and based on scholarly research.

    However true this may be (and the AFI listings are full of very unscholarly errors), it cannot account for the fact that French-born Achille Nardelli (1895-1973) was in 194 feature films in forty years, while the AFI lists only twenty-one titles in 27 years. One of them is wrong, and on this occasion I suspect it is the AFI. Its list just does not look like anyone’s career, not least because of the ten-year gap from 1939 to 1949.

    Both sources agree that Nardelli was in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle and The Toast of New Orleans. IMDb maintains that he was also uncredited in The Merry Widow, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Ship Ahoy, Panama Hattie, The Great Caruso, Lili, Deep in my Heart, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, Silk Stockings and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

  • Harold Minjir

    Harold R Minger (1895-1976) was a theatre actor active on Broadway in the 1920s, including in multiple editions of the Grand Street Follies, in which he performed alongside James Cagney in 1928.

    Minjir travelled to Hollywood, like so many others, in the early years of sound. IMDb suggests he did an uncredited bit in Cagney’s The Public Enemy (1931), but the AFI states his first film as being a featured supporting role in Daughter of the Dragon (1931), the last of Warner Oland’s Fu Manchu pictures, and also starring Anna May Wong.

    He went on to make around sixty films, including Jewel Robbery (1932), Wife vs Secretary (1936), Lubitsch’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) and Blondie (1938), the first in the Dagwood and Blondie series.

    Minjir’s last decent role was in The Great Commandment (1939), a strange independent production in which he played the apostle Andrew. After that, he was restricted to small, uncredited appearances in films including Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944) and, at the age of 50, he walked away from Hollywood. It may be presumed he returned to the stage, but no information seems readily available.

    Minjir appeared as the travel bureau agent in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle.

  • George Le Guere

    There are various claims about the real name and dates of actor George Le Guere. IMDb states he was George Mullally (1887-1947). Wikipedia opts for George Le Guere Mullally (1881-1947). A website devoted to Thanhauser Production, a New York company for whom he made one of his early films, agrees with IMDb’s dates, but says his birth name was Francis Jellinack.

    It is certain that George Le Guere worked steadily on Broadway from 1906 to 1934, in both new plays and revivals. He was persona non grata for a while, after walking off stage in mid-performance in 1913, and it was during this period that he made his first films, presumably driven on screen by the need to eat. Le Guere appeared in six features in 1915, for a variety of New York studios, and continued to work in the medium even after his Broadway career restarted. In 1917, he played Adam Moore in a series of seven films based around the seven deadly sins.

    Le Guere’s final appearances, working in Hollywood in the early 30s, were uncredited, the final one being in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle.

  • Henry Kolker

    The dates of Joseph Henry Kolker are either 1870-1947 or 1874-1947 (definitely not, as he claimed himself, 1884). He was born either in Germany or Massachusetts. 

    What we do know is that he was a professional actor by 1895, and worked extensively on Broadway from 1904. By 1914, he was both acting in and directing moving pictures in New York. He directed eighteen films in total, and wrote one of them, The Third Generation (1920).

    In a thirty-three year film career (including a six-year break from 1919), Koler appeared in over 160 features, usually in credited character roles. 

    In Baby Face (1933), Kolker was a banker seduced by Barbara Stanwyck in her ascent to the top. He played the family doctor in Imitation of Life (1934), and was Melvyn Douglas’s controlling father in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). As Friar Laurence, he provided the sleeping potion to Norma Shearer’s Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1937), and he played the crooked politician in DeMille’s Union Pacific (1939).

    Kolker’s final appearances were in Edgar G Ulmer’s Bluebeard (1944) and, after a break, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947).

    Henry Kolker was in four MGM musicals: uncredited in The Cat and the Fiddle and Reckless, and credited in Here Comes the Band and Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry.

  • Robert Graves

    Robert Graves Jr (1888-1954) was a stage actor who made his Broadway debut while in his mid-twenties.

    Graves made his feature film debut in 1925, and went on to make almost sixty features, plus many shorts. He was a character actor, and made appearances in Blonde Venus (1932), Dante’s Inferno (1935), The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) and Mad Love (1935).

    He appeared in two MGM musicals, uncredited both times. They were The Cat and the Fiddle and Naughty Marietta. 

  • Arthur Hoyt

    Arthur Thomas Hoyt (1874-1953) was a prolific character actor, acting in almost 250 feature films and well over 100 shorts.

    Hoyt made the first of several appearances on Broadway in 1905, and by 1914 was making short films for companies based in New York. He made his feature debut for Bluebird Photoplays in 1916.

    Hoyt had credited supporting roles in Rex Ingam’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and in The Lost World (1925), which was directed by his brother Harry. 

    In the sound era, Hoyt features in two iconic prison pictures, The Criminal Code (1931) and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932). He was the motor court manager in It Happened One Night (1934), and appeared in Magnificent Obsession (1936).

    In the 1940s, Hoyt was a central member of the Preston Sturges stock company, appearing in all nine of the director’s films from The Great McGinty (1940) to The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). The latter was his final film.

    Arthur Hoyt acted for MGM in four musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Student Tour, Hullabaloo and Babes on Broadway. All four appearances were uncredited.

  • Grace Hayle

    Grace Flora Heller (1888-1963) was a prominent actor in provincial theatre, notably Philadelphia, and also worked on Broadway in 1918 and 1946.

    Hayle started working in films while in her mid-forties, developing a niche as dignified ladies in more than 120 pictures. Early appearances, usually uncredited, included Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Baby Face (1933), Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and Topper (1937).

    She was a customer at The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and, in the same year, played her most well-remembered role, as Madame Napaloni in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Hayle’s final screen appearance was in the Elvis Presley vehicle Loving You (1957).

    Grace Hayle was in seven MGM musicals, starting with The Cat and the Fiddle. Online resources always claim she played a character named Lettuce, but I find it difficult to believe she was not actually Lettice. Her subsequent appearances were in The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, Sweethearts, Ship Ahoy, I Married and Angel and Athena.

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